Category Archives: Sermons

“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.”

Glory: on whose terms? (The First Sunday after Christmas Day, 12/29/2024)

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Good morning, and Merry Christmas!

Our lectionary has set a rich feast before us; the sermon could go in any number of directions. We might focus on John the Baptist and the surprising logic of being a witness. The Word the Gospel celebrates is described as a light. Why does the light need a witness? We might focus on Jesus’ coming as opening the path to our becoming God’s daughters and sons. Or we might—and we will—wonder about the odd disconnect between the passion for Jerusalem in Isaiah and the psalm and those sober lines in the Gospel: “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”

Jerusalem, both a specific city at a particular longitude and latitude and one of the Bible’s central symbols for God’s passion to create and preserve a life-giving community. God deals with us individually. But because to be human—as Aristotle memorably defined it—is to be a political animal, dealing with us individually means dealing equally with our communities and institutions.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
and her salvation like a burning torch.

So Isaiah. And in the psalm the salvation of the individual and the salvation of Jerusalem are inseparable:

Worship the Lord, O Jerusalem; *
praise your God, O Zion;
For he has strengthened the bars of your gates; *
he has blessed your children within you.
He has established peace on your borders; *
he satisfies you with the finest wheat.

And in the run-up to Jesus’ birth as described in Luke’s Gospel this vision and these hopes are on full display. And then the lines in the Gospel prologue: “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

How do we make sense of this strange story? The convenient answer: well, what do you expect from the Jews? Tapping into the latent anti-Semitism in our culture is convenient, because it lets us off the hook. But with Jesus, the apostles, all the New Testament writers being Jews, that’s a non-starter. How do we make sense of it all going sideways?

Let’s go back to Isaiah’s words:

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
and her salvation like a burning torch.

In Jesus’ time Jews argued about how to hear those words. At one end of the scale: Jerusalem’s vindication as the condemnation of the gentiles. (The Zealots were here: the only good Roman is a dead Roman.) The other end of the scale: Jerusalem’s vindication as the salvation of the gentiles. And that’s where Jesus was.

It starts already in the angel’s proclamation to the shepherds: “Do not be afraid; for see– I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10).

Fast forward to Jesus reading Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” From a nationalistic perspective, so far so good. But then Jesus chooses examples: Elijah in the famine providing for a gentile, that widow at Zarephath in Sidon; Elisha healing Naaman the Syrian of leprosy.

That argument keeps popping up, so that at the end when the Jerusalem crowd has the choice of sparing Barabbas, who’s killed Romans, and Jesus, who hasn’t…

“He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him”—because Jesus did not offer vindication on their terms.

So God’s story ends in defeat or in a long drawn-out stalemate? Hardly. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” Receiving Jesus, believing in Jesus’ name: beginning with Holy Baptism that’s a life-long process. We don’t easily give up getting vindication on our own terms. But through this process God’s glory becomes visible, which was and is the point of Jerusalem’s vindication. Paul writes to the Corinthians: “You are God’s building… God’s temple is holy and you are that temple” (1 Cor 3:9, 17).

God’s glory, God’s healing, off-the-scale love in all its beauty and terror. (For John the Evangelist, recall, Jesus’ glorification and Jesus’ crucifixion are the same event.) God’s glory, Jerusalem’s vindication on God’s terms, the healing of the nations. We celebrate it in Jesus; Paul looks to celebrate it everywhere from Corinth…to Sun Prairie. While John the Evangelist writes “and we have seen his glory,” the story doesn’t even pause there. We assemble, we extend our hands to receive into ourselves Jesus’ Body, Jesus’ Blood, because there’s a whole world out there hungry for God’s glory.

Amen, and Merry Christmas!

The Riddle (Christmas Day, 12/25/2024)

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Some centuries before tonight’s events, the prophet Elijah’s generation was immersed in profound change—economic, social, cultural—you name it. The fear and anxiety in the air did not leave Elijah untouched. At one point he journeyed to Mt Sinai: “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away” (1 Ki. 19:10).

As the story goes, the LORD said “’Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence” (1 Ki. 19:11-12).

All these convulsions, and the LORD is in none of them—until “a sound of sheer silence.” Surprising, both because these convulsions were characteristic on the LORD’s presence when Moses and the people showed up centuries earier at Sinai, and because these are the sort of convulsions Elijah probably thought necessary for the LORD to sort things out. But no: “a sound of sheer silence.” So the LORD’s appearance turns out to be a riddle: Who is this God? What is this God up to? What does this God want from us?

Tonight’s events mirror Elijah’s experience. All during Advent we’ve been praying “O come, O come Emmanuel,” our prayers echoing so many biblical texts (Isaiah: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence” [Isa. 64:1]), and channeling our own fears and anxieties. An angel appears, then the choir of the angelic army (recall the Red Army Choir)—and the shepherds are directed to… a newborn baby: a sound of sheer silence—except when the diaper needs changing. All these images of irresistible power (the angel’s first words: “Do not be afraid”)—and then this baby. After four weeks of “O come, O come” and hoping (perhaps? probably?) for something like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s coming in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a newborn baby. So we’re right there with Elijah: Who is this God? What is this God up to? What does this God want from us?

Whatever else Christmas is, it’s that riddle. Let us go with the shepherds to pay attention to that riddle; our lives and peace hang on it.

“Good, I’m not crazy.” Mary & Elizabeth compare notes (4th Sunday of Advent, 12/22/2024)

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There’s a double dose of good news in today’s readings: God is indeed coming to set things right, and God generously invites us to be part of this. We’ll start with the invitation, then move to the setting things right.

The Gospel reading starts out “In those days…” If we ask “which days?” we need to go back a few verses and hear the angel Gabriel saying to Mary: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

“Do not be afraid…” first, probably, because angels are powerful creatures. Gabriel’s one of the more powerful and he’s standing right there in the living room. But “Do not be afraid…” also because Mary’s a Jew, whose people have been colonized by a series of pagan empires for over five hundred years, Rome simply being the latest. Mary has to think back over 500 years to remember a time when the Jews were free—if only in theory. If we had to think that far back it’d put us before Columbus. After all that time, can the God of King David, who many think has been conspicuously absent for the last 500 years, be trusted?

Mary trusts, and at the end of the conversation responds “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” God gives Mary—gives us—the quite amazing dignity of being agents in this story. Recalling our reading from Hebrews, Jesus is able to say “See, I have come to do your will” because Mary has given her “Here am I.” Jesus offers up his body because Mary has offered hers up: “let it be with me according to your word.”

Mary’s response brings us up to today’s reading, in which Mary heads for the one person who might understand what she’s just gotten herself into. Elizabeth, her relative, is also pregnant, despite being “advanced in years” and previously judged barren. An angel had been involved in that one also. A year before all this happened, neither Elizabeth nor Mary would have had any thought of being part of a divine project of this magnitude. But here they are.

Elizabeth greets Mary, and her speech takes up most of the Gospel reading. We read Mary’s reply, “The Song of Mary,” between the first two lessons. It’s one conversation.

Why did Luke include this scene? It doesn’t particularly advance the action. But it shows us something we almost never see elsewhere in the Gospels, and never at this length: two disciples talking to each other. And what comes through in both their speeches is a combination of “Oh, good, I’m not crazy,” wonder at being in the story at all, and a fierce joy at what God is doing.

“Oh, good, I’m not crazy.” Neither of them say that; I suspect both were thinking it: Elizabeth, preparing to be a mother when most of her friends are enjoying being grandmothers, Mary, with the angel’s voice—it was an angel, wasn’t it?—ringing in her ears. When you get caught up in God’s projects it helps to have someone with whom to run a sanity check. This is why God puts us into congregations.

Both are a little dazed at being in the story at all. “[W]hy has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” “[F]or he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.” And the joy: present in Elizabeth’s “the mother of my Lord” and developed throughout Mary’s song.

Repentance, about which we’ve been speaking these last weeks, is not the focus of the Christian life. That would be like a photographer spending all her time cleaning her lenses. But it’s necessary so that something interesting can happen. And in the encounter between Elizabeth and Mary, we have an image of what that “something interesting” might look like. Two strong women, dreaming dreams and seeing visions, supported by and rejoicing in each other’s friendship, rejoicing in the first stirrings—quite literally—of what God is doing in their midst.

God’s generous invitation to be part of God’s good news, extended not just to Elizabeth and Mary, but to each one of us. Recall Paul’s absurdly mixed metaphor: “My children, I am going through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19 NJB). Until Christ is formed in you.

Now, what about this business of God coming to set things right? Here we might focus on these lines from Mary’s song:

He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
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.

Mary’s channeling pretty much the entire biblical witness here: we as a race have turned away from God and as a result regularly commit atrocities against our neighbors, all of whom bear God’s image. So “setting things right” is more than a bit of reform here or there. The status quo is inhuman. No wonder that the British banned the singing of Mary’s song in India during their rule, or that in the 1980’s the Guatemalan government banned its public recitation, or the military junta in Argentina banned its public display.[1]

Is God’s coming good news? If my status and riches depend on oppression and violence, not so much. So, not surprisingly, some of the most pointed prayers in the Book of Common Prayer are assigned to these four weeks of Advent:

Week 1: …give us grace to cast away the works of darkness…

Week 2: …Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins…

Week 3: …because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us;

Week 4: Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation…

So, in one of our prayers of confession, we acknowledge “the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.”Is God’s coming good news? Depends on which side I’m on, the sheep or the goats, and the Advent season pleads with us to take this seriously.

OK, preacher, how do we witness to this? If the status quo is inhumane, what do we do? A good chunk of the New Testament is devoted to this question; consider these snapshots:

Jesus’ instruction: “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” (Mk. 10:42-44)

Philemon is a slave-owner and Onesimus a slave: Paul tells Philemon they need to treat each other as brothers in Christ. That plants the seed that eventually results in many countries abolishing slavery.

The first witnesses to the resurrection are women, and Junia is recognized among the apostles (Rom 16:7). Things like these plant the seed that eventually results in women winning civil rights and, in some parts of the Christian Church, the barriers falling to ordination.

“Honor the emperor” (1 Peter 2:17)—and hold the empire accountable for the pretty language it uses to describe its values (Acts 16:35-40).

In short, the default strategy is consenting to God transforming our life together in the church (“let it be with me according to your word.”) and that acting as a catalyst—as leaven—for the whole loaf. And, when it comes to it (“We must obey God rather than any human authority.” ([Acts 5:29]), not being afraid to cause “good trouble.”

God is coming to set things right and—wonder of wonders—we’re invited to be a part of that. How might that play out in the week ahead?

[1] See http://enemylove.com/subversive-magnificat-mary-expected-messiah-to-be-like/, accessed 12/7/2021.

John the Baptist on putting “trust and be not afraid” into practice (3rd Sunday of Advent, December 15, 2024)

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So, today’s candle, pink, not violet. The traditional name for the third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete (Rejoice). There’s plenty of rejoicing in the first three readings, but John the Baptist’s instructions might sound more like violet. And Luke ends that account with “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.” How’s that good news?

Last week we heard John saying “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.” Well, there go the property values! God’s coming to sort things out. Whether I hear that as good news can easily depend on how comfortable I am with current arrangements (economic, social, etc.). So Luke’s “good news to the people” might be a challenge: am I willing to stand enough with the poor and dispossessed to welcome God’s coming as good news?

God’s sorting things out: how’s that supposed to work? Zephaniah: “I will deal with all your oppressors at that time.” John: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Here what John does is more important than what John says, because it’s too easy to interpret John’s words (and many other words in Scripture) in ways that collide with Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s observation (“If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds”, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”). John calls everyone to baptism: everyone in the water! Continuing repentance is everyone’s work.

Nevertheless, this pink candle: Rejoice. Rejoice, not because things are rosy, but because God’s coming. Paul: “The Lord is near.” Or, with Isaiah: “I will trust in him and not be afraid.” Isaiah isn’t talking about emotions. Often fear is knocking on the door. It’s a matter of what we choose to do, let fear in or let it keep knocking; act on the basis of fear, or trust.

This is what John the Baptist is talking about in the bulk of today’s reading. Yes, he’s talking about repentance. But ‘repentance’ is just a fancy word for making a U-turn: stop doing that, start doing this. Stop acting out of fear (tax collectors: collecting more than prescribed; soldiers: false accusations); start acting out of trust (“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”). For John, as for Scripture in general, fear and trust aren’t isolated emotions, but the more-or-less conscious motors of our everyday actions.

Two more things about fear and trust, and then we’re about done. First, notice that John’s instructions mostly have to do with the moments when we may think we’re not accountable to anyone. During Advent our culture directs us largely to observable matters: getting the Christmas lights up, sending out cards, buying gifts, issuing invitations. Our tradition doesn’t denigrate that, but does direct us to the non-observable matters, the things we think to do with impunity. While these things may represent a small or large sphere of action; they are our clearest testimony to whether we view God’s coming kingdom as good news or not. And the choices we make there are forming us into people who will feel at home in that kingdom—or not.

Second, these actions expressing trust: in Zephaniah we heard “And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.” One of the ways God does this is through the trusting actions of former oppressors. So the “Gaudete/Rejoice” is about not just God’s future coming, but about the present effects of our responses to that coming.

How might we summarize John’s “good news” today? The Coming One, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and fire, is more than capable of empowering us to act in the daily grind not out of fear, but out of trust. Rejoice!