So, what now?

So, what now?

The weekend isn’t over yet, but we’ve had the fireworks, the parades, the speeches, and while we might have a cookout or two left, the 250^th Independence Day of the United States is in the books. So, now what? Where do we go from here?

Or, as my favorite TV president, Jed Bartlett, would say, “What’s next?”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve sensed a strange ambivalence about this year’s celebration. It’s been fifty years, but I remember the exuberance of the bicentennial in 1976 and the run-up to it. Yeah, it was the seventies—big hair, big cars, disco, and punk rock—but the buildup for the party was well underway when I finished high school in 1975 and all through my freshman year, until the big do the following summer. Yeah, I know about hindsight and all that, but as I was working a summer job cutting grass, moving chairs, and mopping floors at my home parish, all around that inner-city church there was celebration. (And hype! Don’t forget all the bicentennial themed marketing!) Today? Sure, there have been some America 250 or Freedom 250 banners (indicating the two competing committees running the show), but last night’s fireworks were more or less on the same schedule as last year’s… and I just can’t shake the feeling that there just wasn’t as much energy around this as before. As a Washington native, I am astounded at how few people showed up for the what ought to have been the party of the decade. There have, of course, been at least two exceptions (three, if you count Tayor Swift’s wedding to Travis Kelce on Friday): we’ve been watching the world cup taking place around the US which, as I said last week, has been great fun and I’ve really enjoyed seeing the geeky and enthusiastic crowds that showed up trackside or at train yards to watch the Union Pacific 4014 Big Boy steam locomotive as it made its way across the country from California to Philadelphia.

Maybe “250” doesn’t have the same panache as “200.” But I wonder, do we really know what we’re celebrating? It could be that in ’76 we were, in addition to celebrating our nation birthday, we were also blowing off steam after a really difficult period of war, political upheaval, civil unrest, and scandal. It seems to me that, as a nation, we are experiencing today the same kind of spiritual mindset that caused Paul to write to the Christians in Rome two millennia ago.

Paul wrote to Christians in Rome with breath-taking honesty, about his spiritual life. “I do not understand my own actions,” he says. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” It’s a basic human truth, built into all of us.

I’m not speaking individually, as Paul did, but about us as a nation. We know that we need to come together, to bridge our differences, build on our variety and our capacity for good; but inevitably, we divide into camps, zero in disagreements, and anxiously blame other people for our problems. We can’t talk honestly about our history, because too often when we do, we either ignore what makes us uncomfortable, re-write what went wrong, so that instead of learning from our past  we anxiously takes sides and pick fights. As Paul said, we want the best, but we lean into the worst.

It is hard to follow Jesus faithfully amidst all the noise and bickering. So how does God respond? Well, for one thing we are given a gospel that calls us to hear, listen and rest.

Think about how noisy today’s Gospel is. It’s full of kids playing in the street with little or no supervision, calling out to each other, quarreling, pretending, singing songs, and playing toy flutes.

Jesus says that this is exactly how we are. “…To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’” (Matthew 11:16-17).

Near my house is a lovely playground in a beautiful, forested county park. And when school is out, it is wild. Kids from the very small to middle schoolers are running, jumping, climbing, and generally making a racket. And, if any of you have ever worked with or raised children, you know that sometimes that exuberance can also lead to chaos, even conflict.

In the Gospel, Jesus talks about children in the town market who call out “let’s play wedding!” or “let’s play funeral” to companions who will not join them. We’ve seen this, when one kid comes to another and asks, “wanna play?” and the other kid says “Nah!” and runs away.  Jesus said the generation that rejected both John and Jesus were the same way.

We don’t know how to ‘play nice.’ People said John the Baptist’s way was too hard, but they also said Jesus’ way seemed too easy. (Matthew 11:18-19). But both John and Jesus announced the Reign of God, but is it a wedding or a funeral? Should we feast or fast? Do we rejoice or repent? Should we follow John’s way or Jesus’? Well, the answer to that question is “yes!” Both! We have been invited in our faith and baptism to come play. We have been set free from what holds us back.

So, what now? How do we use the freedom that God has given us?

For the last 250 years, we Americans have debated what freedom means. I remember growing up, my elementary school has framed prints of four Norman Rockwell paintings called “The Four Freedoms,” based on Franklin Roosevelt’s January 1941, State of the Union message: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.

The Scripture readings appointed for today suggest that there is a still deeper question. Not simply, “Are we free?” but “What are we doing with our freedom?”

Political freedom and spiritual freedom are not the same thing. The Apostle Paul understood that. In his letter to the Romans, Paul says something startling: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” I suspect most of us know exactly what he means!

We know the experience of wanting to do one thing and finding ourselves doing another. We want to be patient, but we lose our temper. We want to be generous, but we cling tightly to what we have. We want to forgive, but we carry old grievances. We want to love our neighbors, but fear and prejudice get in the way.

And what is true of individuals can also become true of nations. We can proclaim liberty while tolerating (or even propagating) injustice. We can celebrate equality while excluding some of our neighbors. We can speak of human dignity while turning away from those who are suffering or most vulnerable. We can honor freedom while failing to ask whether everyone truly has the opportunity to flourish.

The founders of this country understood that free societies require “virtuous” citizens. That’s why the government stays out of religion by giving belief space to breathe. It’s also why we have public education and libraries. Paul goes even deeper, though. The problem is not simply that people sometimes make bad decisions. The problem is that there are forces within us that distort us from becoming the people God created us to be.

The Christian faith has never allowed us to imagine that freedom alone is enough. Freedom is not an end in itself. The question before us is always: freedom for what?

That’s when Jesus enters the conversation when he says in today’s Gospel, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not promise victory, nor power, nor wealth. He doesn’t preach national greatness or that our side will win. He promises rest.

I’ve always been intrigued that in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson lists the things people pursue, as God-given, inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the “pursuit of happiness.” I suspect that Jesus’ notion of “rest” and Jefferson’s idea of “happiness” might be related.  Look at Jesus’s vision of a healthy society. Instead of wealth, power, military strength, economic growth, influence, Jesus asks: Are the weary finding rest? Are burdens being lifted? Are people being treated with gentleness? And then Jesus invites us to “Learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.” What’s fascinating to me that when Jefferson, a Unitarian-leaning Anglican, took scissors to the Bible, cutting out all the miracles and stuff he thought unscientific, the part of Jesus’ teaching that we read today is one of the things he left in! Jefferson apparently like Jesus’ ethics more his healings.

Miracles or not, Jesus’ vision of God’s reign presents a different vision of life than our competitive dog-eat-dog, go-go-go way of living that we think of is normal. And it is a very startling vision by comparison. We don’t typically celebrate gentleness and humility in public life. We admire strength. We admire confidence. We admire winning. But Jesus, who said that the truth will set us free, points us toward humility, not coercion; carrying burdens, instead of crushing enemies, in short, Jesus teaches an ethic of love.

That, I believe, is what Christian freedom ultimately means: not merely freedom from something, but freedom for something: freedom for love, freedom for compassion, freedom for justice, freedom for mercy, freedom for building communities where every person knows they belong, freedom for participating in God’s work of healing the world.

So, on day 1 of America’s 251^st year, where do we go from here? What shall we do with this hard won, still unfolding, freedom.

Shall we use it only for ourselves? Or shall we use it to build a society where burdens are lighter, where the weary find rest, where the vulnerable are protected, where strangers are welcomed, where the hungry are fed, the imprisoned visited, and the homeless are sheltered? Shall we exercise power with humility, and live so that love of neighbor is more than a slogan?

The Gospel never asks us to reject our love of country, but it does ask us to measure every nation—including our own— and the actions of our citizens and leaders against the character of Jesus Christ.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe wrote this for year's Independence Day,

Churches like ours, protected by the First Amendment and practiced in galvanizing people of goodwill, may be some of the last institutions capable of resisting this administration’s overreach and recklessness. To do so faithfully, we must see beyond the limitations of our tradition and respond not in partisan terms, but as Christians who seek to practice our faith fully in a free and fair democracy. 

We did not seek this predicament, but God calls us to place the most vulnerable and marginalized at the center of our common life, and we must follow that command regardless of the dictates of any political party or earthly power. We are now being faced with a series of choices between the demands of the federal government and the teachings of Jesus, and that is no choice at all. 

This is not the same kind of patriotism that has guided our church since its founding in 1785, but this July Fourth, it may be the most faithful service we can render — both to the country we love and the God we serve.

Jesus tells us that real, lasting power comes through service and that greatness is found in our mercy. We are invited to learn from Jesus; who is “gentle and humble in heart.” And having begun to learn from Jesus, while doing his work of love, and praying every day that God will give us the wisdom to use our freedom well, we may, with God’s help, become more and more the kind of people, and the kind of nation, that more closely reflects the gentle and humble heart of Christ himself.

 + + +   + + +   + + +

This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9A), July 5, 2026, at St. John's Church, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (9A).

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Spiritual energy put to work

A Sermon on the Second Anniversary of the Partnership between St. John's Episcopal Church and St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Clearwater, Florida

My first encounter with these machines happened on the highway. One day about twenty years ago, I was motoring up the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the Pocono Mountains, when I passed a convoy of extra-long trucks escorted by vehicles with flags and flashing lights. Each flatbed truck had a huge white piece of equipment on it, gleaming like a modern sculpture. What these trucks were carrying was the finished parts for a huge wind-turbine…high-tech windmills. Today, if you drive south out of Wilkes-Barre, PA, through a town called Bear Creek, you will catch a glimpse of a few rows of these huge white propellers on tall towers sitting on top of a mountain ridge slowly turning as they produce electricity. Amazing, isn’t it? That we can take the energy of the wind and turn it into electricity!

Equally amazing are the number of homes and businesses around here that have solar panels on their roofs turning the energy of the sun into electricity or hot water or both. In fact, recently, driving across Florida on Route 60, I saw rows of solar panels sitting on top of one of those mountains of trash where the big green trucks empty their dumpsters! These panels were not only providing electricity, but they were powering the process that was turning the methane from all that trash we throw away into fuel that goes back to homes, schools, hospitals, and other places, powering generators making even more energy.

Everyone is talking about energy…where to get it and how to use it. Whenever I fill up my car with the gas made from the fossils of ancient plants and animals, I am made aware that the cost of energy has gone up. But something else occurs to me. 

Just as cats always find the sunniest spot in the room to warm themselves and plants always lean towards the sun, humans are pretty good at harnessing energy. One of our human ancestors took the potential energy in wood and either with help from a random lightning strike or from learning to bang together two pieces of flint, made a campfire for cooking. Someone first harnessed the energy of the wind to sail a ship or used a rushing river to turn a wheel to grind grain into wheat or drive a loom for cloth.  We’ve unlocked energy from gas and coal to make things go. Now we’ve come full circle, with these great wind turbines that use the wind to make electricity.

Energy is all around us.  But how do we put it to work?

Our lessons today give us three pictures of energy put to work. In one, we see potential spiritual energy. In another we see spiritual energy put to work. And in another we hear about the spiritual engine that makes it all go “vroom!”

In the Gospel of John, the disciples are in the upper room on that very first Easter evening, when the Risen Jesus gives them the breath of the Holy Spirit and the authority to use it. That’s the first picture.

In Acts, we see the second image. The disciples along with other people from throughout the world were gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish festival of Pentecost when “Fiery tongues appeared on them, and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit." The Spirit ignited a new movement and a new people. The energy of the spirit was released and suddenly these people had power to reverse the curse of the Tower of Babel to overcome the languages of division and competition with a new language of God's love and Spirit. The potential energy of the spirit was released and the church was born!

In the third image, the Apostle Paul reminds us that everyone of us, no matter how different, no matter our differing skills, experiences, and gifts, are brought together of the Holy Spirit for God’s work where we live, work, study, and pray. And when we’re in tune, this spiritual energy really goes “vroom!”

One of the most ancient hymns of the church goes like this, "Come, Holy Spirit, our souls inspire...and lighten with celestial fire." It’s too bad that we generally reserve this hymn to ordinations, because it is a prayer that the energy released on that first Pentecost day might continue to burn within the whole church. It is a prayer that God's spirit will continue in each of us and in the whole Body of Christ, so that we might live our faith with zest and commitment and do the work of mission boldly and imaginatively.

The promise of Pentecost is the potential spiritual energy that every person of faith carries is ignited by the Spirit into a deeper, more powerful, more effective Christian living.

One of my favorite stories of potential spiritual energy turned to the actual work of God is of John Wesley, a priest of the Church of England in the 18th century. (You’ll pardon me if on a day we celebrate this partnership between Lutherans and Episcopalians, if I talk about the founder of the Methodist movement?) Anyway, Wesley was a faithful but cautious minister. He studied. He prayed. He wrote. He was thoughtful and earnest. He went to Georgia to minister to English colonists in that rough and wild colony. And you what else he was? Boring! Not to mention stiff and judgmental. The folks in Georgia were so impressed with his earnest, serious preaching that they took an offering... and bought him a one-way ticket back to England!

On the ship, a dejected Wesley, sad and perplexed that his sober, thoughtful, and very earnest ministry had been such a flop, he remembered meeting another group on the way to Georgia when he was coming to America. They were Moravians, and he remembered their energy and fervor. So, on returning to London, he sought them out. And he found them in prayer and song in a little storefront in London, on Aldersgate Street, when something happened. As Wesley recalled, He felt his heart "…strangely warmed...," set afire in a new way with the very Spirit of God. His faith and imagination for the Gospel were ignited for a new beginning of ministry, a ministry of teaching and preaching to ordinary people in the places where they lived and worked, proclaiming a Gospel of renewal and service that extended throughout England and abroad. This new energy brought a new reformation and awakening throughout the cities, mill towns, and mines that had sprung up during the industrial revolution and was changing England.

I suspect that it was the same energy that caused Martin Luther to post his 95 theses on the cathedral door in Wittenburg, or Thomas Cranmer (inspired by Luther!) to turn the ancient prayers of the Church into language that ordinary folk could use and understand. That same spiritual energy inspired revolutionaries and reformers from Katharina von Bora (Martin Luther's spouse and a sharp theological mind in her own right) to Frances Perkins (The Episcopal lay woman who was FDR's secretary of Labor through the Depression and WW2, and the architect of the New Deal and Social Security) to the Rev. Dr. Sister Helena Barrett (first openly LGBT person to be ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church) and the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray (first black woman-- and probably the first trans person-- ordained to the priesthood, an attorney, and a founder of the National Organization of Women) —women whose names don’t usually appear in confirmation catechisms or seminary textbooks—to shake up the church and move us forward into new Godly territory.

I don’t know if you realize this, but we are experiencing that, too. Right now. Besides showing us that the Holy Spirit can speak both Lutheran and Episcopalian, you along with Christians all over the globe, are turning potential spiritual energy into amazing acts of courage, hope, and compassion that makes a real difference in the lives of people and communities.

You might accuse me of hyperbole. I mean what difference can a hundred or so Christians sitting on the border between two Florida cities possibly make in the mission of the whole Church, let alone in our cities? Well, for starters, all of us can take the wind and fire of the Spirit that was ignited in our faith and baptisms, which is fed and banked as we practice the sacramental life, and put it to work. The same Creating Spirit that brooded over creation, spoke through the prophets, and lit up the Church still guides, inspires, nudges, directs, renews, and advocates, re-making us into the people God meant us to be, bringing mercy and compassion and hope to the people we encounter every day.

And that brings us to today’s third image of Pentecost in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Christians. Here we learn what makes the whole thing go “vroom!” What makes the potential energy of John’s Gospel become the spiritual work of that first Pentecost in Acts is this turbine called the Body of Christ? “There are varieties of gifts,” Paul teaches, “but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.” We are the ones God uses to turn spiritual energy into holy work, and we are the ones whom God uses to make the lights go on in people’s lives.

Look at what happened when two different faith communities confronted by different yet daunting issues with their buildings, not to mention working through visions for ministry that would inevitably lead them outside the boundaries of conventional denominational wisdom, decided to come together to experiment with something different. Needless to say, we had to work past some skeptical side-eyes from the folks in both our judicatory’s home offices who each proposed more, shall we say, “time-tested” solutions.

But along the way, you’ve demonstrated that what Paul told the Christians in Corinth is true: we have a variety of gifts, activated by the same Holy Spirit, that builds up the whole body of Christ. Every day the Gospel is communicated to a hurting world in creative and new ways by two communities who are choosing to live out Christ’s love experimentally, inquisitively, and faithfully. In a world that thrives on division and is motivated by self-interest and the interest of our chosen in-group, this is a very big deal! The coming together of St. John's and St. Paul's in partnership demonstrates how the power of the Holy Spirit is unlocked and becomes new vision, new energy, and new hope.

For a long time, the task of uniting churches was mainly about bringing people in the same traditions together that for a variety of reasons has gone their separate ways. In America, traditions split over slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, or which had different ethnic or national roots even if they shared the same theological tradition, needed to be brought back together. The ELCA itself is a product of that… bringing together the descendants of a variety of nationalities, all Lutheran, into a new American church. Even so, not all Lutherans signed up for the project.

The Episcopal Church, along with Anglicans around the world, had other fish to fry. Was the church going to high or low? Urban, suburban, rural or frontier? Privileged, middle, or working class? Catholic or Evangelical? And we, like many of sister and brother traditions, needed to work out that ordained leadership did not, after all, have to be exclusively straight, white, or male. 

And we weren't alone. There were other uniting projects over the last century, among them Presbyterians, Methodists, and the United Church of Christ, to name a few.

But more recently, we’ve discovered a different path: instead of building a new super-church; we've discovered the power of creating partnerships and practicing mutual recognition. We are learning that different churches from different traditions don’t have to chuck their heritages or even their denominations… the important thing is that we work together, pray together, share communion together, but to do that, we need to stop arguing about whether “our” sacraments, rituals, and ministers are more “real” than "yours." 

Lutherans, in my opinion, led the way, choosing to celebrate 500 years of Reformation by entering into communion relationships with as many traditions as possible. Episcopalians have joined in and now count full communion relationships with not only Lutherans, but Moravians, and (God willing) Methodists, and are in conversations with other groups, and such as Presbyterians and other Reformed traditions. Recently, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally went to Rome to meet and pray with Pope Leo XIII. We've got a way to go, because it's long hard work to knit together a fabric that has been torn for centuries, but for the sake of mission it's work worth doing.

Along the way we are finding that instead of needing to be one big blanket church, we are like a quilt lovingly stitched together out of a variety of cloths.

The truth is that none of us can go it alone, either as individuals, congregations, or traditions. We still pray the ancient prayer of Pentecost, "Come Holy Spirit, our souls inspire and lighten with celestial fire...." We all have in us the energy, the power, of the Holy Spirit. The Risen Jesus breathed on the disciples on that first Easter and gave them and us the Holy Spirit as well as the authority and mandate to go into the world and get to work. That same spirit is given to each of us and is sealed in us at baptism. 

No matter the path that brought us here, our prayer is that this spiritual energy will be unleashed. We yearn for God’s power to be let loose and light up our hearts and all creation to make a real difference in the world. It turns out that God has a turbine, an engine, to make that work real and alive, and that is us! We, the body of Christ no matter our flavor or tradition, are the ones whom God uses to let loose God’s energy and make it all go “vroom!”

+ + +   + + +   + + +

This is the Bulletin for Pentecost Sunday, May 24, 2026 at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida and St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Clearwater, Florida

Here are the Scripture Lessons for Pentecost Sunday, Sunday, May 24, 2026.

Learn more about the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Learn more about the Florida-Bahamas Synod of the ELCA here.

Looking Evil in the Eye Again!

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

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

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

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

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

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

And:

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

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

"I will with God's help."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Look again at Jesus’ dialogue with the man possessed:

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

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

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

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

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

Evil hates justice and thrives on division. Seek reconciliation. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And we saw it, too.

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

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

+ + +    + + +    + + +

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

Feeding Jesus and Being Fed

You’ve got to love it! The Crucified, Dead, Buried, and now Risen-from-the-Dead Jesus shows up in front of his friends and followers and what does he do? 

Some great miracle? Nope!

Some great act of power? Nah!

He asks for something to eat. 

It’s as if he came in the door after a long day, plops himself in the recliner and says, “Whew! That crucifixion and resurrection is hard work! What’s for dinner?”

Today’s passage from the Gospel of Luke highlights the physicality of Jesus’ risen self. Jesus shows up in person. He shows the disciples the wounds in his hands, feet, and side. And—I love this—he asks them for something to eat. The Risen Jesus chides the disciples' disbelief. I am not a ghost, he tells them. This is Jesus…not a vision, nor a hallucination, but a real person with a real body. 

Today’s story parallels another story in this same chapter of Luke’s Gospel… Jesus’ encounter with Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus. In both instances, the disciples recognize Jesus as the risen Lord when he ate with them. 

To some of us, maybe, the risen Jesus may be an idea, a story, a symbol, or a memory. But to Jesus’ friends and followers, it was a reunion, a face-to-face encounter, with the same Jesus whom they saw arrested, beaten, executed on the cross… and was demonstrably deader than a doornail! 

But no more!

In these two encounters, Jesus shows that what they are seeing is true by eating with them. Which makes sense, because before his arrest, torture, and execution, this is what Jesus did with them all the time as they went around Palestine teaching and healing. He ate with them. 

And even today, we see him in this most ordinary, tangible way. At the Last Supper and in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus gave us a way of recalling him to our presence and, by eating from his body, to become his body. 

Every day the Risen Jesus shows us that God redeems and makes holy every sphere of our existence: the physical, the rational, and the social elements of our existence are all addressed in Jesus’ resurrection.

The first thing that God redeems and makes holy is the physical world. Our baptism into the church and the promise of resurrection means that we are to value the physical world that God has placed us in and made us part of.

We are to care for the creation and care for our bodies and care for each other, even strangers and people we’ll never meet in person. We are to have environmental concerns and health concerns; the biological and physical sciences are part and parcel of our participation in God’s redemption. We are not to abandon the world we live in, but we are to improve it in whatever small ways we can. 

Another thing that God redeems in the resurrection is the way we know and see the world. Because we encounter the risen Jesus in sacramental living, in prayer, and in the changed lives we both encounter in others and experience ourselves, we discover that God works on every part of our knowing. Rational thinking and faithful being are not polar opposites, always at war, but different ways of knowing the fullness of the creation we live in and care for.

Finally, the physical, risen Jesus redeems our relationships. Christians do not abandon the social world we live in, but we are called to improve it whenever we can, working against evil and promoting justice. The fact that our bodies will be redeemed and raised emphasizes our need to be involved in the world in a positive way. We are not escapists, merely biding time until time ends, but we are involved, letting Christ live in us and grow in us until we are raised with him in glory and we see him as he is and we share in his eternal joy.

In today’s Gospel we find Jesus eating another meal with his disciples. He made eating and drinking together the primary way of experiencing the Resurrection. He uses eating and drinking to teach us and draw us to him. He uses this most universal way people affirm and experience relationships in community. We eat with Jesus. We eat of Jesus. We eat his body, and we become his body. 

Maybe you remember my definition of what a disciple is? A disciple is “a friend and apprentice of Jesus, who learns and does the work of Jesus every day.” So you are all friends and apprentices of Jesus. And you are all learning and doing the work of Jesus.

But lots of people call themselves followers of Jesus... how do you know an actual disciple when you see one?

Well, as the old proverb (that most people get wrong, by the way!) reminds us: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating!"

Clergy and Eucharistic Ministers are the ones who distribute communion, giving bread and saying, “The Body of Christ.” And, if you think about it, we all distribute the Body of Christ in all kinds of ways. 

Imagine when you give a check to the church or a worthwhile charity, placing it in the treasurer’s hand and saying, “The Body of Christ, given for you.” 

Imagine delivering Meals on Wheels or giving a meal to a needy stranger in downtown Clearwater, saying “The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven” when you place the meal in the hands of that homebound senior. 

Imagine visiting a person in prison, extending an encouraging word of love and adding, “The Body of Christ.” 

Imagine teaching the truths of God to a Church school class or in a Bible Study, or prayer group, and concluding by saying, “This is the Body of Christ, given for you.”

Imagine sharing the Word of God in Bible Study, in prayer, daily devotions, or as part of the Daughters of the King, as an act of sharing the Body of Christ.  

Imagine spreading the Good News to those who do not know the Lord, telling others about the joy you find in your faith, and declaring, “Share with me the Body of Christ.”

Imagine being the quiet listening presence to someone who is lonely or in pain, and as you pray with them, recall that we are, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, “Now we are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.”

Jesus rose from the dead, not a ghost, but flesh and blood, in person– his personality, memory, relationships, compassion, and humor intact. Everything he knew is risen and made whole and new and holy. Saint Paul reminds us that when we were baptized, we were all baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection. So as baptized people, we all share in his resurrection, and every day we show off the risen Jesus to everyone we meet. And God uses everything we are, and everything we have, and all our skills and talents and memory–all of us!-- for God’s purpose: to restore all people to unity with God, creation, and each other. 

So, people of St. John’s, Clearwater, my companion friends and apprentices of Jesus, as we gather around this Eucharistic table, as we dash over to the parish hall for delicious nums-nums, and before I turn in my keys and as you get ready for your next era of ministry in service, remember this: in everything you do as a community and as individuals, feed others in Jesus’ name. 

In so many great and simple ways, we reflect the words of St. Augustine, who wrote: 

You are the Body of Christ. In you and through you the work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken. You are to be blessed, broken, and distributed, that you may be the means of grace and the vehicles of eternal love.

And may God go with you in all you do!

+ + +   + + +   + + +

Bulletin for Worship for the Third Sunday of Easter Sunday, April 14, 2024 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for Easter 3-B, April 14, 2024

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida for April 14, 2024

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on April 14, 2024

Six little words

I love word games. I also love clever haiku, and a good joke. So it won’t surprise you that like many of you, every day I go to the New York Times games app on my phone to play Wordle, Connections, and Spelling Bee. I do the Daily Mini-Crossword, and at least on Mondays and Saturdays, I tackle the NYT Crossword (although, even after all these years, I am still not tough enough for Sundays!).

Another thing I love is something I learned in a religious writer’s workshop a few years ago. It is the practice of writing little six-word stories or memoirs. There is a wonderful website put together by an online magazine called SMITH that collects these six-word memoirs. People both famous and ordinary have sent in these little six-word distillations of their lives, highlighting what is important or interesting about them. The best of the stories has been collected in books. The first was called “Not Quite What I Was Planning,” and another “It All Changed in an Instant.”

Some six-word stories are poignant: “I still make coffee for two,” wrote someone recovering from a breakup.

Some are clever. Comedian Stephen Colbert wrote “Well, I thought it was funny.”

Screenwriter Nora Ephron wrote: “Secret of life: marry an Italian.”

I bring this up, because for all the joy and fanfare of Easter, for all the complexity and mystery of our whole religious life together, and for all the billions of words we use to try and explain it, Christianity itself has a six-word autobiography, and it goes like this: “Jesus is risen from the dead.”

Think about it. There are 775,000 words, more or less, in the 66 books of the Bible, and not one of them makes sense without these six words. And there are roughly 2 billion Christians around the globe, and not one of us has a single thing to say without these six words.

All four Gospels agree that Mary Magdalene was the first witness to the resurrection, and is the news she and her companions carried from the empty tomb to the upper room where the other disciples were in hiding. And while she reduced it to five when she proclaimed "We have seen the Lord!" The story is still the same: "Jesus is risen from the dead."

These are the words that have been passed from person to person, from community to community, every day since then – sometimes in secret, sometime in awe, in triumph, in darkness, in celebration, in song, liturgy, art, and theater. “Jesus is risen from the dead.”

These six words that have taken us from being a scattered, broken people who are lost to the largest, most diverse, religion in the world. It is these six words that have found countless individuals whose lives were nearly or already dead -- broken by pain and suffering, by grief and loneliness, by sin and darkness -- and given them new life.

These are the words that are whispered at bedsides and shouted from rooftops and shared at dinner tables and workplaces and in neighborhoods. These are the words that have been forbidden by governments both ancient and modern, and yet somehow they have still been spoken, still been shared.

“Jesus is risen from the dead.”

These are the words that the martyrs sang as they were being burned at the stake, attacked by persecutors, and heckled by cynics. These are the words that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German martyr who opposed the Nazis, taught his students in the secret seminary that he founded.

These are the words that Oscar Romero was speaking as he was gunned down while celebrating the Eucharist in El Salvador. These are the words that Martin Luther King Jr. held fast to as he opposed the violent racism of our culture. These words inspired Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s work in South Africa. These are the words that Mother Teresa hung on to even as she experienced her own crisis in faith while continuing her work with the poor.

“Jesus is risen from the dead.”

Are these words true? If they are not, Paul says to the Corinthians, then “we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Of course, we hear all the time that Jesus’ resurrection cannot be proven, because nobody saw it; that it defies science; that it cannot be true, because people still suffer, they still die; that we cannot believe it, because it seems so utterly unbelievable. And all too often, whether for political gain or to make a quick buck, some have tried to reduce these six words to a mere slogan, chant, or meme.

But the truth and power of these six words knock down such malarkey just as easily as the stone was moved aside, as powerfully as God leading His people through the Red Sea, as wonderfully as the Spirit’s arrival on that first Pentecost.  “Jesus is risen from the dead.”

How many lives have been transformed, starting with Mary Magdalene and her companions, falling to the ground in utter shock, upon hearing these six words? How could we possibly count the ways that billions of hearts have been, in the words of John Wesley, “strangely warmed,” by hearing these six words?

What could we possibly use to measure the impact that these six words have had upon the world -- the ways in which forgiveness, joy, reconciliation, self-giving love and charity have wrought healing, miracles, and abundance on the face of this earth in the time since we have first heard these that Jesus is risen from the dead?

Is it true? Listen to the stories.

C.S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

This is the story of our lives, the story of the life of the world, the story of life itself. It is the story of how life is stronger than death, how God’s love for us is stronger than death. It is, in the end, the only story that there is.

And so, in Easter, we hear these six words again: “Jesus is risen from the dead.”

How will these words change your story?

Where in the essence of who you are do you hear the call to new life -- to come out of the tomb you’ve been sealed in, the tomb of fear or the tomb of hopelessness or the tomb of dreams that have been lost or delayed? Where are you looking for the living among the dead? How will you receive this news that has been handed from life to life, from heart to heart, from age to age, that is now handed again to you?

And how will these words change the world? What does our story still have to say to a world gripped by terror, a culture that is forgetting how to even listen or talk civilly, a culture at odds, a people in pain? How will we be sure that they will hear our story of hope?

Every day we write our story again, and we say that it is no less true today than it was on the first day; it is no less miraculous today than it was on the first day -- no less shocking, no less joyful, no less important, no less life-changing and meaningful. Run and tell the others what you’ve seen and heard: “Jesus is risen from the dead.” Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

+ + +   + + +   + + +

Bulletin for Worship for Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida for March 31, 2024

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on March 31, 2024

Rescuing us

Holy Saturday, April 3, 2010, 

Revised March 30, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ + +    + + +   + + +

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