Suiting up

Like a lot of guys my age, when I was a youngster in elementary school and junior high, I was a space-nut. Other people followed their favorite baseball or football team--- and I certainly loved my Red Sox!—but I was a crazy about space. I knew the names of the original seven Mercury astronauts (Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton – any questions?) and most of the Gemini crews, too. But I was especially interested in this because my dad, like a lot of the dads where I grew up in central Connecticut, worked in the aerospace industry working to put a man on the moon. At one point, my dad worked for the company that made the EVA suits… the space suits that would be used on the moon!

If you go to the Smithsonian, you can see Neil Armstrong’s space suit, and I knew some of the folks who designed and made it! So, whenever the lectionary lands on this particular passage from Ephesians that likens Christian living to putting the whole armor of God, I think of spacesuits.

Armor has made something of a comeback in the military and in police-work with the advent of super-strong, lightweight materials that can stop (or at least slow) a bullet, but not so long ago the only thing in modern life that was anything like what you see in the movies of pages helping a knight suit up for battle was the image of the astronaut in the clean room being readied for space flight.

The space suit is an amazing thing. It makes the person who wears into a little spaceship, where they can for at least a few hours wear their entire environment and be protected from the vacuum and extremes of space. If one is going to walk on the moon, or repair a solar panel on a space station, you can’t leave home without it.

Some scholars wonder if Paul even wrote the letter to the Ephesians. Well, whatever. It’s still scripture. And what the writer is talking about what it takes to be ready to live the Christian life in a difficult time: “take up the whole armor of God,” we read, “so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Here we have an image that everyone who lived in the Roman Empire knew, and often feared—the helmeted, armored soldier-- to illustrate that the Christian life is neither lived by accident nor alone. That while we ourselves face temptations, and have to make faithful decisions everyday, we also need one another.

That’s because to put on the armor of God, we need someone else to make and fit the armor. We can’t put it on alone. It’s a tough world out there. Your spirit will be tested. We live in a harsh spiritual environment, so if you are going to go about your business of loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and loving your neighbor as yourself in such a tough environment, then don’t leave home without your faithfulness.

Paul (or whomever) is not shy about his allegory: you need to know and rest in the truth of the Gospel, our behavior must reflect what we believe, and that we are to be ready to apply the lessons of the life in Christ and we must be ready to move and go where we are needed.

Jesus would remind us that we must also be fed. His ongoing discourse about Jesus being the bread of life, reminds us that our very being is immersed and transformed in Christ at baptism and that we are fed by him in word, in sacrament and in community such that our very identity is changed and marked by Christ.

Still, I am drawn back to that image in Ephesians about armor, and that image of the astronaut in the space suit.

Think about your baptism. Most of you can’t remember your own, unless you were blessed to be baptized as an adult. I think about may still remember when my kids were small the various rituals we’d undertake to get them ready for the world: whether it was putting on a snowsuit before they’d play outside on a winters day—you know those outfits that keep a kid warm but also keep a kid from moving—or the now ever-present car-seat, baby carrier. But even without the special clothing, I recall the making of lunches, the checking of backpacks, the rituals of saying good-bye as they went to school and we went to work. “Make it a great day!” “Get even smarter!” we’d say and they’d roll their eyes as they endured all those embarrassing kisses as they went out the door. It wasn’t an astronaut’s clean room or a slow-motion walk down the gantry but we sure were sending them out into a new, often unknown, sometimes hostile environment, and we hoped that we gave them everything they needed.

To live life as Christ’s own forever, we need food—and that we find in the word of God and in the sacramental life—and we need the tools of faith—knowledge, wisdom, faithfulness, attentiveness to God. To get what we need, we have Christian community. Not just the little, miniature Christian communities that are our households—as fleeting as they are—we also require the intentional and ongoing Christian community we call the Church. You can’t put on the whole armor of God alone. We need a crew… a support team… other friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.

I heard an interview once before he died where Neil Armstrong who said that he felt guilty about getting all the adulation for being the first on the moon because, first, he was aware of the thousands of people who made it possible for him to get there. He said that he was standing on the shoulders of giants. Like the firefighters and first responders and the soldiers and sailors we thank for their service, he said repeated that he was only doing his job. If I could say anything to one of my childhood heroes, it is what I would say to each and every baptized person I meet: if life is lived faithfully, grounded in God’s grace and love, then we are all doing our jobs; and none of us can do our jobs alone. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.

Wear the whole armor of God, live a faithful life with integrity and hope. And don’t forget, we all help each other put on what we need to live faithfully everyday as friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.

+ + +   + + +   + + +

Here is a link to the bulletin and to a video of the liturgy at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida for Sunday, August 22, 2021

Here is a link to a video of the sermon for Sunday, August 22, 2021.

Here is a link for the propers for the day.

Bread for all kinds of hunger

My fourth-grade teacher was a young, enthusiastic and optimistic woman named Miss Johnson. She walked into our classroom having just come back from a stint in the Peace Corps—what a great idea! We were going to send people to the moon, why not send people around the world to make peace! In the Peace Corps, she taught in a little village school in a brand-new African nation called Botswana.

Miss Johnson wanted us to learn about how big and diverse, and yet how small and connected, our world is. So she organized an international festival that involved all the fourth grades, maybe the whole school. We learned about the cultures and music and art and geography from around the world. We wore costumes and made flags, we learned music and dances from around the globe.

And we baked bread. All kinds of bread: wheat breads, rice breads, corn breads, potato breads. You name it! She must have organized this with the mothers of the students because I remember my mother and I learning how to make a kind of rice bread that is known in the fishing villages of Hokaido in northern Japan, where my father had served in the Army after World War Two.

Why bread? Because everyone, everywhere eats bread! And being used to sliced, white bread in cellophane, it was a real eye-opener to learn about all the different kinds of bread there was from all over the world!

All over the word, bread is life and this morning we heard Jesus call himself “the Bread of Life.”

To understand what Jesus is saying, recall a world where food is scarce, where food can never be taken for granted. It was not so long ago where the idea of having a meal that consisted mainly of bread and something to drink, usually water, often wine or beer, was considered pretty normal. Meat was not an everyday occurrence, so people ate their bread with fruit or cheese or a vegetable. And people had to work—spend almost all their waking energy—to gather, make and prepare what they would eat.

Today, we walk into stories and choose from aisles full of food. We drive up to chain restaurants, talk into a box, and get what we want in abundance. And, unless you live in a so-called food desert where the only stores are bodegas and bars or live on food stamps and WIC, the problem in our culture is not starvation but obesity. We still think about food but the struggle today is think about it less. Our culture has turned food into entertainment—something to fend off the boredom.

But this is not the world Jesus was speaking to, and he did not call himself the bread of life by accident.

Of course, Jesus is not talking about food. He is talking about our deep down spiritual hunger and God’s satisfying, nourishing, spiritual food.

In the Gospel of John, when Jesus describes himself as God’s Messiah, as God with us, he says “I am” a lot. “I am the good shepherd.” “I am the light of the world.” “I am the way.” When he says “I AM living bread which comes down from heaven” and “I AM the bread of life,” he is talking about himself both as manna…the bread that God provided the pilgrim people of Israel during their journey in the wilderness between slavery and the Promised Land…and as ordinary, daily bread, baked every day the world over as the heart of everyday eating.

Bread reminds us that our relationship with God is not occasional but constant. God lives in us and with us. God inhabits us. Jesus is telling us that our connection with God is so immediate and so intimate that God inhabits the very fiber of our being.

It’s easy to forget when the communion wafer is so small, so simple, so plain, that what we are eating is bread not so different from all the different kinds of bread made all over the world. And in that little piece of unleavened bread has so much baked into it. Thomas Aquinas wrote a devotional poem that appears in our Hymnal:

O memorial wondrous of the Lord’s own death;

living Bread that givest all thy creatures breath,

grant my spirit ever by thy life may live,

to my taste thy sweetness never failing give.

Let’s think about two ways that Jesus feeds us.

Jesus feeds us because we are hungry. There are some Christian traditions that won’t let you receive until you have confessed all your sins and received forgiveness. They ask that your spiritual life be cleaned up before you can receive. And while the Apostle Paul does warn us against receiving Communion while we angry with our neighbor, I tend to think of the Sacrament as something we need precisely because we don’t have our spiritual act together. That’s why the Episcopal Church opens communion to all the baptized.

The Roman Catholic writer Nancy Mairs says: “I don’t partake (of the Eucharist) because I am good Catholic, holy and plain and sleek. I partake because I am a bad Catholic, riddled by doubt and anxiety and anger: fainting from severe hypoglycemia of the soul. I need food.”

Jesus feeds us because we are hungry.

And Jesus feeds us to make us become like him.

In many ways,  the old saying [and the cartoon in today’s bulletin] it right. “We are what we eat.” Jesus shows us that what feeds us is not just food but everything we take in—words, images, relationships, our knowledge, our surroundings, our music, our art, our science. And what really transforms us, what really makes us grow into the people God made us to be, comes from God.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said “In Holy Communion we have Christ under the appearance of bread. In our work we find him under the appearance of flesh and blood. It is the same Christ. ‘I was hungry. I was naked. I was sick. I was homeless’.”

Jesus feeds us on the most basic level and teaches us how to feed others. Jesus feeds us to make us like him.

So, what Miss Johnson said was true: everyone, everywhere eats bread. It comes in all kinds of shapes and forms just as we do. Jesus is the bread of life feeds us because we are deep-down hungry and he feeds us to make us become like him.

+ + +   + + +   + + +

Here is a link to the bulletin and to a video of the liturgy at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida for Sunday, August 8, 2021

Here is a link to a video of the sermon for Sunday, August 8, 2021.

Here is a link for the propers for the day.

Jesus and the hometown crowd

I once lived in a place that that must have been central castings idea of the ideal midwestern “hometown.” It had not one, not two, but three “Main Streets’ (even though none of them were called “Main Street”)! There was one that went past the small college, through the center of town past the courthouse and the opera house, crossed a small river and connected to another part of town. There was one that was perpendicular to this one, and went from the local “grand” hotel, past businesses, the armory, and post office and then past a few churches. Then there was the third “main street” that also started at that hotel but went north (actually, compass east) along the Ohio River eventually past the supermarket, the strip mall, the multiplex, and the big box stores.

At that time, I ministered in a variety of little churches up and down both sides of the Ohio River, mainly along what I called the “west coast” of West Virginia but also on the Ohio side. And in each of those little Appalachian towns there was a “main street,” whatever they were called. 

And they all had their own special day or weekend or week. Sometimes it was July 4^th, or Labor Day, or else it was built around the county fair circuit. And even though I didn’t grow up in these places, their rides, booths, fireworks, corn dogs, ramps, and cotton candy, all had the feel of being “home.”

Being from a “hometown” can be very comforting and grounding; but it might also be something very different… someplace one gets away from.

The Rev. Dr. Andrew Harmon of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, reminds us that “….for many people, hometowns can also be sources of pain. They can hold old anxieties. Maybe these were places where one found one’s true identity… or had to leave to become their own person. Maybe the hometown might have been a place where one really didn’t “fit” in. Maybe one’s faith (or lack thereof) was growing in a different direction, or maybe one fell in love with someone from outside or from the wrong part of town. Maybe a person’s political beliefs affected their view of the place or just made it hard to talk to others. Some people looked evil in the eyes for the very first time in that place, or found themselves ostracized for who they knew themselves to be or how they wanted to live their lives or for whom they loved.”

He’s right! Small town life can be complicated!

Whatever “hometown” means for us, it can be lifegiving and heart-rending all at once! And that’s how it was for Jesus!  

Today’s Gospel from Mark shows us Jesus returning to his hometown with his disciples in tow. And while we don’t know if he gave his gang the grand tour, showing him the sites and meeting friends and family, we do hear that were some pretty significant challenges.

I am always surprised about how little we know Jesus’ upbringing (although some of the Gnostic and early Christian material that didn’t make it into the New Testament, has some pretty fascinating and outright weird stories about the young Jesus)!  But here's what today’s passage tells us: He grew up in a big family. His parents, Mary and Joseph were devout Jews and probably pillars of the local synagogue. Jesus certainly inherited his faith and learned faithfulness in that home. I love the scene in the Gospel of Matthew where the adolescent Jesus hangs out at the synagogue for three days, sitting among the religious leaders, peppering them with questions and suggesting new takes on old stories! When the Bible says that Mary and Joseph pondered these things in their hearts, I think that was ‘Bible speak’ for “what’s Jesus up to now?”

Now here it is twenty years later and Jesus has left home. He’s gathered some blokes to come along while he begins his ministry of teaching, preaching, and healing. He travels up and down the region staying in homes and villages and cities all around Galilee. Along the way, Jesus talks about something called the kingdom of God and utters shocking, outrageous statements about his relationship to God.

Throughout Mark’s gospel, he tells those who witness or experience his healing power not to speak, for fear that their testimonies will be misunderstood and, perhaps, get them into hot water.

But you what happens in small towns, right? Word gets around and people flock to Jesus. But it’s not to hear the barker at the county fair…they come to Jesus to be made well in body or soul. Others, want to see a miracle with their own two eyes. In Mark 5, immediately before our text today, crowds saw Jesus casting out demons in the land of the Gerasenes. We heard last week how others saw him raise the daughter of a synagogue official and the healing a woman with a blood disorder. Jesus has been busy, on a journey that has taken him far from home, but now he returns to his hometown.

I wonder if Nazareth was a place of some comfort for Jesus? I wonder if seeing familiar faces, being reintroduced to familiar sights, sounds and smells might have reminded him of all the things that happened—those meals, those events, and maybe even those shenanigans, with his family and friends since childhood. Perhaps all this nostalgia got in the way of others being able to see Jesus for who he was.

“Where did this man get all this?” they ask. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”

Jesus observes that “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”

So just like that, Jesus went from being a hometown hero to pariah. Because why would the hometown hero come home and call people out?

Well, Jesus had a prophetic role as well a teaching, healing ministry. We like the other stuff, but prophets come to unsettle, startle, and stir things up. They call people into new ways of seeing the world. Prophets call attention the work of God and demand faithfulness. I can hear the grumbling now: We gave him his start and taught him everything he knows, and this is how he treats us?

You know, I think I understand that hometown crowd. Rather than “booing” them for their inhospitality, I think I get their resistance. I mean, I know that I am not always ready for Jesus to challenge and change me! Too often this is not what I want or expect from Jesus. Neither were they ready for what he had to offer them.

I think that by now you know that I am allergic to the word “disruption.” It has been the trendy concept in leadership training circles both in business and in church for over a decade. Often people think disruption is just coming in and breaking the dishes just for the fun of it, as if the shocked reaction is the main event.

But Jesus is doing something else… he is saying that God’s kingdom, God’s reign, is here now and that the things of God are not what we’ve come to expect. And that disturbed the folks in his hometown synagogue. And often that disturbs us.

For many of us, faith is supposed to be cozy, especially in a world where good news can be hard to come by and things are so unpredictable. But as a hymn in our hymnal says “the peace of God, it is no peace but strife sown in the sod…” The punchline of that hymn urges us to pray for that same, “marvelous peace of God.”

You know, of course, the difference between a real prophet and a religious huckster, right? A real prophet points to God, pointing beyond themselves and allows God’s spirit to work and for people to grow into the things of God. A huckster says that only they know the way to God and it’s all about them and their technique or charisma. As much as we want real prophets, often our hearts and our fragile egos want the ready answers and the good feelings.

Jesus said, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” That’s because it is uncomfortable to be in the presence of a prophet. It can wreak havoc in the corners of your heart, in your own house, among your own people. When God speaks into those fragile, protected parts of us, or even to the warmest, coziest places of our lives, our souls’ capacity for love grows—our love for God and our neighbors grows. We change and grow in the process. It might feel like scales falling from our eyes, encouraging us to see those who were, for the longest time, invisible to us. We might start to witness walls of hostility and division come tumbling down, or cease to be built in the first place. We might learn to welcome those whom we, at one time, labeled “unsafe” or “other” or “criminal”.

We are all shaken up by Jesus in our own way. But whatever happens, routine religiosity is the first thing to go and transformation occurs in its place. Like the people in Jesus’ home synagogue, they were at once “astounded” at God’s words and works and they were invited to take part in Jesus’ challenging and healing power. 

 

Our loving, liberating, relational God

To think of and describe a God who is both one in three and three in one is almost impossible to accurately describe, so we fall back on analogies. And that can be… well… embarrassing.

Every year for a few years now, someone will inevitably post on social media (at least in my on-line silos) a Lutheran Humor video showing St. Patrick trying to describe the Trinity to a couple of Irish peasants. It’s like a three-leafed clover, he says, or how water can be ice, or water, or vapor, and so on. And each time, the peasants object, saying how he has just committed some classic heresy (“Oh, Patrick! That’s modalism!” “Oh, Patrick! That’s partialism!” “You’re the worst Patrick! I mean, really!”). Finally, Patrick gets exasperated and blurts out a rapid-fire recitation of the Athanasian Creed, to which the peasants say “Well, okay. Why didn’t you just say so?”

We get ourselves all tied up in knots. Even in our own parish named for the Trinity, there are only two symbols of the Trinity in the whole place… the big window over the high altar which, while lovely and which is meant to invite us through the Sacrament into the Gates of Heaven, also depicts God as the Old Guy, the Crucified Dude, and the Bird. The other image is so high up on the wall at the opposite end of the church that it is out of reach. Which is too bad, because if you think about it—or really, stop trying to overthink it—it is really rather simple.

If you read the scriptures enough, and listen carefully enough, one truth becomes inescapable: Godself is best known in relationship.

That is for me the chief witness of both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. We see it again and again: From Genesis where we hear about God walking in the Garden looking for Adam and Eve who have hidden themselves out of shame, to God’s encounter with Moses on the mountain, to the voices of the prophets, right down to the incarnation of Jesus, and even to the vision of Revelation where heaven comes to earth and God gathers all people. The very nature of God is relational. And we, being created in the image of God, are by our very nature relational beings.

This is why the dual crises we are facing now cuts so deep. They are crises of relationship. The global COVIS-19 pandemic that keeps us apart is a crisis in relationship. We are not made to be kept apart because we are built in the image of a relational God.

And the stark revelations (to white society, that is) of deeply ingrained racism in all aspects of our society reveals an ongoing abuse of power that distorts the fundamental dignity of each person, shows us how deeply the sin of racism is a sin against our relational God.

Bishop Frank Logue of Atlanta writes:

“Before God created everything we see and know, there was a communion of three separate persons of the Godhead who created you out of love, for love. Not just one being, but relationships and communion, before time and forever. This is why you were created: to be in healthy, loving, generative relationship with God and all creation. And out of this web of relationships comes both your salvation and the redemption of all creation.”

The word Trinity never appears in the Bible. Yet in today’s Gospel, the Great Commission tells us to baptize new followers of Jesus in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We read a different Trinitarian formulation in Second Corinthians, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

The word “racism” doesn’t appear In the Bible, either. It’s not on any of the Apostle Paul’s lists of sins in his epistles, Jesus doesn’t utter the word from his sermons on the mount, on the plain, or from the boat.

But Scripture tells us a lot about oppression and the work of God to break its power and free people from it From Moses thundering before Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” to Isaiah proclaiming a fast from injustice, to Jesus turning over the tables in the Temple, we see that when God seeks to heal human sin and bring us back into relationship, racism is at the heart of what God seeks to eradicate and heal.

The first Christians weren’t deep theologians, at least not in the academic sense, when they started following the way of Jesus. They prayed and fasted, they cared for widows and orphans, they held everything in common, they told others about the Risen Jesus. Not because of some treatise or manifesto, but because it seemed good to them and to the Holy Spirit. It was the right way to live, and the right way to be with each other.

It turns out that renewed relationship was a key sign to those around them of God at work in their communities. And when they baptized and brought a new person into their community in “the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” they were speaking of a God who is known in relationship.

The creation story that we heard this morning reminds us  that our very humanity, our very diversity, the qualities we share and the things that are unique, are in their essence part of imago dei, the image of God.

This is why the coincidence of global pandemic and our corporate rage at racism and all kinds racial violence in the deaths of Breanna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, Botham Jean, Atatiana Jefferson, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and so many more is so very important. Because we are made in the image of our relational God, the sin of racism cuts to the very heart of what it means to be human. Racism destroys and distorts human ecology on its most basic level, by regulating and destroying relationships.

In his classic book Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, Eugene Genovese describes the lengths to which slave owners would go to distort and destroy the relationships among the people they enslaved. They would break up families, take away children, change their names, regulate what enslaved people could learn, even manage and control how enslaved people would care for their sick and bury their dead. Why? Because they knew if the people they enslaved were to experience unhindered relationships, they would find their dignity, discover their courage, and break out of their bonds.

Every oppressive regime knows this—from Jim Crow to the Holocaust to the Gulag to the reservation system and the so-called Indian Schools, to el los desaparecidos—the pattern has been repeated. And as soon as the oppressors teach people in bondage to read the Scriptures (thinking it would pacify them) it is always the beginning of the end. Because the Scriptures introduces oppressed people to Moses, Jeremiah, Ruth, Micah, Isaiah, Mary, and Jesus. At the heart of the scriptural narrative is a people seeking liberation following a God who is present, empowering, and relational.

Jesus time and again quoted the heart of the Law: Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. The great commandment is relational. We love God and we love people in a deeply interconnected web of relationships. When we come to love God more, we find the heart for people that God has, and so the love of God draws us to other people. Loving other people fully means seeing them as God sees them, and so loving people can also draw us to God. And that is how Godself is best known in relationship! God’s people are best known in our communion with one another. That is why we were created: to live in holy relationship with God each other, and creation. It why respecting the dignity of every human being is at the heart of our baptismal promise.

God is a relational God, and God is also a God of hope! Hope is faith that looks forward. The present pandemic and our (apparently newfound) consciousness of the sin of racism is driving us to appreciate and re-evaluate our relatedness and see the ecology of our relationships differently.

Early Christians practiced their faith well before they landed on the language of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They experienced the fullness of God in the communities where they lived. We are invited also to live out our faith now and let our language flow from that. At the same time, we are invited to see the language of the Trinity not as some distant theological concept but as a gift to us from people who have walked this same path ahead of us.

We are God’s people made in God’s image. And just as God cannot be contained to one image, so we cannot be contained to one culture or expression. And as the fullness of God is found in relationship of the Trinity, so the fullness and grace of humanity comes when we discover liberating, life-changing, and loving relationships that overcomes privilege and break down the barriers of racism making us more fully the people God made us to be.




Trinity Sunday worship at Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, PA may be found here

Time for a re-boot

It seems to happen every Thursday. I try to work around it, but it happens anyway. I arrange for it to occur while I am sleeping, but usually it greets me as soon as sit down at my desk. And when it does appear, I just have to wait. I can moan. I can groan. I can plead that I have a really important job to do and can’t this just wait?!! But it is going to happen. It needs to happen. Just get over it.

I don’t know about you Mac people, but thanks to the nice people in Redmond, Washington, all this is just a fact of life for us PC people.

What I am talking about is, of course, the weekly Windows update and the need for some of those to make my computer(s) reboot. Even when I give permission the night before for the reboot to happen while I sleep, it will sometimes hit some step that will require my permission to proceed. Which is very polite, I must admit, but it is hard not to feel annoyed.

But what can you do? Nothing. Just sit back, take a sip from your coffee (or, in my case, my keg’o’iced tea), and just wait.

So, there I’ll sit, staring at my screen while the little spinney thing spins away on my screen, thinking that this can’t be very productive.

I used to resent it. (Well, okay, sometimes I still do.) But… it just is. Get over it. And besides, I need it.

Every now and then, I’ll come across a person who has never given permission for the weekly update, or who always puts it off. They say “nope, not today! I’m just too busy to stare my screen for one or three or five minutes, and even if it runs in the background, I don’t care. I’ll do it later!”

Only “later” never comes, and then some day when they really need to machine to work, they will discover that the various apps and software will no longer talk to each other or to you, their system is no longer supported, or (God forbid) your machine catches a virus and if it runs at all, it runs as if it trying to run through wet concrete in snow shoes.

So, like it our not, every now and then we need an update and a reboot.

This might be a useful way to think about Lent and what we are doing for Ash Wednesday today. Rebooting. Doing a mild, annual, systems check and update. Nothing drastic, mind you. Just maintenance.

As I was contemplating Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians assigned for Ash Wednesday: he talks about all the hardships and calamites that were happening to him and those early Christians and that through it all they have endured. But it wasn’t by accident: it took “purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God.”

And this doesn’t come by the push of a button. It takes practice and it takes focus.

When think about Lent, what do you think about? Do you think about giving something up or deciding to change a habit… and do you live in fear (or in the certainty) that you will fail? Maybe even after a few days or even hours? Do you look at Lent as a six-week New Year’s resolution?

Lent is, instead, a tithe of our time when choose to get ready to remember and observe Jesus’ life, his passion, his execution, and his resurrection. We are getting ready for the Passion and to celebrate Easter. It is a big party, worthy of quality preparation.

Besides, we need it. Just as our bodies need sleep or else we go a little cuckoo, or exercise or else we get achy, flabby, and tired, or relationships or else we become self-absorbed. That’s why nearly every religious tradition has some way of setting aside time to pray, reflect, listen, and… re-boot. If we don’t do this, our faith becomes at best a to-do list, a thing to fill up time, maybe even a mere entertainment.

Have you ever met someone who never bothered to do that Lenten reboot or anything like it? Maybe they have a spirituality that never challenges but reinforces their deepest assumptions. Or they are allergic to anything that requires them to look beyond themselves. Maybe they are only going from one day to the next in a kind of lifelong reactivity-fest. Or maybe they just can’t imagine life being any different, or better, or that they have responsibility for the people or world around them, so why bother? Maybe it comes from a deep skepticism that anything other than rock-solid, material living matters so to them we have no choice but to just look out for number one and too bad for all the others.

Or maybe they’ve become so immersed in their pain that all they can do is just swim in it, perhaps numbing themselves with substances, or work, or experiences as they go.

Don’t ask me how I might know about any of this! But that’s why it’s important for us to stop, listen, look around, and if necessary, re-boot. Jesus said elsewhere in the Gospels that he came that we might have life and have it in abundance, and that life starts when we choose to stop doing the things we are doing in the way we’ve always done them.

Still, we’ll forget things. Something will slip our mind. We will have great intentions and even if things went as perfectly as we can imagine, there will still be some “oops,” a forehead-slapping, face-palm moment, where we’ll say “I can’t believe that happened….”

But don’t give up. The very failure you fear is an occasion to set things aright. Remember, the measure of success is not that we a flaw-free Lent, but that our hearts, our minds, our souls, are ready to walk with Jesus to the Cross, sit in the darkness of the tomb, and celebrate His resurrection in joy. It will be a time to cheer on those who are being baptized, and give thanks in the companionship of this and other Christian communities. It is a time to discover again that the Lenten journey leads to Easter living, and it is a journey of both grace and intention.

So when we decide to focus a little more on prayer, we are rebooting.

Or when we decide to give up certain foods or set aside certain practices, we are trying for an upgrade.

Or when we choose to do something concrete and personally challenging to care for the poor or the outcast or the lonely, we are attempting to reorient our thinking and our doing.

It’s not just our phones, computers, or devices that need a periodic update. We all do. It’s just that it takes time. Sometimes we can reboot and still go on with our living. The rub is that it’s not done by clicking on a radio button. Sometimes we need to just stop, listen to the silence. Do without for a moment. Think about who and whose we are. Upgrade. Reboot.

This is what Lent is. It is a tithe of our year which allows us to practice letting God in. During Lent we clean out the old useless code, er, uhm, our old way of being (!), and experiment with something new. And in this way of living we will make ourselves ready to let in Jesus, who has already lived, died, and rose again, and to walk with him through his passion so that we may discover, live, and share the love we know as his friends and apprentices. Have a happy and holy Lent, and above, relish the re-boot!

Ash Wednesday sermon, February 26, 2020 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, PA.

The Main Thing

I knew a guy who is given to motivational sayings in his teaching and leading. He is in charge of the education and development of healthcare professionals so he thinks about people learn how to work a fire extinguisher to how to do CPR to making sure nurses and allied health professionals get their continuing education. It’s a big job, and so it is no surprise that he is given to motivational sayings and those posters that show up in workplaces (and which get made fun of on the internet).

So when I read today’s Gospel, I thought of my friend and one of his motivational sayings, which was originated by Stephen Covey: “Always remember to keep the main thing the main thing.”

In the Gospel of Luke, we see that distraction from the “main thing” happened just as much in Jesus’ day as today.  A group of Sadducees, one of the many parties in the Jewish religious culture of that time, wanted to trick Jesus into saying something controversial by asking him a question about marriage and resurrection.

The set up for this question is very, very, strange: One of seven brothers marries a woman and had no children, and then he died.  According to an ancient custom, they say, the brother of the widow married her, and the same thing happened to him--no children and then death.  All seven brothers married the widow and all met with the same fate--you guessed it--no children and inevitable death.  The seven-time widow eventually herself died.  Now came the perplexing question.  "In heaven whose wife of the seven is she?" 

It’s a good thing this question went to Jesus, because I would have said, "Uhm. Huh? What?” 

And then I would have called in Leroy Jethro Gibbs from NCIS because something very fishy is going on here! 

The question, of course, is a zinger. How do we know that? Well, for one thing, that ancient custom that was posed to Jesus? No one actually observed that custom even in Jesus’ day! Widows were widows, and they had their own particular challenges in the culture of Jesus' day. If the system that the questioners proposed actually worked that way, then all those accounts of Jesus and the early church encountering and caring for widows just would not have happened. 

No doubt about it. The question is a “gotcha.” It is meant only to make Jesus look silly. But he doesn’t take the bait. Instead he reminds them that God is God of the living, not the dead.  He is basically saying, "Our concern should be about the living."

But look! It turns out that talking smack, trolling, and living in political and religious silos were not actually invented by the internet! They aren't reserved to bullies and certain kinds of pundits and politicians. They’ve been around since, well, forever! The only thing that's change is the technology.

If you think about it, these Saducees that confronted Jesus are very familiar. We've all run across them. First, we have to recognize that Luke has grossly generalized a whole class of Jewish believers (whom he probably never actually encountered but may have heard about) and turned them into straw-men for Jesus to knock down. 

But Luke gets away with this because broadly speaking, we've met these characters before... maybe at work, or on talk-radio, or your favorite news channel, or that loud guy at the end of the bar. 

You know the type: these are the ones who love being right. The ones who feel smartest by making other people look dumb (which is the game these guys were playing with Jesus). They think of themselves as worldly and all knowing. I'll bet that the ones Jesus encountered probably laughed among themselves at Jesus and his ridiculous teaching like that silly Sermon on the Mount. 

These are folks who do not respect people they disagree with. When they confront Jesus, they came up with a world-class silly question out of their disrespect. How little did they respect Jesus? I don't know but I am sure that when they heard that Jesus walked on water, they sneered because he clearly didn't how to swim!

This is why what passes for political discourse in today's culture is so poisonous. I don't care if you're Michael Moore or Anne Coulter, or any of the rest, the technique is the same. Characterize, slander, belittle, and disrespect your opponent... and that is anyone who disagrees with you... or anyone who questions your line of attack, er, argument. 

But we don't have to play. We can keep the main thing the main thing. Like Jesus.

As so, they loved to argue. They didn’t need talk radio, cable news, and Facebook memes to argue about picky, silly stuff. And they loved to belittle those who did not think as they did.

But that leads to the thing I love most about this encounter.

Notice that when Jesus answers the very silly question, he isn’t talking to them. Why should he? He’s not going to change their minds. Jesus won’t play their game. He allows them revel in their rightness.

Instead, he speaks to all the people around Jesus who are curious, or bewildered, or just trying live from day to day. In other words, he speaks to us.

Because, as far as Jesus is concerned, convincing smug people with clever questions is not the main thing! Drawing ordinary people in closer connection to God, each other and creation…that is the main thing. Returning humanity to God and to faithfulness and wholeness was his task... it is the whole point of the incarnation, passion, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. To return us to unity with God, humanity, and creation. 

When Mark shares his version of this very same encounter in his Gospel, we see someone listening in who at once "gets" what Jesus is about, and sees through The Very Silly Question. 

In Mark (12:28-33), there is a scribe, a person who can read, write, and faithfully copies the scriptures, who overhears this conversation and has apparently had enough. He interrupts and cuts to the chase. He reminds us of the main thing. He asks Jesus a question which exposes the silliness and gets to the main thing: 

²⁸One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he had answered them well, he asked, "What commandment is the first of all?" ²⁹Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' ³¹The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." ³²Then the scribe looked at him and said, "You are right."

In other words, always make sure you keep the main thing the main thing! 

To love God and to love neighbor as yourself, that’s the main thing!  Who cares who will be married to whom in heaven; it is all about loving God and loving neighbor!

To love God and to love neighbor--so simple, yet we make it so difficult.  But the way to fulfill these two commandments does not with addition or multiplication but through subtraction. 

Writer and theologian Richard Foster said: 

Contemporary Culture is plagued by a passion for possessions...more is better...the result is that the lust for affluence in contemporary society has become psychotic....We feel strained, hurried and breathless....Christian simplicity frees us from this modern mania....People once again become more important that possessions.

Christian simplicity is not only about being released from things, it is also living a life free of anything that draws us away from God and from being truly, wholly human.

So, who is married to whom in heaven:  not the main thing!  What car to drive: not the main thing.  

Clever, insulting political memes in your little internet silo: not the main thing! In fact, the only one for whom shutting down your opponent with your cleverness is the Enemy! Evil just loves it when you are reveling in your rightness and condemning of those who disagree or differ from you. Because as long as your reveling, you're not listening. As long as your put up those witty memes or cutting remarks, you're not looking at your opponent as a person but as a thing, and that this a first step away from the Way of Love.

But, just as Jesus did, you have a choice. Keep your eye on the main thing.

Getting together with neighbors and building home for the poor:  that’s the main thing!  

Serving hungry people at a community meal or visiting a home-bound person or listening to and praying with a friend in pain:  that’s the main thing! 

Building friendships among diverse people of faith: that’s the main thing!

For the past several weeks, we have been hearing stories of faith from several different members of the congregation. In a few minutes, you will hear one more. I have really enjoyed hearing each of these accounts of faith, because they are—each and every one—a story of how these extraordinary everyday Christians, your companions in faith, keep the main thing the main thing.

Keeping the main thing the main thing, shows us how following the Way of Love in companionship with the people of this parish has made a significant, tangible, difference in many lives. 

We have learned how our sisters and brothers in Christ have both handled significant challenges, and we discover how God is at work in us helping people grow in their faith and stay grounded in God.

We have again heard real-life examples of how to be Jesus' friends and apprentices. 

When you think about your place in the Church and your life of faith, we can choose to get caught up our selves and our egos and insecurities—looking to always be right, striving to be on the top of the heap, trying to always do things the way we’ve always done things—or we can be faithful stewards of God’s gifts, grace, and mercy to communicate the love of Jesus everyday. 

The question before us, and what Jesus shows us today, is that how we use what we have and how order to our relationships so that the main thing— loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and loving our neighbor as our selves—is always, in this moment and in every encounter, the main thing.

Sermon given on Sunday, November 10, 2019 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, PA.
Job 19:23-27a, Psalm 17:1-9, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17, Luke 20:27-38

Faith overcomes fear

A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper  14-C

It’s strange, I know, but I collect fortunes. You know, the little paper sayings that come inside of cookies at Chinese restaurants. Every now and then one will come along and I will stick it in my wallet or pin it to my bulletin board.

Sometimes I will come across one that I've kept and wonder what possessed me to keep it in the first place. Surely it was not how to learn how to say “cat” in Chinese, or whatever. No, the little morel of wisdom must have spoken to me somehow.

One I found didn’t sound very Chinese, but it did sound a lot like Jesus. It says: "Your faith will overcome your fear." 

Today's Gospel lesson is also a collection. Not of fortunes, but of sayings of Jesus.

First, Jesus reminds us not to be afraid. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (12:32).  

Next, we he tells us to make treasure for ourselves in heaven where no thief can steal or moth destroy.

Then Jesus spins a scenario about the blessedness of servants who are dressed and whose lamps are lit so they can jump up the moment their master returns. How pleased is the master for their readiness? He is so pleased that he serves the servants dinner instead of the other way round!

Finally, Jesus tells us to be as watchful and as ready as a homeowner keeping an eye out for burglars.

So… add all these saying up and what do you get? Assurance of God’s blessings, encouragement to trust in God’s faithfulness, and the command to be alert for God.

This is most helpful, not to mention good news, for us distractible, afraid, and anxious people!

But you know how it goes. The more we are told to be patient, the more we fidget. The more we are told to relax, the more we pace. And whenever the sign on the wall says “wet paint”, the more we want to touch it.

And, I don’t know about you, but my readiness always backfires. Like when I carry an umbrella in my car, just in case it rains. So that when I am in the office and it starts to rain, I will get wet running to my car to get the umbrella!

I know I’m not alone when my faith works backwards. My fears often come first. And I don’t mean the fear of the Lord (the deep awe and reverence for God) that the Bible tells us repeatedly is the beginning of wisdom. I mean the anxiety that tries to keep at bay the chaos in our personal little cosmos. I mean the distorted faith forms a protective shield around our lives. I mean the sneaking feeling that takes that fleeting moment of peace and makes me worried that I’ve overlooked something.

Today’s passage from Luke reminds that Jesus tells us not to be afraid... but that doesn’t mean that we are to be inactive.

Don’t be afraid, and also be dressed for action! Don’t be anxious but keep your lamps lit. Trust in God and be prepared for the return of the master. Keep our valuables in a space that won’t wear out. Faith and grace, Jesus says, is an unfailing treasure that no thief can steal, and no moth can consume (12:33).

We are all wrong about fear. We think it is our protective shield. We might think it keeps us on our toes. But fear is, in fact, the thief. When we dwell on our fears, they become our treasures-- but it is counterfeit currency! Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (12:35). Faith is the genuine treasure we are to be accumulating, but we get it backwards when our fears fill our hearts and faith can’t get in.

This past week, we have witnessed and endured another spate of random violence. Thirty people were killed in just a few days in Mississippi,Texas, and Ohio. The violence this time was directed mainly at people of color by angry, and very fear-filled, white men with guns. In all the arguments about the second amendment this, and rights that, and amidst all the pontificating by politicians and pundits this past week, I have never once heard this question asked: “what the heck are we so afraid of?" 
What is so scary that we feel the need to arm ourselves to the teeth? Why are we so afraid? These (white) guys dressed in camos, body armor, and carrying weapons (even though they serve in no police or military force) think they look tough, but in fact they scared out of their wits. What is frightening them so much?

Well, there is the usual litany… immigrants, crime, strangers, economic uncertainty and race. And there is the added level that “they” (whoever “they” are) are coming to take our jobs, our homes, our security, our privilege and place in society. The truth is that when we dwell on our fears, when we focus what we think we are losing, it causes us to lead with our rage and that brings out the worst in us.

Today's Psalm talks about the scariest, most advanced technology of war yet known in that day: the horse-drawn chariot. I am sure that the Kings of the day longed for the mobility and seemingly unstoppable power that these offered. Yet, even the Psalmist knew, that the power they promised was a response to fear. Psalm 33: 16-18 says:

There is no king that can be saved by a mighty army; *
a strong man is not delivered by his great strength.

The horse is a vain hope for deliverance; *
for all its strength it cannot save.

Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon those who fear him, *
on those who wait upon his love,

Verse 18 reminds us that the antidote to the fearful accumulation of combat technology is to true\st in the Lord, who watches over those who only fear God and wait upon God's love.

Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that if we put our value in the wrong places, then we will know nothing but fear. So our fear is telling us something. Our need to carry around big guns and talk tough is telling us something. Our need to lock doors and distrust our neighbors who look or speak or dress differently that us is telling us something. It is telling us that our fear is running us and is out of control.

We are like Jesus’ householders whose homes are threatened. The thief is fear that has come to steal our faith. And we do know when the thief is coming. The thief is at the door right now. The thief is fear and anxiety. Leaders and celebrities who build themselves up by stirring up fear aid and abet those thieves. How can we keep our house of faith from being broken into by fear?

Jesus promises to turn the tables on fear and to empower our faith.

I heard of a Hindu physician who would talk about how to cope with the stress of modern life, “Live in the past and you will be depressed. Live in the future and you will be anxious. Live in the present with gratitude and you will be at peace.”

As we learn to pray and to turn even the most mundane, everyday chore into a prayer—not only a gift from God but a gift to God—then we find our orientation changing from fear and towards faith. From scarcity into abundance. From worry about the future to resting in a blessed present.

The rhythm of sacramental living—of Eucharistic community, daily prayer, and studying and meditating on God’s word together and alone—immerses us in God’s time, in God’s always unfolding present. Doing God’s work with God’s people, at home, at work, in worship, and among the poor, sick, and lonely, immerses in the community of God’s faithful and reminds us what’s important.

I'm not the only one who collects fortunes. The Rev. Dr. Alyce McKenzie, a United Methodist pastor and seminary professor does too. She talks about two fortunes and decided to keep. They said, “An unexpected event will bring you wealth;” and the other read, “If you put up with small annoyances you will gain great results.”

She wrote, "move over fear and anxiety, because here are some promises of Jesus that are more reliable than fortune cookie fortunes. These are promises that leave no room for fear: Strive for God’s kingdom and these things (food, drink, clothing) will be given to you as well.” (Luke 12:31) and “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)"

This is not the first time that we've lived in a time of fear and anxiety. And it won't be the last. Some people try to meet their fear with fear. They think that if they get bigger guns, wear armor, talk tough that they will somehow intimidate fear and it will stay away. Jesus knew that meeting fear with fear only creates more fear... this is, in fact, how terror works. Meeting fear with fear creates even more evil. 

Jesus invites us--calls us-- to meet fear with clarity, patience, love, steadiness, and, above all, faith!

Genesis 15:1-6, Psalm 33:12-22 , Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16, Luke 12:32-40

See also:

February 1, 2015: Do the Thing That Evil Hates.

June 20, 2016: Looking Evil in the Eye.