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Faith as Defiance (19th after Pentecost, 10/19/2025)

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Readings (Track 2)

Just before today’s Gospel reading Jesus tells his disciples “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it” (Lk. 17:22). Discipleship, praying “your kingdom come,” it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Losing heart is a real danger, and Jesus has a parable about that.

If the unjust judge gives the widow justice, how much more will God grant justice to those “who cry to him day and night”! And Jesus continues: “I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.”

“Quickly”? Rather than resolve the tension present throughout the history of God’s people, Jesus leans into it. God and humans do time differently; God’s “quickly” rarely feels like quickly to us. That can be a deal-breaker (“lose heart”); Jesus doesn’t want it to be a deal-breaker. God will grant justice. The real question: “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

In today’s collect we prayed that we “may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name.” The widow in Jesus’ parable shows us what that looks like: continuing to cry out for justice as long as necessary.

OK, we could say “Amen” at this point and go on to the Creed. But that could leave us assuming that we had a reliable idea of the justice we needed, and had only to keep praying until God gave us that justice. Our other two readings might want us to wonder about that.

Paul to Timothy: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” Paul is speaking diplomatically. Put less diplomatically: “All of us are works in progress. All of us need teaching, reproof, correction, training. “Proficient, equipped for every good work”? That’s the goal, not the present reality. God uses many tools for our salvation; Scripture is one of these tools, an essential tool.

Paul’s words guided the reformation of the Church of England in the 16th Century. The first task: get the Bible into English in the parishes. Then: when and how would it be heard? The monasteries had frequent daily offices for hearing Scripture and praying, but not the parishes. So Archbishop Cranmer reduced the multiple offices to two (Morning and Evening Prayer) and created a lectionary so that every parish could hear most of Scripture over the course of the year.

So our Book of Common Prayer opens with various orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, and at the very end there’s the schedule of Scripture readings. The challenge, of course, is how this works in the 21st century. So Good Shepherd, like many parishes, orders copies of Day by Day, and various smartphone apps put the offices at our fingertips. This is part of our Episcopal identity that could use more attention, so that Coffee Hour is predictably the time when the clergy are besieged by questions (“Why’s Jesus talking about bringing a sword, rather than peace?”).

Why bother? My favorite example comes from the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel. We’re introduced to Joseph, Mary’s fiancé, whom Matthew describes as “righteous.” That sounds promising, but on learning of Mary’s pregnancy, Joseph’s best idea is to dismiss her quietly. So God sends a dream “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” and Joseph’s righteousness gets an upgrade. That’s not a bad picture of the people of God. We’re righteous, but our notion of righteousness means that we’re about to dismiss Mary—if we haven’t done so already. We need the teaching, reproof, correction, and training that regular encounters with Scripture can provide.

Then there’s that strange story in our first reading. Jacob—from whom you should never buy a used car—had cheated his brother Esau, and now Esau was coming to meet him—with 400 of his armed retainers. So Jacob prays for deliverance and (in answer to the prayer?) a “man” wrestles with him all night. Jacob remembers it as having “seen God face to face.” In any event, that’s the crisis; the subsequent encounter with Esau goes smoothly.

I wonder about that story. Esau is a problem, but perhaps God’s the bigger problem. Perhaps Jacob got it right and it was God with whom he wrestled all night. Maybe prayer is like that. I pray for justice; perhaps I shouldn’t expect to emerge from prayer unchanged.

In today’s Gospel we heard Jesus encouraging his disciples to “pray always and not to lose heart.” Yet it’s his questions that I often find most haunting. Last week: “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” (Lk. 17:17-18) Today: “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” What answer will we give in the coming week?

“You got to know when to hold ’em…” (15th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/21/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

“You cannot serve God and wealth.” That’s a statement that seems perfectly obvious when applied to other people, whether to the Spanish conquistadores who brought the cross and the sword —not necessarily in that order— to the Americas or to the occasional well-heeled tele-evangelist who practices creative bookkeeping. But the same statement seems unnecessarily limiting when applied to us. There really ought to be a way to do it!

Where did Jesus get “You cannot serve God and wealth”? He could have gotten it from the Decalogue: when wealth is the bottom line it’s a god and “no other gods before me” kicks in. This is another form of the duck test: if it walks like a duck & quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. If it drives my decision-making, it’s my god. He could have gotten it from reading prophets like Jeremiah. But I don’t think he came to it without carefully examining the alternatives. His career would have been a lot less frustrating and a lot less painful if he’d found a way! That may be what the 40 days in the wilderness were about. Recall the temptations. The devil invites him to turn stones into bread, to cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, to worship the devil in exchange for “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” These are also ways of trying to serve God and wealth.

Now, sermons are supposed to contain good news, and “You cannot serve God and wealth” doesn’t sound very good newsy. It can, however, be useful information. It’s like the first rule of the hole: if you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the first thing to do is…stop digging. To the degree that we take “You cannot serve God and wealth” seriously, we save ourselves all the futile work involved in trying to serve both.

But “You cannot serve God and wealth” does more than this. Once accepted, it opens up some new possibilities, possibilities that Jesus explores through his story. But before diving into that story, a few words on our first two lessons.

Jeremiah is directed, broadly, to the leaders of the Kingdom of Judah at the end of the 7th Century bc. God had brought Israel into being about 600 years earlier —about the time of the fall of Troy— as a place where God would be loved and the neighbor loved —the two halves of the Ten Commandments or Decalogue. Measured against the Decalogue the leaders’ conduct was suicidal, particularly with respect to the love-your-neighbor half. And so God sends Jeremiah to announce the end of the Kingdom —exile. And from that time Jeremiah’s words are passed down from generation to generation so that Israel will remember that God really is serious about both halves of the Ten Commandments, that one cannot serve God and wealth.

Now one way of responding to Jeremiah would be to retreat into a strict legalism that wrote off everyone on the outside. Something like this was what Paul was responding to in the letter to Timothy. Rather than writing off everyone on the outside, pray for everyone —supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings— including the kings and folk in high positions who are as corrupt as Israel’s leaders were. Why? God desires that all be saved. God, desiring the salvation of all, has supplied a mediator between God and humankind —Jesus Christ— and appointed Paul —and many others down to ourselves— as witnesses of this. So —Paul to his audience— if God desires everyone to be saved, the least you can do is pray for everyone. In other words, don’t use “you cannot serve God and wealth” as a reason for writing off your neighbor—God hasn’t.

Another way of responding to Jeremiah would be to retreat into a sort of quietism, maybe to retreat into the desert and wait for the Messiah. Here’s where Jesus’ story comes in. It’s a strange story. To get into the spirit of it a soundtrack might help. As a sound track we might use the country-western song Kenny Rogers made famous back in 1979 called The Gambler. You may recall some of the lines… “Ev’ry gambler knows that the / secret to survivin’, / Is knowin’ what to throw away / and knowin’ what to keep. / ‘Cos ev’ry hand’s a winner, / and ev’ry hand’s a loser.” And the chorus: “You got to know when to hold ’em, / know when to fold ’em, / know when to walk away, / know when to run.”

So, keeping that song going in the background, recall the story Jesus tells: out of the blue a rich man gives his business manager notice. It’s a crisis: business as usual just isn’t an option. The business manager faces the crisis, and responds by calling in all the rich man’s debtors and reducing their debt, thereby making them indebted to him. (It’s not clear if he’s cheating his boss, or simply forgoing his cut.) His boss commends the manager for acting shrewdly. And Jesus glosses the story: make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. Parenthetically, the phrase “dishonest wealth” or “unfaithful mammon” is probably a shameless pun, since “mammon,” the word for wealth, is probably derived from the Hebrew root for “faithfulness.” As Luke tells the story, Jesus is returning to a theme we’ve met before: “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.” This doesn’t mean that every Christian is called to sell all their possessions —not even Luke believed that. But every Christian and every Christian community is called to recognize that God’s coming Kingdom means the economic arrangements of this world’s kingdoms will become obsolete and to use their resources —shrewdly. We can’t serve God and wealth, but, serving God, we can use what wealth we have to serve others, and—Jesus’ words, not mine—make purses for [our] selves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, (Luk 12:33). If the financial planners only knew…

This homily, you see, ends up being about stewardship —not simply what we give to the church, but how we steward (manage) all our resources.

The standard is God, who, in Jesus’ brother James’ words “gives to all generously and ungrudgingly” (1:5).

The surprise is that Jesus is quite happy to urge generosity for selfish motives—“an unfailing treasure in heaven.” Generosity for selfish motives—better than no generosity for selfish motives. And what can happen, of course, is that the generosity transforms—slowly—the motives.

The obvious question: just how generous do I have to be? I think Jesus would say that’s the wrong question. What might be the right question? Do I think that this generous God is worth imitating? If my answer is yes, then I sort, or continue to sort—that out within the web of relationships in which this God has placed me.

Ev’ry hand’s a winner, and ev’ry hand’s a loser. The secret to survivin’, is knowin’ what to throw away and knowin’ what to keep. Kenny Rogers’ gambler and Jesus’ business manager have something to say to us. Every hand’s a winner, and every hand’s a loser, so with every hand it’s possible to act shrewdly with what we have for the glory of the Lord. May God give us the grace to continue to see and act shrewdly.

Renewing–not erasing–the face of the earth (Pentecost, 6/8/2025)

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Readings (Genesis 11, Acts 2, John 14)

As a setup for a story of epic proportions it’s hard to beat that brief interchange between Jesus and his disciples at the beginning of the Book of Acts:

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:6-8)

There’s some quiet humor in it. The apostles are ready to kick back, assuming that the ball’s in Jesus’ court. Jesus parries the question, talks about what they’re going to do: receive power, be Jesus’ witnesses “to the ends of the earth.”

Does anyone else think that sounds like a remarkably bad idea? Recall the stories Luke’s told about these apostles:

On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Lk. 9:52b-54)

John [again] “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.” (Lk. 9:49)

People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. (Lk. 18:15)

Give this group more power? How’s that going to work?

What’s at stake is captured by that verse in today’s psalm: “You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; / and so you renew the face of the earth.” Renew: how do you renew without erasing? Folk who work at restoring art constantly face this challenge, trying to remove the effects of smoke, dirt, etc. without losing the original creation.

The Day of Pentecost provides one model, in which the Spirit keeps a pretty tight reign on the apostles. “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?” How indeed? Perhaps the languages of the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, etc. came out of the mouths of the apostles. Perhaps—more likely—the Spirit provided simultaneous translation so that the Parthians etc. heard in their own native language. And even if it’s the former, it’s a one-off event.

“My witnesses… to the ends of the earth.” That’s a vision of frequently crossing cultures, of frequently learning. Recall the crash course the Spirit put Peter through so that he could share the Good News at the gentile Cornelius’ home. First that strange repeated vision of the sheet containing clean and unclean animals. “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” Then, when Gentile messengers show up at the door the Spirit says“Look, three men are searching for you. Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation; for I have sent them.” Later, “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word,” and there they are, “speaking in tongues and extolling God.” It’s the conversion of Cornelius and Peter.

Regularly crossing cultures, regularly learning. No passport required, as anyone who’s parented knows: we’re almost constantly learning new languages.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that when Jesus talks about the role of the Spirit in today’s Gospel, the focus is on the Spirit as Teacher: “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” And from elsewhere in the same discourse: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (Jn. 16:13).

Heard in isolation “guide you into all the truth” can sound abstract, even esoteric. Heard alongside the rest of the New Testament, it’s about renewing without erasing. Jesus, not the many Roman gods, is Lord. OK: so in the cities in which the meat markets are temples to these other gods, how do the Christians relate to these markets? Paul, writing to the Corinthians, spends a couple chapters on that question.

How do we renew without erasing? Some years ago a cartoon captured this nicely. All the characters are pigs, and they’re in a hospital waiting room. The doctor comes out smiling, saying to the anxious spouse “Your husband is cured.” Unfortunately, he’s carrying the sort of 10 pound shrink-wrapped package you’d find in the meat department.

How do we renew without erasing? Current arguments about how we steward the environment, how we respond to different experiences of sexuality, how we order our economic life suggest that “guide you into all the truth” still belongs on the front burner. And that—God having a stubborn regard for our freedom—the promise isn’t “coerce you into all the truth.”

So how does the Spirit guide? Three suggestions; perhaps they’ll echo your experience.

From one of my favorite theologians, Mark Twain: “Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.” Our Acts reading focused on language, so let’s stay with that. I learn a language by making mistakes. If I try to avoid making mistakes I learn much more slowly. I also learn more slowly—or not at all—if I insist that I’m not making mistakes. Feel free to transpose that to other areas of life.

From one of my favorite crime novelists, Louise Penny: her protagonist Inspector Gamache says this: “There are four things that lead to wisdom.… They are four sentences we learn to say, and mean.…  I don’t know. I need help. I’m sorry. I was wrong.” Four things that lead to wisdom; four things that makes it easier for the Spirit to guide.

Finally, this concern to renew, not erase. It’s at bottom an expression of love, loving the other enough to recognize the difference between renewing and erasing, loving the other enough to do the hard work of getting to know the other enough to begin to have some sense of what renewal might mean, loving the other enough that Gamache’s four sentences work their way into the core of our vocabulary.

God, so the Gospel tells us, “so loved the world.” The Spirit’s guiding us into all the truth is about being infected by that love. And so, in our best moments, we welcome the Day of Pentecost. Come, Holy Spirit.

The Good Lord’s Decision (The 2nd Sunday of Easter, 4/27/2025)

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Readings

After a very full Holy Week in which it’s easy for the brain to go on overload, this Sunday, a.k.a. “Low Sunday,” is a welcome opportunity to catch our breath and ask what all that was about. That pretty much sets the agenda for this sermon.

In our first reading we heard Peter address the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem: “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus… God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” That’s the core of Easter: the divine decision to raise Jesus, to vindicate Jesus.

At Jesus’ baptism Luke recounts: “And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” Some time later, as some of Jesus’ disciples watched him talk with Moses and Elijah, that same heavenly voice: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” Wistful thinking? A trick of the wind? God’s raising Jesus from the dead: the exclamation point!

But why raise Jesus after three days rather than waiting to sort everything out at the Last Judgment? Because there’s work to be done on earth now, and it’s not only Jesus’ work. The poorneed good news now; the Pilates, Herods, Caiaphases of this world are—shall we say—underperforming. Recall Peter’s words: “that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” It doesn’t take much unpacking of those words to see that they include the disciples, Peter’s audience, and us. That’s seconded by our second reading from Revelation: “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father…”

Recall what we heard on Maundy Thursday: [Jesus:] “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” “This is my body that is for you… This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Without Easter we wouldn’t be recalling those words, or at best recalling them as another example of crazy hopes cancelled by a Roman cross. With Easter: even that cross is part of their fulfillment (“and freed us from our sins by his blood”).

In other words, Easter is God’s decision regarding Jesus and God’s decision regarding us. Rather than fire and brimstone, going full momma bear, the offer of repentance and forgiveness. The Easter Vigil—one of the jewels of the 1979 prayer book revision—makes this clear in including the renewal of our baptismal vows “by which [as the BCP puts it] we once renounced Satan and all his works, and promised to serve God faithfully in his holy Catholic Church” (p.292). God raises Jesus and then turns to us: whose side are you on?

Back to our reading from Revelation: “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.” That’s what the baptismal vows are about, not one more card among many (driver’s license, Social Security card, MasterCard, etc.) but as the guide for how we use all the rest.

Peter: “And we are witnesses to these things.” Witnesses. Not the judge, not the jury, not even the bailiff. Witnesses, who by definition are not expected to know anything beyond their own experience, and not even expected to understand that. “God raised Jesus from the dead, and this is what Jesus has been doing among us:” that’s more than enough to keep us focused.

Witness, of course, often happens as much by action as by word, and two examples from today’s readings are worth noticing.

Recall again Peter before the Council. He doesn’t mince words: “Jesus, whom you had killed.” But God exalted Jesus as Leader and Savior not for payback, but for repentance and forgiveness—precisely what Peter offers to the Council members. Bless him, Peter’d learned something from Jesus.

Then today’s Gospel reading. There are two surprises in that second encounter between Jesus and the disciples. The first is that Jesus shows up again. The second is that the other disciples were still willing to be in the same room as Thomas. For a whole week they’d been all “Alleluia!” and Thomas “I need some evidence.” The disciples witnessed to Jesus’ resurrection also by not writing Thomas off. Bless them, they’d learned something from Jesus. Given the Church’s history of splitting over much smaller issues, if we’re looking for a way of witnessing to Jesus’ resurrection this isn’t a bad place to start.

In these two examples Easter is an invitation to dial back our fear, whether of external enemies (Acts) or of potential internal enemies (the Gospel). It’s Jesus whom God has exalted as Leader and Savior, not whoever is currently claiming those titles. Even the State looks a little different when the Crucified doesn’t stay dead.

Easter: The Lord God’s decision: Jesus got it right. Jesus’ project is just getting started, and Jesus has no interest in doing it alone. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” We celebrated that at the Easter Vigil; as we hear the stories from Acts and approach Pentecost we have the opportunity to wonder afresh what else it might mean. Joyous Easter!

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

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Readings

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.

“Then the eyes of the blind [disciples] shall be opened” (24th Sunday after Pentecost, 11/3/2024)

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Readings (Track 1)

Centuries before Jesus, when Solomon’s temple was still standing, the prophet Isaiah, surrounded by the folly that passed for wisdom, spoke of God’s coming salvation. One of his images: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped” (35:5). What might that look like? Today’s Gospel provides one answer, Jesus working at opening the eyes of the disciples.

“As he taught, he said, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’”

What do the disciples see when they see a scribe? All the outward signs proclaim honor, but open eyes don’t stop with appearances. Where does Jesus get this? Maybe through recalling stories like the one about the prophet Samuel, sent to anoint Israel’s next king. The Lord to Samuel: “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). So, not Eliab, but David. Or maybe through the multiple texts in Proverbs we noticed a few weeks back. A rich man: rich through diligence or theft? A poor man: poor through sloth or oppression? Based on appearances we don’t know. Or maybe from having grown up in the North, where scribes who copy and interpret the legal documents can be seen rather differently than in the capital.

Is Jesus talking about every scribe? Of course not. He is talking about what we see, what assumptions inform what we see.

And, of course, Jesus’ words continue to be passed down also because they speak to new situations. Soon the new churches have bishops, priests, deacons—and the temptations of long robes, preferred seating, etc. are as relevant as ever. But that would be another sermon.

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened.” Jesus keeps working the problem.

“He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’”

What do the disciples see? Which gifts look impressive? Jesus’ mother had sung “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, / and has lifted up the lowly.” Perhaps Jesus is remembering that too. In any case, what they see, what we see, is important also because it determines what we do. We heard Jesus’ brother James a few weeks back: “For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in…” (2:2).

Salvation: Jesus working on our vision—on our hearing, for that matter—so that we treat each other well. A surprising number of our acts of seeing and hearing reflect who we are, who we are becoming.

And sometimes the rich get it right, as our first reading reminds us. It would have been easy for Boaz to write Ruth and Naomi off. He doesn’t. He listens. And as the parts of the text we didn’t hear in the assigned readings make clear, he makes decisions that are financially costly to do right by the women. One result, as the text reminds us in a delightfully understated postscript, King David.

We can close by noticing an additional layer to the contributions to the temple treasury story. Mark puts the story right at the entrance to Passover/Holy Week. At Passover the High Priest, richly attired, accompanied by all the pomp and ceremony Jerusalem can muster, will offer the prescribed sacrifices. At that same Passover, a prisoner stripped of everything, will stretch “out his arms upon the cross.” As we heard in our second reading, the author of Hebrews has no doubt which sacrifice was the more efficacious, the more worthy of honor. If our eyes are open enough to see the value of the widow’s two small copper coins, we just might be able to see the value of that prisoner’s self-offering.

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.” So in the coming week who knows when the Lord might nudge us: “What do you see? What do you see?”

About that knife edge distance between wisdom and folly (17th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/15/2024)

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Readings (Track 1)

In today’s sermon I’m inviting us to wonder about two questions. The first concerns the prayer after baptism found on p.308 of the BCP:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.

Given its strategic place, it looks like a prayer concerning all our life as Christians. So, for what are we asking? A complete answer would be too much to expect from a single sermon; but our second question can give us some hints.

For the second question we pull back the camera to the official author of Proverbs (our first reading): Solomon. 1 Kings presents him as proverbially wise. 1 Kings presents him as catastrophically foolish. His economic policies make of Israel a pressure cooker that explodes immediately after his death. So, what went wrong?

Well, there’s the official answer, and the answers a closer reading of the text might suggest. The official answer is found in 1 Kings chapter 11: “For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David” (v.4). And we might take that seriously, until we recognize that it’s the same voice we heard from Adam back in Genesis: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). James’ words about the tongue in our second reading turn out to be applicable in unexpected places.

A closer reading of 1 Kings suggests three possible answers. First, Solomon is wise. And wisdom carries the inevitable temptation to assume that one’s wisdom has no important limits. And the wiser one is, the stronger the temptation. The burdens Solomon’s grand building projects and economic centralization placed on the backs of the people: was Solomon unaware, or simply unconcerned?

This helps us, I think, unpack that baptismal prayer: “Give them an inquiring and discerning heart.” An inquiring and discerning heart: even as it seeks to expand the limits of our wisdom it stays aware of those limits.

Recall today’s Gospel. Jesus asks “But who do you say that I am?” and Peter absolutely nails it: “You are the Messiah.” You may recall Jesus’ words in Matthew’s version of the scene: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven” (16:17). But in response to Jesus’ explanation of what being Messiah means, Peter rebukes Jesus and Jesus in turn rebukes Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” In virtually a heartbeat Peter goes from what he knows to what he doesn’t know.

Fortunately we don’t live most of our lives on a knife edge, right at the fateful border between what we know and what we don’t know, but sometimes we’re there, and if Peter’s experience is any indication, we may not even be aware of it. “Give them—give us—an inquiring and discerning heart.”

The second thing that may have been going on with Solomon is captured by that ironic observation of Ben Franklin: “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.” And the more reasonable one is, the wiser one is, the easier to find strong—ironclad—reasons for doing what one wants to do. Of course the temple must be magnificent. Of course the royal dwellings must be magnificent. Game, set, match. And the pressure in Israel the pressure-cooker goes up a few more notches.

This is what’s behind that strange turn in today’s psalm. The psalmist celebrates the excellence and the power of the law in vv.7-11. The law is perfect, and by it “your servant is enlightened.” The psalmist is talking about the law; the psalmist could as easily be talking about the wisdom whose voice we heard in our first reading. And we would think that with all this excellence and power nothing more needed to be said.

But v.12: “Who can tell how often he offends? / cleanse me from my secret faults.” The law/wisdom is powerful, but too vulnerable to being coopted by our desires. “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.”

The Greeks thought—and until recently our culture has largely followed them—that if only reason reigned supreme everything would sort itself out. If only we could all be more reasonable! But reason, as Franklin noticed and the psychologists have confirmed, is no match for our desires. And our baptismal prayer pays as much, if not more, attention to those desires than to our reason.

And our baptismal prayer suggests a third way Solomon’s wisdom may have gone off the rails. I’m thinking of that bit toward the end: “the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.” That’s an invitation to continual contemplation. Not contemplation as opposed to action, but action and contemplation nurturing each other. Solomon’s no slouch when it comes to contemplation: “He composed three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He would speak of trees, from the cedar that is in the Lebanon to the hyssop that grows in the wall; he would speak of animals, and birds, and reptiles, and fish” (4:32-33). But all that contemplation seems curiously siloed. When it comes to being king, he simply does what the surrounding kings do, enacting the prophet Samuel’s dire warning: “He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers” (1 Sam. 8:13-15). Take, take, take. Autopilot. And the pressure in pressure-cooker Israel keeps rising.

Solomon: proverbially wise, catastrophically foolish. From what 1 Kings narrates of his actions three things could have been in play. First, wisdom tends to forget its limits, so even as Solomon was wisely building up Jerusalem and profiting from his international arms trade, he was ignoring the economic tensions that would explode at his death. Second, wisdom is vulnerable to being coopted by desire, so Solomon’s wisdom offered unanswerable reasons for the luxury he and his court desired. Third, wisdom can get siloed: contemplation for this, action for that, with that “joy and wonder in all your works” leaving untouched what most needs touching.

Why does 1 Kings tell us all this? Not to trash Solomon, just as Mark’s Gospel has no interest in trashing Peter. But so that we might be more aware of our own vulnerability, and of those knife-edge moments in which the space between wisdom and folly is only a knife-edge. And with 1 Kings and Mark still ringing in our ears perhaps we’ll be able to give greater attention to our baptismal prayer:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.

Love complicates things (3rd Sunday after Pentecost)

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Readings (Track 1)

In the middle of Jesus’ argument with the scribes he tells this short parable: “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.” Plunder: that’s an intriguing image for what Jesus is about. For what God’s about, for that matter. The Exodus: plunder on a national scale. The mob stirred up by Paul and Silas’ presence in Thessalonica didn’t get it entirely wrong: “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also” (Acts 17:6). No wonder Paul’s regularly in trouble—as we heard in our second reading.

But it’s not plunder for the sake of plunder (“My pile of loot’s bigger than yours!”), but, whether at the Exodus or in Galilee, for human freedom, restoring it so that it can be used well. Pulling back the camera to take in all of Mark’s Gospel, whether in the exorcisms, the healings, the conversations or the proclamation, that plundering is about restoring human freedom and encouraging us humans to use it well. The first thing out of Jesus’ mouth in that Gospel: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15).

The kingdom/reign of God, with two divine desires in play: that we be free, that we choose well. Either one of these would be easy to fulfill; both—that quickly gets complicated. Consider our first reading from Samuel’s time, a few centuries after the Exodus. The people have repeatedly used their freedom badly, and now they want a human king. A king: they’d celebrated the Lord as their king back at the Exodus (Exodus 15:18). But now, no, a human king “so that we also may be like other nations.” If God’s desire were simply that the people choose well, well, so much for freedom: no human king. But God desires both that they be free and that they choose well. So God tells Samuel to give the people what they want; we’ll do it the hard way.

That’s a pretty good illustration of God’s love. God loves us too much either to compromise our freedom or to stop caring about our choices. Love—as any parent knows—complicates things. God can bring good out of our bad choices (the king is the template for the Messiah), but the price is high (“King of the Jews” was the sign on Jesus’ cross).

Does God always get what God wants? Since what God wants is that we be free and that we choose well, the answer is pretty clearly no. (That’s one of the main reasons why the Bible is a lengthy book!) And one of the recurrent challenges in worshipping this God is to respect both of these divine desires. If we think the people are choosing badly is their freedom really all that important?

Bad choices bring death. Adam and Eve choose badly in Genesis chapter 3; only one of their sons (Cain and Abel) is alive by the end of chapter 4. Death ends the story; death ends all stories. In the psalms one of the most frequent arguments the psalmists make for deliverance: rescue me, because in Hades no one praises you; that’s the lose-lose option. Shakespeare nails it in MacBeth:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

So if there were ever a game-changer, it’s Jesus’ resurrection (the motor for Paul’s reflections in our second reading). Death isn’t the end. Jesus’ transformed body grounds our hope for a similarly transformed body, “an eternal weight of glory,” as Paul put it.

How to tie this together? At least three ways come to mind. “God desires our freedom and that we use it well.” That, of course, is only one of many ways we might summarize what God’s up to. But play with it; wonder how it might serve to guide our outreach budget and activities.

Second. God desires our freedom and that we use it well. Because neither desire is negotiable God’s history with us is as messy as it is (recall, again, Holy Week) and Mick Jagger’s “You can’t always get what you want” turns out to apply to God as well. So we don’t know how all this will play out in the end. Will all be saved? We do know that it comes down to a fairly simple question: is my character such that I’d enjoy spending eternity with this God who keeps making hard choices and who loves my enemies as much as me?

In this respect heaven and hell reflect who we are. Recall that old analogy: a large banquet hall, the tables loaded. The complication is that our arms no longer bend at the elbows. At some tables, despair: despite increasingly acrobatic strategies no one can feed themselves. At other tables, delight: everyone feeding their neighbor.

A third way of tying this together: C. S. Lewis’ luminous sermon “The Weight of Glory” that draws on our second reading. After imagining what this weight of glory might mean, he pivots:

…it may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which I have been indulging. I can think of at least one such use. It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour.… It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.…There are no ordinary people.

God, in love, desires our freedom and that we use it well, for our choices really matter. That doesn’t make it easy for God or for us. Easy, apparently, is not the point.

Creative perishing; the Creator’s interventions (4th Sunday in Lent, 3/10/2024)

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Readings

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” We’re now two weeks out from Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week; the lectionary gives us this text to enter into its meaning.

Our texts are first about God’s love. Physicists talk about the different constants whose precise balance makes the universe possible: gravitation, electromagnetism, etc. Well, if God loved us any less, human history would have been very short.

Our verse talks about God’s love and our not perishing. Knowing God’s love, I can deal with the perishing part, and the ways I still opt for perishing. (That’s what we acknowledge when we confess.) Our three lessons offer portraits of what perishing looks like. Not all of it applies to any one of us; most of us will find something to chew on.

Finally, a word about “eternal life.” In the Gospel of John, ‘eternal life’ is not life after death. It’s God’s life in which we participate now. Because it’s God’s life, it’s not limited: it’s eternal. Because it’s God’s life, it’s full & festive. In the Gospel of John Jesus’ first miracle is turning a very large quantity of water into wine.

Numbers. Our first reading tells of Israel complaining —again— in the wilderness on the way from Egypt to the Promised Land. In the last two chapters God’s given them water from the rock —again— and given them victory over a local king —again— but Aaron the high priest has just died, and they’ve also been denied passage through Edom, which means a substantial detour.

So they are complaining against God and Moses: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” That’s verse 5. On that trajectory, we’d be reading about them picking up stones to stone Moses in v.6. More, it’s a classic example of spin: all of this is your fault; we’re the innocent victims. The people neglect to mention that they’d asked for deliverance from Egypt & that they’d rejected God’s command to enter the Promised Land directly a few chapters back, which is why they’re in this wilderness. Spin.

To get the conversation back on track God sends serpents. Are all the bad things that happen to people God’s punishment? Of course not. Does God punish? Well, unless we thoroughly rewrite both the Old & New Testaments, yes. Here, for example. Both to get the conversation back on track and —probably— to save Moses’ skin, serpents. And when the people ask Moses to intercede, God tells Moses to put an image of a serpent on a pole, so that those who are bitten can look at that serpent and live. No natural connection between looking and living; just God’s choice. God seems to like physical signs: this one-time use of the bronze serpent, more enduring signs like the rainbow, or circumcision, or Holy Baptism, or Holy Eucharist.

‘Spin’…a new word for a very old practice. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” We learn it very early; by the time we hit puberty it’s become as natural as breathing. Worse, we often believe our own spin: it really is only their fault. And that erodes our capacity to repent. If I have nothing to repent of… If the words of the General Confession are mostly reminding me of other people’s sins, that’s perishing.

So it turns out that there are two portraits of perishing in these few verses. Getting bit by a serpent turns out to be the easy one: look at the bronze serpent. The other way of perishing is to be so deeply into spin that we know that it’s God & the rest of the world that’s not OK, not us. We don’t want to put God into the position of wondering whether more serpents are necessary. The good news is that God will not easily abandon us to our spin.

Ephesians. Paul’s letter gives us a different portrait of perishing. Recall the opening verses: “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.”

It’s texts like these that drive the examination of candidates in our baptismal rite. “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?” “Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?” (BCP 302)

OK. What are we talking about? We don’t find it difficult to come up with examples: Hitler’s concentration camps, Cambodia’s killing fields. Easy to come up with examples on our enemies’ turf! Where Satan might be active here? Ah, the blue state/red state, left/right divides. I suspect that one of Satan’s major accomplishments in this country is the frequency with which Christians simply parrot the Democratic and Republican talking points against each other. Righteous indignation is great for keeping the focus on the speck in the neighbor’s eye.

Relying on our own strength, renouncing Satan et al would be a futile exercise. In the context of Holy Baptism it’s a glad confession that God’s love in Jesus gives us a real alternative to following the course of this world.

But here we need another digression: “…following the course of this world.” What do we mean by ‘world’? “God so loved the world…” “…following the course of this world…” If we think about it, the New Testament uses ‘world’ in two very different senses. The first and primary sense: the world as God’s creation: as God’s creation it is good, God loves it, and God’s in the process of redeeming it. The second sense: the institutional opposition to God on the part of rebellious humanity in concert with Satan, the spiritual forces of wickedness, the evil powers of this world. In God’s world six days of work produce seven days of food. In the world we’ve laid on top of that sometimes not even seven days of work produce enough.

In other words, God’s world has been hijacked; Jesus is in the process of taking it back…and invites us to participate (baptism). As Paul puts it, “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

Perishing: also about being part of this world order that sets itself in opposition to God. God’s love means that united to Jesus we can change sides.

Our Gospel. Here’s a third picture of perishing. “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” Really? Only in extreme cases do we experience ourselves as loving darkness. Most of the time it’s simply a matter of sensing that some things are better off in an obscure corner.

And so, at the family level, it’s remarkably easy to fence off areas as “what we don’t talk about.” And those fences can become walls which tend to thicken over time.

Secrets. Some things don’t start out as secrets. They become secrets as we make choices regarding what we tell to whom…or not. This is one of the reasons we offer private confession in our tradition. It can be hard to believe that God can forgive or redeem what I fear to name. (And, of course, sometimes what I fear to name is not a sin at all.)

“…that everyone who believes in him may not perish…” Again, believing in Jesus is not believing things about Jesus. The demons Jesus exorcised knew lots of things about Jesus, for all the good it did them. Believing in Jesus is putting your weight on Jesus, trusting Jesus. It’s like trusting the rope when you’re first learning to water ski, or trusting your soles when you’re rock climbing. Believing in Jesus: knowing he’s got my back—and getting on with the work he’s put between my hands.

Perishing: loving darkness more than light. God’s love: offering us a love that frees us to inch into the light and discover to our astonishment that we are not destroyed, but restored.

In sum we humans have an impressive arsenal of ways of perishing. From our 1st lesson: we end up believing our own spin. From our 2nd lesson: we’re born into a world in rebellion in which God’s creatures are corrupted and destroyed; that’s what’s normal. From our Gospel: there are situations in which darkness is really…convenient.

The good news is that God loves us, and that God’s arsenal is even better equipped than ours. With our consent —sometimes as small and vulnerable as a grain of mustard— God continues to transform us into daughters and sons who can live and dance in the light.

Psalm 19 (3rd Sunday in Lent, 3/3/2024)

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Readings

Each of today’s readings could fuel multiple sermons. This time around let’s focus on Psalm 19. Thematically it breaks into three parts: creation (vv.1-6), the law (vv.7-11), and what we might call divine intervention (vv.12-14). Each part is an important part in a faithful life. Is it a complete picture of a faithful life? No. There’s no attention to the community—for that we’d need other psalms. But it gives us more than enough to think about this morning.

“The heavens declare the glory of God, / and the firmament shows his handiwork.” Creation proclaims God’s glory; creation is worthy of our sustained attention. The physicists give us the clearest picture of this, the fine tuning of the various constants that make a stable universe possible, for which see folk like John Polkinghorne. For the world of flora and fauna, I often return to Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

“The creator goes off on one wild, specific tangent after another, or millions simultaneously, with an exuberance that would seem to be unwarranted, and with an abandoned energy sprung from an unfathomable font. What is going on here? The point…is not that it all fits together like clockwork…but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, fringed tangle. Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz” (p.135).

“Consider the lilies of the field” Jesus tell us, and how much of his teaching depends on his having first himself considered God’s creation! So theologians like Augustine talk about God’s two books, Scripture and the book of nature. In short, the first part of our psalm: going outside and paying attention is a spiritual discipline.

If God’s glory is found in creation it’s equally found in God’s Torah (“teaching” or, more narrowly, “law”). The joy expressed in this second part, vv.7-11, is perhaps most clearly expressed in the Jewish celebration of Simhat Torah (“Joy of the Teaching/Law”). The Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy) is read in the synagogue over the course of the year. Simhat Torah, in which members of the congregation dance with the Torah scroll, celebrates the end of the reading and the opportunity to begin the reading again. The Decalogue, that part of the Torah from our first reading, gives us an opportunity to enter into that joy. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” What follows: how to live as free people. The Godly Play curriculum calls this text “The Ten Best Ways to Live.”

“You shall have no other gods before me.” There is only one God we need to keep happy. An improvement over the various polytheisms then on offer, with multiple gods to keep happy. An improvement over our current de facto polytheism. So many gods want a piece; so many commercials: without me, you’re toast.

“Remember the sabbath day.” God’s creation is generous enough that six days of labor provides for seven days of life. If seven days are required, or if the scheduling is such that there’s no dependable weekly day of rest, that’s a sure sign that Pharaoh has returned.

You shall not murder, commit adultery, steal, etc. We don’t have to do these things to preserve/enhance our life.

“The Ten Best Ways to Live” indeed.

Now, the big surprise in the psalm is that it doesn’t end with v.11. After all that’s just been said about Torah, why do we need vv.12-13? Why indeed?

It turns out that we humans are pretty good at coopting/subverting anything, including Torah. In our best moments this happens almost by accident; in our worst, quite deliberately. The dog is wagging the tail, the dog is wagging the tail… and one day we discover the tail wagging the dog.

The activities Jesus discovered in the temple (John 2). “In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.” All that probably started legitimately enough: animals are necessary for sacrifice and some worshippers may have preferred to buy locally rather than bring the animals from their village. The money changing? Common currency had an image of the emperor, for whom divine prerogatives were claimed, and the temple authorities came to believe that such coins were inappropriate in the temple. It starts legitimately enough; but soon the penny drops that there’s a great deal of money to be made. The tail wags the dog, and all for the greater glory of God.

“Cleanse me from my secret faults…keep your servant from presumptuous sins.” The psalmist doesn’t explain how God does this, even as it’s clear that if it’s just me and Torah it’s not going to end well. How God does this: here’s where the psalmist could have talked about the community, particularly those members of the community that I don’t like to listen to. (“I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter” [Mk. 6:25].) It’s probably more prudent to listen to John than to leave God no other alternative than sending in Jesus, whip of cords in hand.

This unexpected turn in vv.12-13 is probably related to Paul’s critique of “the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning” in our second reading. Often the problem with this wisdom/discernment is that it assumes that we’ve heard all we need to hear from God. We have the Torah; we have the Bible; what more do we need? And we end up crucifying Christ again.

But the psalmist’s “cleanse me” trusts that it doesn’t need to end like this. “Cleanse me from my secret faults…keep your servant from presumptuous sins.” Why? Look at the last verse: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart / be acceptable in your sight, / O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.” The heavens are declaring God’s glory—that’s where we started. The psalmist’s hope/prayer is that the psalmist’s voice finally join that voiceless praise.

Not a bad agenda for Lent—or the rest of the year: get outside and pay attention, drink deeply from Torah with its “Ten Best Ways to Live,” listen for how God—often through our neighbor—may be trying to free us from our self-serving readings.