Having what it takes

Do you think you are good enough to be one God’s saints? Do you think you have what it takes?

What a strange question! Saints are really holy people, right? Only special people, who meet strict criteria get to be called saints, right? We pray to Saints, we name churches for them. Sometimes cities, or colleges or hospitals. Right now, we are surrounded by idealized images of saints in the stained glass that adorn this church.

You know what? The word “saint” appears in the New Testament 62 times and that the Apostle Paul used the term 44 times and not one of them refers to a hospital or college? In the New Testament, every follower of Jesus is a Saint, or in Greek "hagios", one of the holy ones.

Yes, that’s right. You are one of God's saints.

So what makes a saint a saint? St. Paul says Baptism is the mark of sainthood. The writer of the Revelation to John has a heavenly vision. He wrote, "I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;"

We are called “saints” because of God's continuing incarnate presence among his people through Jesus Christ and in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; it is God who is intimately and fully holy, it is God who came in the flesh, who not only lived and walked among us and still dwells in the midst of His people. That presence permeates the entire community of faith.

As Presiding Bishop Michael Curry once reminded us when he said,

God came among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth to change the world, to change it from the nightmare it often can be into the dream that God intends. He came to change the world, and we have been baptized into the Triune God and summoned to be disciples and followers of this Jesus and to participate in God’s work, God’s mission of changing and transforming this world. We are the Jesus Movement now….

…We are part of the Jesus Movement, and he has summoned us to make disciples and followers of all nations and transform this world by the power of the Good News, the gospel of Jesus.

What makes God's people holy is His presence in and with us. It’s not our behavior, which, we must admit, is often less than perfect, that makes us saints but it is our living identity as Jesus’ people that makes us saints. There are many examples of people transformed by the love of Jesus. One well known story is about the Rev. John Newton who former slave ship captain who became an ardent abolitionist and an Anglican priest. He wrote the famous hymn “Amazing Grace” in 1764, that describes the truth that it is God's gracious presence in the midst of His humanity that makes sainthood possible.

"Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see."

With God's loving grace we can grow to be the people God made us to be…to live into the sainthood we have been adopted into!

In the second half of today’s reading from Revelation, God's voice thunders from heaven, "See, I am making all things new." God is making a promise to us. 

I think I’ve told you before about how, when I was in high school and college, I experienced two movements that was sweeping the churches: the Jesus Movement, and in particular the movement that swept through the Episcopal Church (and many other churches). People who were once part of a church known as “God’s Frozen Chosen” were experiencing the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including but not limited to speaking in tongues, and ecstatic prayer. Well, this was new to me and I loved going to those churches and prayer meetings and I learned so much from them. But the truth is that I made a rotten charismatic… and still do! I am just too tightly wound, I guess! The truth is that the only time I’ll ever pray with my hands up will probably be during a bank robbery.

I used to feel guilty about this, thinking that I wasn’t holy enough or that somehow I was closing out the Holy Spirit. But a wise woman reassured me that it was okay…that God was not finished with me yet.

We live in a world that often advertises promises of perfection, but the fact is that saintliness is much less about perfection and much more about transformation. We who are God's saints are saints both by grace and by choice. We followers, friends, and apprentices of Jesus are constantly learning how to follow Jesus as we do the work of God, as we allow the holy presence of God be a transforming influence in our life.

One of the things I have discovered over the years about how to learn and do the work of Jesus is to let go of our outsized expectations of perfection. Sure there are skills to learn: how to pray, how to read scripture, how to listen to others, and how to form holy habits. At the same time, we are also called to have an open and ready heart. And that comes from learning to improvise, punt, to live with limitations. All these teach us that sainthood is not about externals, piety, or looking good. Sainthood comes with baptism, and how we live it by learning and doing the work of Jesu

I remember a children’s sermon I heard as a kid, and I’ve repeated this image a few times in this parish. In the sermon, the priest pointed to all the wonderful stained glass windows that were in that church (here you have wonderful etched windows but the image still holds….). What was said in that children’s sermon is that we, you and me, are all like these windows: we are people through whom the light shines.

When I was in Seminary, I remember hearing Dr. James Fenhagen, the late Dean of General Seminary, speak about the Church in American culture. He said that modern Christians tended to have hard crusty exteriors but soft inner cores. The problem is God call us to have a solid core, grounded in Scripture, tradition, and reason, and a soft exterior, a heart for all God’s people. As baptized said, we build that solid core by being disciplines who engage in prayer, the study of Scripture, spiritual direction, and sacramental living, which shapes into who and what we are, deep in our souls. All this helps us to have a genuinely compassionate, welcoming, and embracing faith that expresses God’s love and care to the people God gives us every day.

Remember that famous old English hymn, "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God?" The last verse brings home the point

"They lived not only in ages past,

there are hundreds of thousands still,

the world is bright with the joyous saints

who love to do Jesus' will.

You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,

in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,

for the saints of God are just folk like me,

and I mean to be one too."

I have to confess I am not there yet but, as that wise woman reminded me long ago, we are on the way. Being a saint is a being a person of hope… hope is faith that looks forward. And the saints of God who surround us in a fellowship of love and prayer tells us that we are not along in the journey. God isn't finished with us yet. And, yes, you do have what it takes! God is making all things new, even people like me and like you.

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Bulletin for Worship for the Sunday after All Saints, November 5, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the Sunday after All Saints, November 5, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on November 5, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on November 5, 2023.

Choosing to forgive, choosing to live

I know what Jesus says, but the truth is this: there are times when I don’t want to forgive! I want to get even. I want my day in court. My pound of flesh. I want everyone to know I’ve been wronged, and I want the one who hurt me to get what’s coming.

That’s the truth. And I know I am not alone. The problem of course, is what happens when we organize our lives around our injuries— when I start to build my living around all the ways that I have been denied my due, and all the ways I have been injured—then it becomes quickly apparent that my life will bear the fruit of anger, of fear, of resentment. And that’s why Jesus says what he says about forgiveness.

Forgiveness happens when we choose to no longer organize our lives around the things and the people who have hurt us.

What the late Presbyterian pastor and religious writer, Frederick Buechner said of the deadly sin of anger applies to forgiveness as well:

“Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

The kind of anger that Buechner spoke of is grounded in an inability to forgive.

But it is not magic. Forgiveness doesn’t come with the snap of a finger. Forgiveness is a journey and a discipline.

I remember an example of this from 17 years ago, when five Amish schoolgirls were killed and 11 others were wounded by a gunman in Pennsylvania in 2006. What made this stand out from the rash of school shootings that have infected our country, what stood out the Amish community not only comforted the shooter’s wife and children, but they also forgave him. They even took in and cared for the mother of the killer as she struggled with his crime. As astounding as that was, you want to know what was even more astounding.? It was the anger and the revulsion that the Amish received in their community, in the media, and even in pulpits, because they forgave even as they mourned the death of their own innocent children.

A more startling example happened in 1948. Pastor Yang-Won Sohn’s two teenage boys were shot for being Christians by a rioter in Korea. Yang-Won not only forgave the shooter, but arranged his release from prison and adopted him as his own son.

Were these people crazy? How can people forgive such heinous crimes against innocents? It messes with our minds. Yes, Jesus said forgive, but there must be a limit, and these crazy people crossed it.

But Jesus said, forgive not seven times, but 70 times seven. OK, let’s count it up; we must be way beyond that limit now. But if we’re honest, we know when Jesus said “70 times seven” he was using it to mean “always.” Jesus teaches us that there is no limit to forgiveness, either to the number of times we ought to forgive and to the power of forgiveness. 

And then Jesus told a parable about the wicked slave who is forgiven a huge sum by his master, but then goes out and throws a fellow slave in prison for being owed just a fraction. We hear that the wicked slave then gets his just punishment. “Good,” we may say. He surely deserved that! We might forget that he was punished not because he owed money, but because he did not forgive. Jesus is very serious about this forgiveness thing.

The Apostle Paul reminds the Romans about another side of forgiveness. His take on it was about how we treat each other because of our differences. Some eat anything, others are vegetarians; they must not despise each other. Well, that’s easy enough. We can do that.

Some may worship God on one day, some on another; do not despise one or the other. Another easy one – we can do that! To each his own, we say!

But then the Apostle Paul asks, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?” meaning, why do we pass judgment on everybody else? Perhaps because we so often see immense hurt and evil in our world and we want to see justice done. We cannot imagine why people maim and kill innocent people. We cannot understand the sickness of domestic abuse, trafficking of young men and women and children, the horror of genocide. These evils need to be dealt with. They need to be eradicated from the earth and humanity deserves to live in peace and safety. Forgiveness? Was Jesus being naïve when he said “70 times seven?” Probably not. Remember that even as Jesus was being executed he prayed that God would forgive his tormentors and executioners “for they don’t know what they are doing.”

So, how do we start? We might look once again at the Amish. Their ability to forgive came from the center of their theology, which is the Lord’s Prayer. They believe it when they say, “…As we forgive those who trespass against us….” Over and over, Amish leaders tried to explain that to journalists and others who could not believe the parents of the dead little girls could forgive. The Amish in that community made quite clear that forgiveness did not take away the pain of the death of their children. It also did not take away the requirement that the perpetrator be held accountable. They were choosing not to build their lives around hatred for the person who caused that pain.

So forgiveness doesn't say, "Act like it never happened" -- that's amnesia.

And forgiveness doesn't say, "well, nobody could have expected you to do any better" -- that's condescension.

And forgiveness doesn’t mean that there one who injured us is freed from accountability. That’s, well, unhelpful.

Forgiveness puts demonizing the other person out of bounds. When we demonize another person we deny their moral agency, as well as their fitness for being loved. In suggesting that the others are incapable of moral action—by turning them into monster-- we lets them off the hook.

The truth is that when we are hurt and we want to hit back and we want to make the other person suffer, but choose not to—when we make the hard choice to stop organizing our lives around the injury, we are freed from the shackles of living in the past, feed from the fetters of living the injury over and over again, freed from the prison of rehearsing the hate.

You see, forgiveness doesn’t let the other person off the hook. Forgiveness frees us to continue to live faithfully and ethically, because we have chosen to forgive and because we have chosen to no longer organize our lives around life's injuries that have afflicted us either intentionally by other persons, or the disappointments that have inevitably occurred as life has unfolded. 

In a few minutes, just after we recall Jesus’ gift of himself on the cross and just before we break the bread which is also his body that will feed us, his body, we will pray the Lord’s Prayer. And we will all say “as we forgive those who trespass (sin) against us.” As you let that prayer marinate in your heart, think about what the Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said  about forgiveness:

“The simple truth is, we all make mistakes, and we all need forgiveness. There is no magic wand we can wave to go back in time and change what has happened or undo the harm that has been done, but we can do everything in our power to set right what has been made wrong. We can endeavor to make sure the harm never happens again.”

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Bulletin for Worship for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, September 17, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, September 17, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on September 17, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on September 17, 2023.

Everybody is from someplace

One of the things that I have learned since “retiring” to Florida is that everybody is from someplace and that location matters.

A long time ago, when I was a young priest seeking a new cure, I dutifully sent my resume and profile to any place the church’s computer said that I might possibly be a decent match. One of those churches was in Virginia. They called me up for an interview. Now they were polite, but they were not really interested in a young priest from Connecticut, no matter how nice I was, until I mentioned that I was born in Virginia and baptized at an old, historic parish there where George Washington was once Senior Warden.

My, did their tone change! It did not matter that, except for the occasional vacation or family trip, for all practical purposes I had not set foot in the Old Dominion since I was two years old, my pedigree had clearly improved.

On the other hand, I only grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut, which does not really make me a true New Englander. I once asked a parishioner of my first parish in Northeast Connecticut (who could trace her ancestors back to the first Puritans in New England) about this an/d she said “Well, if a cat has kittens in an oven, does that make them biscuits?”

Certainly, where we are raised has an effect on us!

Jesus was not born in his hometown, either. In today’s Gospel he talks about something far more serious. He talks about how our spiritual birth is far more important than our physical birth.

This is what Jesus said to Nicodemus late one night.

Nicodemus came to Jesus with a sort of hesitant curiosity—a curiosity that would not let go.

Nicodemus was a leader of the Pharisees, a movement within Judaism that sought in the first century to modernize things—a movement that sought to revise Jewish consciousness about faith and geography--to get Judaism out of the Temple in Jerusalem and into the places were Jews actually lived. Before the Pharisees, a Jew whether they lived in Galilee or Alexandria or Rome, was not complete until he went to the Temple in Jerusalem. The Pharisees, on the other hand, said that being Jewish is a matter of knowing who you are, whose you are, and how one lives – loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind and our neighbors as ourselves. They believed that the local synagogue was therefore the center of Jewish community life, not the Temple.

Jesus knew that Nicodemus wants relocate the heart of Judaism from the Temple to the Synagogue. So, when the two finally meet, Jesus takes this new idea one step further. The heart of the faith is not located in a place but in heart. The Spirit is not confined to a building no matter how local. Instead he says "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

I am sure that you’ve heard the phrase before. It’s usually translated as being “born again.” It could mean that, or "You must be born anew." But, basically, the word means "from above." So Jesus tells Nicodemus that one must be born from above, a kind of second birth that is a gracious gift of God.

Jesus says that where the Spirit is found is not dependent on a place. Jesus says, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

It was William Temple, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury during World War II, who when asked once if he was born again said, “I’ve been born again, I am being born again, and I hope to be born again tomorrow.” All of us have the chance to change, to grow, to deepen our life in Christ. John 3:8 reminds us that "The wind blows where it chooses."

Listening for that wind is one of the great disciplines of the Christian life. Awaiting the chance to be born again is one of the great disciplines of the Christian life. Maybe it should be one of our disciplines during this season of Lent.

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

We are all born someplace. Everyone is from somewhere. But, as Christians, we are citizens of God’s reign. We are natives of that place which we call the kingdom of God, which we call heaven, which we call eternal life, which we call God’s creative, transforming presence right now on earth! It is a kingdom that we enter simply by following Jesus and letting our identities be shaped and re-shaped by this marvelous wind, this breath of the living God.

In living our life in Christ, we have a choice: we can think of it as a punch-list of tasks we have to accomplish to be sure that this aspect of our life is covered; or we can see the movement of baptism and Eucharist, of daily prayer and sacraments, as a process by which we discover again and again our identity in Christ.

Nicodemus’ journey will take him from a night-time meeting with Jesus to the foot of the cross and to Jesus’ grave on Good Friday, where Eastern Orthodox tradition has him providing the oil that was to be used to anoint his body. My own hunch is that Nicodemus became part of the Community of the Beloved Disciple and that he was a Jesus-follower after his resurrection. That is quite a journey! And so is yours.

Everybody is from someplace and, as followers of Jesus, we are all on a journey to new and wonderful places. Lent is a time for us to discover once more that no matter where we are or where we are from, God is always present to us and that our identity is found with Christ. As baptized people, we are at home with Christ.

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

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Bulletin for Worship for the Second Sunday in Lent March 5, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Scripture Lessons for the Second Sunday in Lent, March 5, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's Clearwater, Florida on March 5, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on March 5, 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.

Salty Christians

Like a lot of people my age, I have been thinking a lot about salt lately. I used to only worry about it before winter arrived, but not since I moved down here! Nowadays, I peruse the labels of nearly everything I eat counting milligrams of salt—sodium chloride—in nearly every serving.

In our diet, we humans only require less than a teaspoon of salt a day –from all sources-- for our survival, and most of us take in much more than that. And my doctors tell me that too much salt can lead people to be at risk of developing high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and even some kinds of cancer. So people who try to eat right quickly learn to look for salt not just in the shaker but in all the ways salt is used to prepare and preserve food to get and stay healthy.

I think that the people in Jesus’ day would be astounded at how common… and how cheap!... salt is in our culture. In addition to small amounts of salt for the table, we can buy it in 50-pound bags for use in water softeners, we use it in swimming pools, and (up north) by the dump-truck load to melt ice on roads and bridges. We can thank advanced mining technology, railroads, and ships that can carry huge quantities of salt in bulk for all this.

But in Biblical times salt was rare, hard to obtain, and considered a very precious commodity!

The phrase “salt of the earth” means something very different today than when Jesus said it. Today, when we say someone is the “salt of the earth,” we mean that he’s a good guy, humble, down to earth, and honest. When Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth,” he did not mean that we are Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” He meant that we are as precious and as essential to life as salt.

Jesus says that we are the light of the world, and we are salt of the earth. Where would life be without light? We are God’s light. We are God’s salt to the world.

Again, in our light-saturated culture, where we can barely see the stars anymore because we generate so much artificial light, we forget how valuable and rare light can be. A lone campfire lit by a shepherd on a hill could be seen from miles away. Light shining in the darkness didn’t just shine. The smallest light could pierce the darkness… not obliterate it as we know today… but pierce it with pinpoint intensity. That’s why in the ancient near east, they’d light fires on the top of towers so that ships at night could steer by it through the darkness.

You are the light of the world.

You are the salt of the earth.

Imagine a world where salt and light were special, extraordinary things.

In this preaching and teaching, Jesus used ordinary images everyone could understand to let us know that he expects something extraordinary from us for the sake of God. He was telling his hearers that he places a high value on them and on what he requires of his followers – just as in the first-century salt was valuable, he is telling us that we are valuable, too! He taught his followers to act for God in ways as important and varied as salt was in their world!

So, let’s follow the image of salt for a moment. We are salt to the world, Jesus says. What does that mean?

Our being salt to the world would help others learn to make life special and not be the “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” existence described by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Christian faith can provide spiritual seasoning that gives life joy and meaning. To keep life from being bland and unrewarding, we season it with Christian commitment and understanding of God’s love for his children. Being salt to the world means adding flavor to life wherever and whenever possible. It means adding a zestful spirit to life and love. It means pursuing meaning in all we do and in all we encounter. It means acting in love with all whom we touch.

In Jesus’ day, salt was often connected with purity. The Romans believed that salt was the purest of all things because it came from pure things: the sun and the sea. It was used by the Jews to purify their offerings to God. If we modern Christians are to be the salt of the earth, we must accept a purer and higher standard in our speech, thought, and behavior – keeping ourselves unspotted by the world’s self-centeredness. We use respectful language, we avoid slurs and generalizations because we followers of Jesus attempt to heed his call to be a cleansing presence, constantly witnessing to the good that is found in God’s people and to express the values of God’s realm.

In ancient times, salt was valued as a basic ingredient of a good life. As salt in the world, we can serve as a basic nutrient for others. We can become nurturing agents for those around us – caring, helping, enriching, teaching, and bringing them to Christ.

Salt was also used to aid healing. As salt in the world, we can promote healing through prayer, caring for others, and supporting the least, the lost, and the lonely – holding hands with one another and administering the holy oil of anointing.

Salt has, for centuries, served as a preservative to prevent food from spoiling. If we, as salt in the world, become preservatives of God’s goodness, we can help prevent spoiling and corruption wherever we find it. As followers of Jesus, we are committed to preserving Christian principles that keep ourselves and others from going bad.

Most of the time, salt is mined from the earth or, more and more, dried from sea water. Whether it is in a bag in the garage or a shaker on the table, for salt to become effective, to do its work, it must be released from its container. God can release us from what entraps us so we can truly salt the people of the earth.

God can release us to do the work Jesus commands us to do – to make a difference in the world: giving hope where there is no hope; forgiveness where there is division and rancor; to embrace others where there is loneliness and despair; tolerance where there is prejudice; reconciliation where there is conflict; justice where there is wrong; food where there is hunger; comfort where there is distress or disease.

So that’s what Jesus meant when he said that we are “salt.” Through his incarnation, death, and resurrection, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, he empowers us to purify, to heal, to nurture, to thaw the frozen, to preserve, and to season the people of the earth. In Sacramental living, the power of God supports and sustains us and stands with us if we risk whatever it takes to become salt to the world. And when we fail in this effort, through prayer, Christian community, confession and absolution, God raises us up and renews us and gives us strength to persevere, again and again.

Unlike many modern people whose health depends on moderation in eating sodium, we “salty” Christians never need to go on a spiritual salt-free diet! In fact, the world needs us to be salt! Our community is in desperate need of the seasoning that we, from our branch of the Jesus Movement, can provide. God is sending us to heal a broken world, be a sign of justice and hope, of commitment and peace, to be people of prayer and faithfulness.  To be, as Jesus said, salt of the earth.

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Bulletin for Worship for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 5, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Scripture Lessons for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 5, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's Clearwater, Florida on February 5, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on February 5, 2023.

Old dogs. New Tricks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Met at the point of our greatest need

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is a link to the Scripture readings.

Here is a link to a video of the sermon.

Here is a link to a video of the liturgy.

A Day for Healing, Mercy, and Grace

The idea of work on the Sabbath has changed in my lifetime. I grew up in Connecticut when it still had strict Blue Laws: no stores open on Sunday, except for pharmacies and some grocery stores and gas stations—and then only for a few hours. William Willamon, a theologian and ethicist, wrote in his book Resident Aliens about the day the movie theater in his little Southern small town showed a movie on Sunday for the first time… he said it was the day the world changed forever.

And he was right: if in his little town, where traditional values were held so strongly could tolerate—even encourage—the opening of the movie theater on a Sunday, then anything was possible.

The idea behind the Blue Laws was to keep the Sabbath holy, and to build in some time for quiet rest. But it was never 100%--there were exceptions to certain professions. Hospitals, for example, were always 24/7 institutions but little by little culture chipped away at the idea until the laws came tumbling down.

Today, of course, even banks are open on Sunday. Given the hectic nature of our lives today, we might be excused if we give in to some nostalgia here and there.

And we might also be excused from understanding exactly what the problem is in today’s Gospel. Jesus heals a chronically ill woman from her illness in the Synagogue on the Sabbath. Jesus is teaching in a local synagogue on the Sabbath, he looks over sees this woman who is bent over because of some kind of chronic malady that is clearly painful. He calls her over and heals her. This causes the leader of the congregation, to complain to those around him about Jesus (interestingly not to Jesus)—he did “work” on the Sabbath, couldn’t this have waited until this evening or tomorrow.

I mean, really, is this any way for a respectable Messiah to act?

The rules to "do no work on the Sabbath" had exceptions, as surely the leader of the synagogue must have known. You still had to feed your livestock on the Sabbath. I mean, a cow only knows she needs milking, not day of the week it is! And you still had to bathe and care for yourselves. You still had to feed yourselves—which meant someone in the household (guess who?) was always working.

What’s remarkable to me is that, according to the Gospels, Jesus apparently had to deal with this issue a lot! An awful lot! I mean, he deals with the question of working or healing on the Sabbath six times in the Gospel of Luke alone!

Given that Luke’s Gospel is rooted in a Church that is increasingly Gentile, and rooted more and more in Roman culture, I think something else is at work—and it is not simply a diatribe against first century Blue Laws.

Jesus is teaching us that the Sabbath, rather than only being a place to rest and refresh, is telling us something about how God works. Jesus is saying that the Sabbath is the time when work—healing work—can happen, and that there is no better time to see healing work happen than on the day God rested.

Jesus—and Luke—are putting forward the notion that when God rested after creating everything in six days, God not napping but was instead a day of appreciation and connection. The Sabbath was the day God stepped back, and looked at all creation and marveled at the extent of its goodness. It was the day God blessed creation in its fullness.

So it’s not a day to nap; it’s a day to appreciate. And for Jesus it was a day to show and appreciate that God’s Reign is amongst us, right here, right now, and that the completion and wholeness we long for is in fact available to us right here, right now.

When we refrain from normal work on the Sabbath, it is so that we can appreciate the wonder and the power and the miracle of God’s work that we take part in everyday.

Jesus would say elsewhere that the Sabbath is made for us—so that we can remember that everyday we are apart of God’s creation.

The Sabbath reminds us that God’s work never ends. God’s work does move in cycles, though. In a cycle of rest and activity—in a go-go world such as ours we often forget how to rest and what it is for. Rest is not only to reenergize the body, but periods of rest is where we renew the mind and spirit as well. Our prayer, our study, our community life are all part of the rest we undertake. The times of reflection and study, our times of play, of art and music, are all times we need to be full, whole people. These periods of rest may be a day, like a Sunday, or they may be times we take in spiritual retreat or even the moment we take to say a simple prayer or the moment we take to reflect on the blessings of the day before we drop off to sleep.

Our work is where we engage the world—our public lives, our work, our participation in civic and community life, our outward relationships, these are the places where our lives as baptized people.

To be healthy people, to be fruitful friends of Jesus and healthy apprentices we need to remember that we need to live this cycle of renewal and action. Of rest and activity.

Jesus heals and works on the Sabbath to remind us that everything we do rests in God’s grace and when we rest, we rest in God’s grace. In the action of rest and activity, mercy never takes a holiday—neither does God’s power. That is why we come here—to lay before God all that we have and all that we are, all our pain and all our hopes, knowing that God in Christ heals us and that in Christ we are the healers—and bringers of rest—to those who seek after God.