Author Archives: Fr. Tom McAlpine

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About Fr. Tom McAlpine

Fr. Tom is a semi-retired priest in the Episcopal Church living in Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

Jesus’ Freedom–and Ours (Palm Sunday, 4/13/2025)

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Readings

In today’s collect we prayed “Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection.” Wondering what that might look like, I’m drawn to what Harold Kushner says in his Forward to Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, the book based on Frankl’s experience in the Nazi concentration camps: “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” And I’m struck by how Jesus uses that freedom in today’s Gospel.

Our Gospel reading starts with Jesus’ celebration of the Passover, and his reinterpretation of its symbols: “This is my body, which is given for you.… This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” And Luke follows this immediately with “A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest.” How tempting it might have been for Jesus to use his freedom to say “Enough. I’m going back to Galilee. You all sort it out on your own.” Instead, again, he tries to help them understand that God’s kingdom works differently than those to which they’re accustomed.

(Oddly, given the often discouraging state of the Church, I find Luke’s portrayal of the disciples encouraging. They argue about who’s the greatest. They fall asleep while Jesus prays in the garden. One of them betrays him. One of them lops off the high priest’s slave’s ear. Peter denies him not one, not two, but three times. Jesus knows the material he has to work with in this Church project, and somehow thinks it’s worth the effort.)

Praying in the garden: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” There’s such a painful distance between the Father’s perspective and Jesus’ perspective. Nevertheless, let’s notice how Jesus uses his freedom: to forego second-guessing the Father. It dovetails with that line from our Isaiah reading: “I have set my face like flint.” There’s a time for considering multiple options; once the decision has been made it rarely helps to revisit it: being double-minded usually doesn’t end well.

During the arrest: “Then one of [the disciples] struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear.” “I have set my face like flint” could easily translate into tunnel vision; Jesus uses his freedom even to attend to that wounded slave. Jesus uses his freedom—a freedom we all have—so that even on a bad day other people matter.

Those same alternatives, tunnel-vision vs responsiveness to the context, show up at the crucifixion. I am so grateful that I can’t imagine what it would have been like, but there it is: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Harold Kushner again: “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” Jesus’ use of that freedom is, frankly, breathtaking. May it nurture our imagination and courage when we find ourselves in situations where we have less control than we’d prefer. So, yes, with the Collect: “Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection.”

Ash Wednesday: “Ash”? (March 5, 2025)

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Readings

Well, here we are again at Ash Wednesday with its “Remember that you are dust.” As I wondered how we might enter Lent this year that dust image got my attention, an image Scripture uses in a variety of ways.

The words that accompany the ashes echo that text from Genesis’ Garden of Eden story: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But ‘dust’ is not always the best translation of Hebrew עָפָר, so the Common English Bible reads “until you return to the fertile land, since from it you were taken; you are soil, to the soil you will return.” Not good news, but it recognizes an ongoing relatedness: adam (humankind) from the adamah (the fertile land). That relatedness is good news—and easy to forget. So I’m grateful for the various initiatives our parish is taking.

Dust. From this evening’s psalm: “For he himself knows whereof we are made; / he remembers that we are but dust.” Hashtag ‘dust’ positions us for God’s mercy. And the prophet Isaiah recognizes that not even death can get in the way: “Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. / O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! / For your dew is a radiant dew, / and the earth will give birth to those long dead.”

So there’s an implicit promise in “Remember that you are dust…” The year I was in the middle of a hospital chaplaincy program I made the promise explicit: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return, and from the dust you shall be raised.” And every year I remember that.

The raised part isn’t automatic, of course, which is why imposing the ashes in the shape of the cross is as important as the ashes themselves. The cross: Jesus’ path, Jesus’ way, our way with Jesus through death into life.

Our faithfulness to Jesus’ way is usually—shall we say—ambiguous, which is why Paul regards being reconciled to God as an ongoing project, why the BCP’s invitation to a holy Lent emphasizes repentance. ‘Repentance’: a $50 word for changing course, for changing.

Back in 1957 they made a short movie featuring the cellist Pablo Casals. The director asked him why at age 80 he continued to practice for hours each day. Casals answered: “Because I think I am making progress.”

That’s a lovely model for repentance. We often assume that repentance is about what goes on in the head or heart. But recall our Isaiah reading: “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.” Repentance needs to move to Casal’s fingers, to our hands and feet, to have any lasting value. And in any case, as Jesus points out, the heart pretty much just tags along after the treasure.

“Because I think I am making progress.” OK. “Making progress on loving God and neighbor:” where does that fall among my priorities?

There’s probably an unavoidable element of altruism here. Rowan Williams talks about decentering, abandoning—as often as I need to—that oh-so-attractive idea that I’m the natural center of the universe. But altruism isn’t the point.

Recall these lines from the Song of Songs that didn’t (alas!) make it into tonight’s readings:

10 My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
11 for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
12 The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land. (Cant. 2:10-12)

The noise and worries of the day-to-day can easily drown out that voice. Lent is our time to remember that for quite selfish reasons that’s the voice we want to hear, that hearing it more clearly, more often, might be worth some change.

Parenthetically, here’s one reason I want to hear that voice. Whether it’s Jesus’ “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt. 6:33) or the BCP’s “self-examination and repentance,” our responses often leave us overly serious and wound very tight. Jesus, in the midst of the Roman occupation and the multiple Jewish factions each claiming the Lord’s stamp of approval, responds with joy and generosity. There’s a lot I could learn from that voice.

Earlier I said that Scripture uses the dust image in a variety of ways. Here’s another, with which I’ll close. At one point the Lord said to Abram: “I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted” (Gen. 13:16). And in Scripture’s last book John gets a glimpse of the fulfillment of that promise: “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Rev. 7:9-10). May we be numbered with that dust.

“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” (Last Sunday after the Epiphany, 3/2/2025)

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Readings

The eyes and the ears: what happens if we attend to these while reading today’s lessons?

The eyes are the easy part: Moses’ face shining, Jesus’ face and clothing really shining, Paul’s promise that his hearers, having turned to Jesus, will themselves shine. Not hard to get a decent sermon out of that. And attention to the eyes can speak powerfully to us in two ways.

First within the text and—for that matter—the Church calendar. Three days from now is Ash Wednesday, when we’ll begin to walk with Jesus to his death. That’s an important walk. But as we do it, it’s easy to start thinking that Jesus went to his death because he didn’t have any choice: too many enemies, no place to hide. And that’s when we need to remember today’s reading. The Jesus whom we’ll join as he walks to his death is the same Jesus we saw dazzling white on the mountain. If he dies, it’s not because he’s run out of choices.

Second, so the light show’s over? No; here’s where we come in. St. Paul tells us that as we look to Jesus some of that light, some of that glory, starts to rub off: “all of us…are being transformed…from one degree of glory to another.” No. The light show’s not over. “The God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’” will shine in and through us as we consent to it.

And Paul’s writing this to the Christians in Corinth. Corinth was a boisterous, rowdy seaport, and from Paul’s letters it looks like the Christians there fit right in. Paul repeatedly struggles to make himself understood. There are factions. It’s one body, but the eye is saying to the hand “I don’t need you” and the head to the foot “I don’t need you.” And precisely in that unpromising context Paul hopes for light, transformation, glory. And if Paul can hope for light, transformation and glory there, how much more can we hope for it even in our parishes in Wisconsin.

What about the ears? Let’s look at the Gospel again.

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31 They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

Jesus goes up the mountain to pray. Prayer: Luke emphasizes this practice, making it explicit where the other gospels don’t. So preparing this sermon I wondered what my devoting more time and energy to prayer might mean. (It’s a real nuisance when the text turns around and bites the preacher!)

Then there’s Luke’s summary of the conversation between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, speaking of his departure (Greek ἔξοδος) “which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” ‘Exodus’: while the Greek word is common enough, Luke’s using it here to point toward Jesus’ decision to time his passion with the Passover celebration, perhaps Jesus’ most important interpretation of his own death: an exodus, a liberation more radical than the one in Moses’ time.

How do you free Israel—or any nation, for that matter—from the various forms of interlocking economic, ideological, and political oppression? Flee to the wilderness like the Essenes? Continue to assassinate Romans and Roman stooges like the Zealots? Encourage meticulous observance of selected portions of the law and shun the non-observers like the Pharisees? Journey to Jerusalem for a new exodus like Jesus? Notice that the Essenes, the Zealots, the Pharisees, and Jesus are responding to the same question. It’s not a specifically religious question. It’s one of the most basic human questions: how do we maintain/create/regain (choose your verb) a way of living together that doesn’t self-destruct?

And here’s where the ears again become important. A few verses later, partly in response to Peter’s suggestion, the divine voice says “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” Listen to him. What might that mean?

Well, let’s recall what we’ve heard Jesus say. Back in the Nazareth synagogue: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.…” The Gospel writers thematize this as announcing the kingdom of God, the kingdom that this morning’s psalm celebrated (Ps 99). “O mighty King, lover of justice, / you have established equity; */ you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.” Magnificent. And then Jesus spoils it all with his examples: the widow at Zarephath in Sidon, Naaman the Syrian, warning us that God’s generosity extends to our enemies. Worse, Jesus’ conduct matches his words: sharing a table with tax collectors and sinners, healing the servant of a Roman centurion. That, Jesus would have us understand, is what God’s justice and righteousness look like: the Good Shepherd abandoning the ninety nine to seek out the one who’s strayed.

Perhaps you’ve seen the cartoon based on this story. Jesus shows up with the lost sheep on his shoulders and the rest of the sheep respond, “No, Lord. You don’t know how much effort it took to get rid of her!”

Turns out that while listening to Jesus is sometimes easy, it’s sometimes not so easy. How do we build a world that’s sustainable, that doesn’t self-destruct? That’s what Jesus is talking about. And we really need to hear Him, in the midst of so many voices that urge some form of identity politics. And anyone can play this game. We’re for inclusivity? Then we need to stand against those who don’t share our vision of inclusivity! (Thank goodness Lent is coming!) So, it’s not simply that Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom of God, but proclaiming that kingdom and a particular way in which He and His followers were to live on the threshold of that kingdom: forgiving, mirroring God’s generosity even to their enemies, abstaining from violence in word and deed. “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

“Love your enemies”–the downside of “God is love” (7th Sunday after the Epiphany, 2/23/25)

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Readings (Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50; Luke 6:27-38)

Easter doesn’t often fall late enough for us to celebrate this 7th Sunday after the Epiphany. Since we often find Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel unwelcome, perhaps that’s intentional. In any case, here we are, with readings that invite us to wonder about how God holds together justice and mercy, and what that means for us.

Justice. Psalm 62 ends with “For you repay to all according to their work,” and that’s the definition of justice this sermon assumes.

Justice: the problem’s centerstage in our psalm. How are we supposed to believe in God’s justice surrounded by all these prosperous evildoers? To which the psalm responds (repeatedly): don’t be angry; be patient; “the lowly shall possess the land” (v.11)—last week we heard Jesus weave that last bit into his beatitudes. That’s all good and true as far as it goes, but what when the patience needed extends over generations? So in the last centuries leading up to Jesus books like Daniel and the Wisdom of Solomon turned to the world to come to find God’s justice.

Our reading from Paul follows that tradition. Last week, earlier in the same chapter, we heard “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (v.19). Why? Because within this tradition God often doesn’t make things right until the next life, the next world. And Paul concludes the chapter—past the verses we heard—with “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (v.58). Not in vain, because within this tradition only with the resurrection does life make sense, is God’s justice obvious. So Paul out of pastoral concern works at length to help his hearers imagine the resurrection.

The cries for justice are frequent in Scripture, as is the deferment of an answer. In response, there are voices—the Book of Job in particular—that suggest that while justice is important, it’s perhaps not supremely important. Gustavo Gutiérrez, whose credentials as a partisan for justice are impeccable, puts it like this in his book On Job, “The world of retribution—and not of temporal retribution only—is not where God dwells; at most God visits it” (p.88).

So if justice is not supreme, what might be? That brings us to another theme in today’s readings: mercy.

“Love your enemies” says Jesus. Why? “Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

We don’t notice often enough how diplomatic Jesus is being. He doesn’t say—as he could easily have said–“Be merciful, just as your Father has been merciful to you.” Scripture often talks about the righteous and the wicked, and it’s easy to assume that these are quite different groups. But then we hit the fine print as it were, the penitential psalms or that line from Psalm 143 “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, / for no one living is righteous before you.” The difference between the righteous and the wicked is not that the righteous are righteous and the wicked wicked, but that the righteous are that group of the wicked who plead for mercy, who seek to act mercifully.

Within Scripture Jesus’ “love your enemies” is not a new idea. (Recall that in both Testaments love is about actions, not emotions.)  We hear this in Exodus: “When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free” (23:4-5). But it’s not until Sirach—which the Protestant reformers relegated to the Apocrypha—that the connection between receiving mercy and showing mercy is clear: “Forgive your neighbor the wrong he has done, / and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray. / Does anyone harbor anger against another, / and expect healing from the Lord? / If one has no mercy toward another like himself, / can he then seek pardon for his own sins?” (28:2-4). So Jesus in the “Lord’s Prayer:” “And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us” (Lk 11:4a).

“Love your enemies…be merciful.” How unwelcome these words were and are. “Hey Jesus, have you forgotten about the Romans and those so-called Jews who collect their taxes?” And our polarized context brings the problem into sharper relief. “Real people are being hurt; many are at risk”—that’s a cry heard across the various spectra. All this is the downside to “God is love.” “God is love” applies also to our enemies. More precisely, for the preacher, the problem is not so much God’s love, but that there’s such a chasm between how much God loves and how much I love.

So, how does God do justice and mercy? James, Jesus’ brother, nails it: “mercy triumphs over judgment” (2:13b).

So the Gospel is finally a variant on “Olly olly oxen free?” No, because there’s that first half of the verse from James that I just quoted: “For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy.” Or, as Jesus puts it in Matthew’s account: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (6:14-15). We can hear this as justice getting its due; we can hear this as the Father extending to the merciless the only mercy they can receive. The question of eternal life is finally the question of whether we’re the sort of folk who’d want to spend eternity with this merciful God.

Recall how the Eucharist moves. Scripture and Creed remind us of God’s love and mercy. We pray, and then, more pointedly, we confess that we’re only sometimes on board with this love your enemies / be merciful business and commit ourselves again to try to do better. Then the Absolution, then the Peace.

Two more things, then we’re done. Jesus’ “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” poses two intimately related questions: How do we want to live? How does God live? Intimately related, because we rightly think that living like God sounds pretty good, but our pictures of how God lives are all over the map. How does God live? Doing whatever God wants? Answering to nobody? Showing mercy? Jesus is suggesting, I think, that if we get some clarity as to how God lives, a remarkable number of other issues sort themselves out.

Finally, Joseph in our first reading, which reminds us why all this matters. Paul spends a good deal of ink on the resurrection; from the brothers’ perspective Joseph might as well have been raised from the dead. Joseph could have moved the brothers into one of Egypt’s prisons, thrown away the key, and justice would not have raised an eyebrow. Joseph chooses mercy, chooses to acknowledge that God was also a player in their history. “And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.” Today, when too many are acting like Joseph’s brothers, our merciful God is also a player, and calling on us to show mercy.

Who is blessed/happy? (6th Sunday after the Epiphany, 2/16/2025)

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Readings

Whether we respond to the readings with “The Word of the Lord” or “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church,” I take the readings to set the agenda for the preacher: what might the Spirit want us to hear today in these words of the Lord? That agenda’s in the form of a question, so most of the time the sermon’s an invitation to reflect together. So let’s dive in.

Words like ‘happy’ or ‘blessed’ appear in three of our texts. ‘Happy’ has a broad range of meanings; what are these texts talking about? Well, it looks like they’re part of a long conversation in the Mediterranean world about what counted as a life well-lived. It’s certainly about something more basic than one’s momentary emotional state. ‘Happy’ is the first word in the Book of Psalms, despite many of the psalms assuming situations that have the speakers crying “Help!” In this sense there’s considerable overlap between ‘happy’ in that psalm and Jeremiah’s ‘blessed.’

Both texts talk about two groups, their behavior and the results of that behavior. The Psalm speaks of the righteous and wicked, the behavior of the righteous captured by “Their delight is in the law of the Lord.” Jeremiah speaks of those who trust and those who don’t trust the Lord. Both use the tree image: those who delight in the law, those who trust: they’re like well-watered trees: they endure; they’re fruitful. They’re the ones who are happy (Psalm 1), blessed (Jeremiah). Trees: the image suggests a rather long timeframe. Fruit, or the effects of drought: these take time. The image is hopeful and can nourish our hope. Droughts: they’re a given; we don’t need to fear them.

So these texts are saying that in this life, this world the righteous prosper and the wicked fail? No, for starters because Jeremiah’s career is the antithesis of ‘prosper.’ They are saying that delighting in the law of the Lord, trusting the Lord are life-giving. Notice the careful language with which Psalm 1 closes (and introduces the entire book): “For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, / but the way of the wicked is doomed.”

In other words, whether all this plays out in a satisfactory way in this life, this world is left unanswered. Earlier texts often seem to assume that it does; our latest texts—like Daniel or the Wisdom of Solomon—are sure that it doesn’t. Paul’s words to the Corinthians continue this trajectory: without a resurrection in which each receive their due “we are of all people most to be pitied.”

But returning to Jeremiah and the psalm, notice that while for both of them the Lord’s torah (law, or, more broadly, teaching) is fundamental, neither narrows the focus to obeying or not obeying. Jeremiah understands that the issue is often trust, who or what we put our weight on. The psalmist speaks of delight in the Lord’s law or teaching. That’s an invitation to a life of continual discovery. Paul to the Ephesians: “test everything to see what’s pleasing to the Lord” (5:10 CEB).Cue the music from the various iterations of Star Trek, one contemporary vision of a corporate life well-lived.

Hearing Jesus’ words after Jeremiah and the psalm, we might hear them as encouragement: even if you’re poor, hungry, etc., you’re still in the life-well-lived game. And that wouldn’t be a bad way of hearing them. But there’s more.

Earlier in the Gospel Luke recorded Mary’s song. “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, / and has lifted up the lowly. / He has filled the hungry with good things, / and the rich he has sent away empty.” Growing up with your mother singing songs like that will do things—good things—to your head. Three Sundays ago we heard Jesus reading Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…” and here Jesus is doing just that.

“Whoa, Mary, Jesus! Pretty hard on the rich!” we might think. Well, their words reflect centuries of their people’s experience. Of course riches can be used in good ways, but usually? Sirach nails it: “Wild asses in the wilderness are the prey of lions; / likewise the poor are feeding grounds for the rich” (13:19). We shouldn’t assume that these words match our reality, nor should we assume that they don’t. (And, by the way, the next thing Jesus says—which we’ll hear next Sunday—is “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” So however we read our situation, we’ve been told how to respond.)

Happy those poor, hungry, weeping, hated. Not because these are positives, but because God’s reign is—as Jesus proclaims—at hand. Now, in our text we hear “for surely your reward is great in heaven.” So isn’t this another version of “pie in the sky when you die”? No, first, because the border between heaven and earth is porous, and a reward “great in heaven” is a sight better than having received all the consolation you’re going to get. Second, because of where Luke is taking this. Later in the Gospel we hear “And [Jesus] said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life’” (18:29-30; italics mine). So, describing the church in Jerusalem, Luke writes “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (Acts 4:34-35). What is the Church for? It is where the truth of Jesus’ Beatitudes can be experienced.

How might we wrap this up? Already in the Old Testament we have the contours of a life well-lived: a life in which our trust in the Lord is growing, a life in which our delight in the Lord’s teaching is growing. To quibble a little with Gene Roddenberry, for all practical purposes the final frontier is not space, but the week ahead.

And with the power of the Lord Jesus’ Spirit active in our midst, this life well-lived is particularly good news for the poor, the hungry, those weeping, those excluded, reviled, and defamed on account of the Son of Man. As one of our Eucharistic Prayers puts it, “that we might live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us, he sent the Holy Spirit, his own first gift for those who believe, to complete his work in the world, and to bring to fulfillment the sanctification of all” (BCP 374).

“Cleanse me from my secret faults.” File under “Be careful what you ask for.” (3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, 1/26/2025)

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Readings

What might the Spirit be saying to us through today’s readings?

At first glance the first two readings go in opposite directions. The center of Psalm 19 celebrates the Law, the Torah: it revives the soul, gives wisdom to the innocent, rejoices the heart, gives light to the eyes… But when Ezra reads that Law the people weep.

Our first reading doesn’t explain why they weep, but its setting lets us make a reasonable guess. Ezra and Nehemiah are reconstructing the people’s common life after the disaster of the Babylonian conquest and exile. The temple’s been more or less rebuilt, the city walls restored, and now the Law reproclaimed. Love God; love your neighbor as yourself. Obey and things will go well; disobey and things will go very badly—as just experienced in the Babylonian conquest and exile. Why think that things are going to go any better the second time around? The people seem to have enough self-awareness to ask this question—and weep.

Love God; love your neighbor as yourself. That’s the path that revives the soul, gives wisdom to the innocent, rejoices the heart, gives light to the eyes… But as the prophets kept pointing out, it’s remarkably easy to stray from that path. Love God: more than I love my script for how I achieve security and status? Love my neighbor, or see my neighbor as a threat to be neutralized or a resource to be exploited? If only this were the challenge only for Ezra and Nehemiah’s audience, and not for every generation of the people of God!

We’ll come back to this. Meanwhile, our Gospel reading, like the first reading, gives us another scene of public proclamation, this time Jesus reading Isaiah in the Nazareth synagogue. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” We could apply the psalmist’s praise of the Law to this good news: it too “it revives the soul, gives wisdom to the innocent, etc.” But—spoiler for what immediately follows—it runs into the same problem the Law encountered: the synagogue audience goes homicidal when Jesus declares that this good news is also good news for those neighbors they consider enemies. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we observed last Monday, ran into that same problem.

Love your neighbor as yourself. As Paul’s letters remind us, this is difficult enough to do within the church. The ear, the eye, the hand: they focus on different things; by some measures they have very little in common. But what Paul’s aiming at: that “the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” Ears, eyes, hands, feet: some of us voted for Harris, others for Trump; some of us get our news from Fox, others from MSNBC, some of us are still sorry we’re not using the 1928 prayer book, others can’t wait for a full revision of 1979. And so on. And Paul wants us to get to the point that “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”

What’s at stake here? On the macro level, whether the good news embodied in Jesus is true and has the power to transform, or if it finally belongs in the box with the Easter Bunny and Linus’ Great Pumpkin. On the micro level, recall the ending of today’s psalm. “Who can tell how often he offends? / cleanse me from my secret faults.” For all the power of the Law—or the Gospel—it’s often powerless against my blind spots. And as long as I listen only to those like me those blind spots stay undisturbed. In other words, God typically responds to “cleanse me from my secret faults” not by some ethereal intervention, but through a neighbor I’m too ready to write off. Cue, again, Dr. King.

This challenge of loving God and neighbor, central to both Law and Gospel: what in our readings might give us some encouragement?

Paul’s image of the body is an appeal to our imagination, so let’s stay with that image a bit longer. The ear, eye, hand: each has access to an extremely narrow slice of reality. And in God’s ordering of the body, it all works, even though none of these parts has the “big picture.” This ordering depends on a sort of trust, the eyes, ears, etc. sending out nerve impulses without knowing or controlling what will happen to them. And, conversely, bad things happen when this “trust” breaks down. One or more cells may get together, decide “the heck with all this cooperation, let’s just grow”—which is what we call cancer. In short, Paul’s image is designed to nurture trust and a healthy humility: our individual perspectives are limited; in the infinite wisdom of our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, it works.

And, going back to Ezra and Nehemiah’s Second Temple weeping congregation, it’s going to be better this time around because God comes to us in our brother Jesus saying “Let’s do this together.” Loving God and neighbor involves some serious dying, an ongoing letting go of my impulses to neutralize or exploit my neighbor. That’s scary. And Jesus is there beside me: “You don’t have to do this alone. Let’s do it together.” That’s also what the Bread and Wine are about: Jesus’ “Let’s do this together.”

Ezra and Nehemiah aren’t in a position to mount a strong argument, but they point in the right direction: “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared.” The endgame of all this is the victory banquet Isaiah described:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. (25:6-8)

The Bread and Wine: they’re the first course. So come to the Table, God’s dream for the new world: everyone is welcome, there’s room for everyone, there’s enough for everyone.

“They have no wine.” (2nd Sunday after the Epiphany, 1/19/2024)

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Readings

Children’s Sermon

Today’s Gospel reading: what was your favorite part? That short dialogue between Jesus’ mother and Jesus: What is Jesus’ mother saying/doing? What might Jesus’ reply mean? Jesus’ mother then talks to the servants: what’s that about? Does Jesus’ mother get what she asked for? What might have happened if Jesus’ mother had let Jesus’ first  response end the conversation? (So we keep at it, even if we don’t quite understand what’s going on.)

Adults’ Sermon

There are any number of things we might notice in today’s Gospel; I’d like to focus on two. The first is what the children and I were looking at: how to respond when Jesus’ response sounds conversation-ending. Today’s Gospel isn’t the only place this question comes up. The most notorious case: Jesus’ response to the Syrophoenician woman’s request to exorcise the demon from her daughter: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (Mk. 7:27). The woman could easily have let that end the conversation. She chose not to, and in the end Jesus does what she asks. Why Jesus gives these odd responses: that question is probably unanswerable. What we should do when we think we’ve gotten one of these odd responses: texts like today’s give us a clear answer: don’t throw in the towel.

Had we read just a couple more verses in our first reading we would have heard:

Upon your walls, O Jerusalem,
I have posted sentinels;
all day and all night
they shall never be silent.
You who remind the LORD,
take no rest,
and give him no rest
until he establishes Jerusalem
and makes it renowned throughout the earth. (Isa. 62:6-7)

Jesus’ mother would have liked that text. And it’s like that strange parable Jesus tells about our needing “to pray always and not to lose heart” (Lk. 18:1): be like the wronged widow who wears out the unjust judge with her persistence. So, when we think we’ve gotten an odd response from Jesus, we don’t throw in the towel. That’s not the point of today’s Gospel reading, but something we might learn from it.

The second thing we might notice in today’s Gospel reading: how unexpected it is after all the solemn pronouncements in the previous (opening) chapter. Recall some of what we hear in chapter 1:

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (Jn. 1:14)

“No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” (Jn. 1:18)

“The next day [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’” (Jn. 1:29)

“And [Jesus] said to [Nathanael], ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’” (Jn. 1:51)

All this sounds very solemn, very serious. Then the first thing Jesus does out the gate is gift the wedding party with about 150 gallons of high-quality wine. Maybe we run back to John the Baptist: this Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world makes really good wine! Looks like John the Evangelist (the author) has chosen to give us a friendly warning: don’t assume that you know how chapter 1’s solemn and serious language is going to play out. Be prepared for some surprises. Be prepared for some surprises.

We could easily stop there; but let’s look at one way we might take it a bit further. In our Isaiah reading we heard

“For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your builder marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you.”

Yes, in the Gospel Jesus is a guest, not the bridegroom. But John the Evangelist plays with the image and in the next chapter has John the Baptist say “He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn. 3:29-30). So John the Evangelist’s decision to put this wedding story at the start of chapter 2 may be a heads-up that all that language in chapter 1 may be pointing to the joy of a wedding.

The image of Jesus at the door has captured our imagination: “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me” (Rev. 3:20). After today’s Gospel perhaps we should pair it with this text from the Song of Songs: “Listen! my beloved is knocking. ‘Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one…’” (Cant. 5:2).

Jesus’ Baptism–and Ours (1st Sunday after the Epiphany, 1/12/2025)

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Readings

This sermon was delivered at Holy Cross, Wisconsin Dells, in 2022.

Then as now we’ve never lacked idiots declaring—often with sandwich boards—that the end is near. Perhaps that’s why Luke gives us two long chapters of backstory so that we take this “idiot” John the Baptist seriously.

First there’s Elizabeth’s extraordinary pregnancy when she and Zechariah are “very old” (CEB). Then Mary’s even-more extraordinary pregnancy, being a virgin. John is born to Elizabeth, and his father Zechariah responds with a lengthy prophecy speaking of “a mighty savior” and of being able to serve God “without fear.” Mary, even before Jesus’ birth, sings what we know as the Magnificat:

He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

After Jesus’ birth the shepherds convey the words of the angel and the angelic military chorus, and Simeon and Anna add their witness in the temple. So, John the Baptist is no ordinary “idiot.”

John’s message is, I think, three-fold: (1) “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” God is coming to set things right. (2) Repent! When God comes it’s prudent not to be obviously part of the problem: stop hoarding, stop extorting! (3) Me, I’m just the warm-up act. It’s all very apocalyptic. The newspapers might have called it the “Apocalypse Now” tour. Things have to be pretty bad for apocalypse to sound like a good idea, and the crowds flocking to John give us a pretty good idea of life in the benevolent claws of the Roman Empire.

And, at the end of today’s Gospel: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” In those words of the Divine Voice many hear echoes of three biblical texts:

The new king’s witness in Ps 2: “I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you’” (Ps. 2:7).

The Lord’s introduction of the servant in the midst of exile: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations” (Isa 42:1)

The Lord’s words to Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you” (Gen. 22:2).

John is hardly underplaying what’s going on here! And all three of these texts continue to echo in Luke’s Gospel. Psalm 2: Jesus sorting out his messianic role, which is essentially about what it means to live as a human being. Isaiah 42: Jesus assuming the mantle of the servant—and invites his followers to do so as well. What sort of service pleases God? Genesis 22: Jesus continuing on a trajectory over which he has limited control.

There are many things that we might explore in this and the other readings. Since we’ll be doing the renewal of baptismal vows in a few minutes I’ll focus on just two.

First, this salvation that everyone’s been celebrating—Zechariah, Mary, Simeon, Anna, John—doesn’t play out predictably. Luke’s mention of John’s imprisonment brutally yanks John offstage, and signals what Jesus is getting himself into. This is probably not what John had in mind when he proclaimed “every tree…that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And Simeon had warned Mary “and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” And the echo of the words to Abraham in the words to Jesus. Fast-forwarding to Paul, who started his career very certain of how God’s salvation was going to play out, being baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection means giving up our illusions of control.

Second, for all that Zechariah, Mary, John, etc. get right, there’s plenty that they don’t get right, plenty of room for ongoing repentance. Zechariah responds with so little faith to Gabriel’s announcement that Gabriel decides it would be better for all concerned if Zechariah would just shut up until John’s birth. The story we heard last week of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple: every parent’s nightmare, but also evidence that Mary and Joseph had no idea who was living under their roof. This pattern continues with the disciples, so that in Luke’s telling they chose the Last Supper to continue their argument about who’s the greatest (22:24-30). They all end up abandoning Jesus. So, when in the renewal of the Baptismal Covenant we say “I will, with God’s help,” Luke would probably want us to remember that “God’s help” includes graciously accepting our repentance. Jesus tells us to accept a brother’s or sister’s repentance even seven times a day (Lk 17:3-4); our firm hope is the God does likewise.

Let us close with the collect for Friday from Morning Prayer: “Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.”

Learning with the Astrologers (The Feast of the Epiphany, 1/6/2025)

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Readings

Sometime in early Spring, shortly after what we celebrate as the Feast of the Annunciation, Mary had sung:

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel,
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
The promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.

We might mentally loop this song and let it play in the background throughout this sermon, for it provides an appropriate soundtrack for our Gospel reading, and the Gospel reading in turn shows the surprising ways in which it plays out.

And the Gospel reading, in turn, also looks like it’s playing off the texts we heard from Isaiah and our psalm. There’s the foreigners bringing gifts theme. Further, Matthew’s identified Jesus as Son of David in the opening verse of the Gospel, and here the quote from the prophet Micah identifies Jesus as the Messiah. Psalm 72’s gifts to the King’s Son fit right in. Gold and frankincense as gifts show up twice the the Bible: Isa 60 and Matt 2. Matthew’s interested in both the continuity (Ps 72) and discontinuity (Isa 60) of these texts with his story.

Our Isaiah text. For a sense of the situation, recall that when the returning exiles laid the foundation for the second temple, we’re told “many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many shouted aloud for joy” (Ezra 3:12). This temple: such an impoverished version of Solomon’s temple. But, proclaims the prophet: that’s not the last word. You will shine. Nations will come to your light. Nations, bringing gold and frankincense to the temple. Jesus’ “You are the light of the world” might come to mind.

So, enter the Magi, the astrologers. In Matthew’s world folk assumed that important events—like the birth of powerful kings—would be heralded in the heavens. Even the Book of Numbers recalled the pagan prophet Balaam’s words “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near– a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel” (Num. 24:17a). The Magi have seen the star; they head for the capital.

We heard what happened: they’re redirected to Bethlehem. The gold and frankincense end up in Bethlehem. So Isaiah got it wrong? Not according to Matthew: if you’re looking for the true temple, it’s currently in Bethlehem. The Gospel of John made the same point with Jesus’ words “”Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (Jn. 2:19); Matthew does it with this story.

Pulling back the camera, the Magi story reminds us of why we gentiles are celebrating this Jewish King’s birth. So in our second reading we heard “the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” Jews and Gentiles, then (and now?) like the proverbial Hatfields and McCoys: and Jesus is uniting them. Matthew’s Gospel ends with the command to disciple all nations; the Magi story is the set-up.

The Magi. We met their counterparts in the competitions between Moses and Pharaoh’s magi and between Daniel and the Babylonian magi. The Jews (so to speak) get it right; the Gentiles get it wrong. And here the script gets reversed? Maybe. What doesn’t change is that in all three situations (Pharaoh’s court, the Babylonian court, Herod’s court) it’s the powerless who get it right.

That’s the warning both here and in Mary’s song. “He has come to the help of his servant Israel,” yes. But servant Israel—like servant Church—can be asleep at the switch. Not one of the chief priests or scribes accompany the Magi down to Bethelem. Better, I suppose, than Herod, who’s quite awake to any threat to his understanding of God’s kingdom. Being part of Israel or the Church: no guarantee that we’ll get it right. And the more power we have, the more careful we need to be.

Coming at this another way, in Mary’s song it sounds like God is making all the decisions. “He has filled the hungry with good things, / and the rich he has sent away empty.” In Matthew’s story the rich (so to speak) exclude themselves, the chief priests and scribes through some combination of sleep and inertia, Herod through fear.

Let’s return to Isaiah’s image of light.

Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the LORD will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

No shortage of thick darkness these days. Isaiah—and Paul—don’t want us to be surprised by that. But precisely in the midst of that: “so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” And what is this wisdom that Paul is celebrating? That the Gentiles—all peoples—are now through the Messiah invited to full participation in God’s project of world healing initiated with Abraham and Sarah. Is this project of uniting all peoples in Christ sustainable? Is the water of baptism more potent than the inertia of ethnicity and culture? Did Mary and her song get it right? That’s what the Church—despite all its failings—is to demonstrate. “You are the light of the world.”

Praying the Psalms with Job

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“Inspired by the experience of his own innocence, Job bitterly criticized the theology of temporal retribution as maintained in his day and expounded by his friends.… But his challenge stopped halfway… What he should have done was to leap the fence set up around him by this sclerotic theology that is so dangerously close to idolatry, run free in the fields of God’s love, and breathe an unrestricted air like the animals described in God’s argument—animals that humans cannot domesticate. The world outside the fence is a world of gratuitousness; it is there that God dwells and there that God’s friends find a joyous welcome.
“The world of retribution—and not of temporal retribution only—is not where God dwells; at most God visits it.” (Gustavo Gutiérrez On Job p.88)

“Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” (Abbot H. John Chapman)

Many of the psalms call on G-d to give folk what the psalmist thinks they deserve, to visit—in Gutiérrez’ words—the world of retribution. If I think Gutiérrez is right, what do I do with them?

Chapman’s advice is probably a useful starting point. Sometimes (often?) my pain or my neighbor’s pain is such that I can only add my voice to the psalmist’s. Thwart the wicked, rescue the righteous, NOW! But sometimes there’s enough distance to experience some sympathy for G-d: it’s easy in prayer to play Saul to God’s David: “Here, bronze helmet, coat of mail, sword! Go for it!” (See 1 Samuel 17:38-39), when G-d would really rather do something else.

With a few exceptions the Psalter articulates only the human side of the conversation. The divine speeches in Job (chapters 38-41) with a nudge from Gutiérrez encourage us to notice the disconnects between the divine and human agendas, and to remember, with Isaiah, that the disconnects are finally very good news.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace…  (Isa. 55:8-12)