Seeking Unconditional Love: A Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, Year A

 

I have to admit: I am not ready for this being Advent. I mean, I am OK with a change in season and all, but I think the events of the world, the marking of the 44th anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk and George Moscone...especially after the shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs... makes me long for more Luke, less Matthew. 

Or maybe it's the election in Florida which has turned this state into a experimental lab in Hungarian-style politics that has me so down that I am really struggling with holding on to hope. 

Perhaps that's why unconsciously I reached into the console in my car and put on the 25th Anniversary recording from Sweet Honey in the Rock to play in the car as I travel the back roads between Tallahassee and Valdosta...

"We are the ones we've been waiting..."

"I've been thinking about how to sing about greed..."

"If we want hope to survive in this world today. every day we've got to pray on, pray on..."

My muses.

Texts: Isaiah 2:1-5; Ps.122; Rom. 13:11-14; Matt. 24:36-44

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Happy New Year!

Yes, this is a new year. Not according to the Gregorian calendar, but in our church calendar.

The season of Advent…Advent from the Latin “Adventus” means “coming.”

This is the beginning of a new cycle in the life of the church. We’ll be hearing a lot more from the Gospel of Matthew over these next 12 months… which means we’ll be getting more teaching moments with Jesus…including his very extensive Sermon on the Mount.

We’ll also be getting a much more Jewish Jesus…as Matthew takes purposeful steps to draw parallels between the words of the prophets and the words of Jesus…establishing Jesus as a New Moses for his people.

And while this is the start of a new year… the readings this morning seemed to have missed that memo.

While the world is in that season of Black Fridays…and Cyber Monday sales…get your holly jollys at a low discount rate….the church is casting a long foreboding shadow over everything.

“Be ready.”

“Stay awake.”

“Don’t give in to debauchery and drunkenness or gratification of the flesh.”

With such cheery messaging is it any wonder why the Church isn’t popular with the general population?!

Why in the world are we talking about the end of things when we just started a new year?

Why can’t we ever have a little fun around here?

Before we get too doom and gloomy…let me first say that while we take Scripture seriously… we need to be careful how we read it.

For example…in this Letter to the Romans… I realize that it might sound as if St. Paul is being the biggest killjoy in the world. But I don’t think he’s telling us we can’t have any fun.

When he talks about these many ways that he calls “the works of darkness” I hear in this a warning against all the ways in which we… to steal a phrase from popular culture… “go looking for love in all the wrong places.”

We humans are not the most patient of God’s creation. We often go looking for instant feel goods.

And we lose sight of Love…Love with a capital “L”… when we turn our attention toward possessing people or things as a means of finding pleasure.

A new piece of jewelry might give us temporary joy and happiness. But a ring can get lost. A bracelet will get put away and forgotten… and a favorite pair of earrings might fall out favor.

Worse is when we see another person as an object instead of a fellow child of God.

When we use people as a means to an end…satisfying some need in us to feel powerful or more loved or superior in any way…then we’re venturing into the realm of darkness.

We’re no longer following that basic commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves.

What Paul wants us to remember is that our true joy comes from connecting to that much deeper energy of God’s love.

A love he’ll describe to the church in Corinth as patient and kind…but always present and available to us.

A love whose one and only desire is for all of us to experience the freedom that comes from being loved unconditionally…and then passing that on to others.

And the best part about it? We don’t need to prove anything.

This isn’t like how things happen out in the world… where we must produce a photo ID to prove who we are and whether we’re worthy of God’s love and grace.

All we need to do is accept it…take it in…and say Thanks be to God.

Thanks be to God that we are beloved creatures… made for good… and out of God’s deepest desire to bring order to chaos... and a expand a universe where love wins… wars end… and swords are beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.

Man, oh man, let there be light for such a world!

It sounds so good. So…when does all this happen?

If we pay attention to what Jesus says…the answer is “no one knows but God. So keep awake!”

Aw, c’mon!

We don’t even get a hint?

Once again… our impatient human selves are put to the test.

Throughout world history… there have been those who have tried to predict that on “X” date of “Y” year… Jesus Christ will return… and then a certain few of us will be raptured off to heaven. Every single one of those predictions has been wrong… and sometimes that has led to the sad and disastrous consequence of mass suicides by those who thought they were surely going to meet Jesus face to face.

For the original hearers of Matthew’s Gospel… there was an expectation that Jesus would return. Clues that scholars have picked up from the text would lead us to believe that this Gospel was written in the late First Century… about ten or so years after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. And there was a belief among those who had come to follow what was then called “The Way” that Jesus would be back… and would become the center of worship in place of the now-destroyed Temple.

In our impatience… there seems to be a desire to keep seeking someone or something else which will get us to that place called “Heaven.”

And in our rush to get there…I think we miss the real reality of Jesus’ message here in the Gospel.

When Jesus beckons us to “keep awake” he’s telling us to raise our consciousness.

To be awake means that we become more aware… and more tuned into the creation around us.

More cognizant of the needs of our community.

More caring of the people in our lives.

In other words…we are to live fully now!

Right now.

Cut through the noise of the world and the smoke and mirrors of materialism and find the real joy of God’s unconditional love NOW.

The more awake we are… the better able we are to be that bright light of Christ for those seeking more love… more kindness… a more compassionate world.

With each week in Advent… the light on our Advent wreath will grow brighter. May we see in each of these candles the potential for our own lights to grow brighter as we anticipate the coming of Christ into the world.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

Christ the King vs. The World: a Sermon for the Last Sunday After Pentecost

 

I don't typically title my sermons when I write them, but I think this title works for the jist of what I am saying here. Last week was a rough week for me, physically. My insistence on being superwoman when I'm not finally caught up with me and I have succumbed to the "once every five or six years" head and chest congestion. I managed to be well enough to go to Valdosta, but during the Collect for the Day, I had an annoying piece of phlegm get caught in my throat rendering me almost speechless halfway through! It was embarrassing. 

Fortunately, some well placed lemon water by my chair restored my voice for the sermon and the rest of the service. 

Because I wasn't feeling great last week, I was happy that we were on Christ the King Sunday...and the Gospel story from Luke about Jesus' crucifixion. I have already preached on this passage once before; hence I lifted some of the text of that sermon and used it again because it remains relevant. I also had written on this passage in previous entries... all of which combined with reading commentaries...made this sermon come together more quickly.

Add to it the fact that it was International Transgender Day of Remembrance, and we were going to be doing a service later that afternoon at St. Barnabas. In the current political climate, it felt right and necessary for me to reflect on the othering of transpeople who are regularly crucified in campaign ads.

On the way to St. Barnabas, I heard the news about another shooting at a queer nightclub in Colorado. I wrote that into my script when I got to the church. When I was preaching and got to that point, one of my congregants shouted out, "That's sad!"

"Yes," I said. "It is sad."

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Text: Luke 23:33-43 

We’ve reached the end of this church calendar year with Luke… the day that is commonly referred to as “Christ the King Sunday.” The church started using that title for the Last Sunday After Pentecost since the early 20^th Century. All the hymns celebrate Jesus as the King…crowning him with many crowns… letting angels prostrate fall before him.

And yet… here in our Gospel reading from Luke… we don’t see a Jesus triumphant.

Instead we’re invited into the scene of his public execution.

He is mocked and scorned.

There is a nameless “they” who cast lots for his clothing as if they are some kind of party favors.

“Leaders” most likely of the emperor’s clan taunt him.

Roman soldiers get in on the act…hurling snide commentary about him being “the King of the Jews.”

Luke tells us “the people” stood by watching. The people were likely fellow Jews…powerless in the face of this cruelty to do anything.

Terrified by the spectacle.

That was the point: to frighten any rebellious Jews from taking on the Roman Empire.

They might have been angry and feeling let down.

After all… they had pinned their hopes on Jesus to the one to lead them.

And here he is…hanging between two criminals.

Condemned to die.

Some king, eh?

For the Roman Empire… this is a brilliant strategy. It’s the one all authoritarians and bullies…both then and now…like to employ.

They’ve reduced Jesus and his ministry to a joke.

Encouraging an ethic of love, 

loving the stranger as your neighbor, 

forgiving the wayward one who comes home and says, “I’m a screw up and am not worthy,” 

healing people struggling with all kinds of demons; 

that’s not how a powerful person lives their life. By earthly standards, such caring and compassionate behavior shows weakness and vulnerability.

But then isn’t it interesting that even though there are three people being crucified, only Jesus draws out the ire of the powerful. 

There’s something about Jesus that makes them so bitter that they make a spectacle of his death.

Something about him has a strange pull on them. He seems to be such a threat to their comfort at the top that they feel they must not only inflict punishment and shame on him; they must kill him in order to remain strong.

Perhaps deep inside their hearts they are also afraid. 

Maybe they sense that he is stronger than them and his strength might expose their own weakness. 

That is the paradox of being a bully, isn’t it? It’s because they are weak, the bullies and tyrants of the world act out in destructive ways to mask their own vulnerability. 

Their shadow selves hide behind a mask of brutality because they know they aren’t really that powerful at all.

They search out those who they think are weak to attack so they can feel strong.

It’s a strange providential coincidence that this Christ the King Sunday corresponds with the international Transgender Day of Remembrance… a time when we pause to pay homage to the lives lost due to violent hatred of those who are “othered.”

Recently… we have seen in a state just to the south of us… that those in places of power and privilege have used their positions to heap more hardship on trans children and their families. The Florida Medical Board has adopted a rule banning doctors from providing necessary hormone therapy and care for children who are experiencing gender dysphoria.

Politicians in this last election cycle felt no shame in running campaign ads which demonized trans youth and played upon fears of trans people. And just last night in Colorado Springs… a gun man killed five people and injured 18 others at an LGBTQ+ nightclub.

Such cynical and blatant “othering” runs counter to Jesus’ stated mission:

To bring good news to the poor,

Sight to the blind,

Release to the captives,

And freedom to the oppressed. (Luke 4:18)

As we reflect on this scene of Jesus’ crucifixion… it’s interesting to see that the one person who recognizes Jesus is not a leader. Not a soldier.

It’s one of the criminals…another one who is “othered” in society.

This man…who is broken and among the lowly…is the one person who can see the divinity of Christ shining through that bruised and battered skin.

He senses Jesus’ power…even as they both hang dying at the hands of earthly powers.

Perhaps… this is why so many who have ever felt “othered” by the world…when they meet the risen Christ in their lives… find in him a true king.

A real leader.

Kindred spirit.

And the man earnestly begs Jesus: remember me. Please, remember me when you come into your kingdom.  

This is the king who can maintain compassion in the face of violent opposition. 

A king who can resist anger and can keep loving and forgiving all the way to the end. 

A king being unjustly crucified by a corrupt system and yet can still maintain dignity enough to promise Paradise to the repentant criminal. 

If social media had existed in the First Century, Jesus would have been vilified by all those hiding behind their avatars. Because he is type of king whose power of love and true righteous justice intimidates and topples the bullies who feed on fear and hatred. 

We proclaim Christ as King because…in his dying and then his rising again… Jesus makes a pledge to the one on the lowest rung of society.

To that one he will restore and liberate him from his worst self…and deliver him from his separation from God. 

If Jesus can say this to a criminal, how much more so do his words apply to us? How much more is he bringing us into his mission to face the injustices of our time which keep people in poverty, keep them captive to their fears and addictions, and press down upon those who yearn to breathe free?

This promise of being “re-membered” into God’s kingdom is renewed each time we come to this Eucharistic table and receive the body and blood of Christ. We are being renewed and reinvigorated with a life force, grounded in love, to resist the powers of this world that want to break us. When we take in Christ we are being given the strength to meet the needs of our community in the mission of God to love those who are the lost and the alone… and to give comfort to those who are afraid. 

It's through us and our resilience to live into that love that we bring Christ into the world. And it is in this way…working through us… Christ reigns as a true king on earth as in heaven. 

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

Stones Upon Stones: A Sermon for the 28th Sunday After Pentecost, Year C

Well, sheesh! 

The week we get an apopcalyptic Gospel lesson that sounds just horrible to our 21st Century ears is the same week that I had NO time to lock in and really prepare. We had diocesan convention in Savannah, and wouldn't you know, I had to drive through Tropical Storm Nicole for 4-1/2 hours to get there. 

For as much as I'm grumbling about it, I was glad I went. I always enjoy convention as the opportunity to catch up with people I never get to see otherwise. I was finally able to meet the members of the Racial Justice GA team. I got to hear about other LGBTQ+ people in the diocese. 

And even more importantly: I got to listen to other sermons, which ultimately helped me write my own!

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Text: Luke 21:5-19

 

This past Friday… we marked Veteran’s Day. I always remember and pay my deepest gratitude to all who have served. I give thanks… often with feelings of remorse… for those men and women who have followed a calling of military service and ended up in some foreign place witnessing the worst of our humanity in the form of war.

All while I get to go about my life without worry.

My dad was in the Navy and served on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific during World War II. Growing up… he would share only select stories of his time engaged in the battles with the Japanese. He enjoyed telling the funny ones about training Marines how to fly planes and watching them turn green as he did certain maneuvers.

But he said very little about what he experienced as a flight deck officer.

He would only reminisce in short quips… such as telling me and my brothers about “The Battle of Naha” in Okinawa.

He told us how they “Bombed the hell out of Naha. We didn’t leave one stone on top of another stone.”

Little did I know that my Calvinist father was using biblical imagery to describe warfare.

And if the Navy did do that much damage to Naha… it certainly was of epic proportions.

The stones the disciples so admire in the temple were pretty darned impressive. They were huge…about the size of say a Ford 250 pick up truck.

They were beautiful, too. Smooth Jerusalem rock with pinkish and muted orange coloring.

Herod might have been a fox, but he sure could construct an impressive and beautiful temple!

So it’s easy to see how the disciples could step into this center of grandeur and beauty and just be in awe of what they’re seeing.

It was the best example of “bright shiny object.”

And then Jesus verbally chucks cold water in their faces as a wake up.

“You all like this building? Well guess what? It’s going to be reduced to rubble. Not one stone left on top of another stone!”

There is some history to back that up. The temple WAS destroyed by the Romans in the First Century. And destroying the temple was a way for Rome to crush the spirits of the Jewish Community… especially the Sadducees since temple worship was central to their identity. All of that took place after Jesus’ crucifixion… and was very recent history for the writer of Luke’s Gospel sometime about 85 CE.

But Jesus’ caution to the disciples… and to us… is not just historical; it’s also metaphorically accurate.

Don’t let the bright shiny objects… bold and beautiful stones… or tales of horrible events and experiences of ground shaking uncertainty… get you down. Expect difficulties and challenges. In all of it, remember that we will survive…because God is never far from us…especially in those moments when we are the least sure of God’s presence.

Boy, Jesus: that’s some whacky weirdness there!

And yet…so amazingly and wonderfully true.

Today’s Gospel fits well with what we heard this weekend from Bishop Logue and the canons of the diocese at our convention.

There’s no hiding the fact that every church in the diocese…and across the Episcopal Church…and even across other Christian denominations… has hit wall in large part due to the COVID pandemic.

The world of 2019 is not the world of today.

All the churches across the diocese saw drops in attendance. Churches had already been seeing attendance numbers go down…and COVID seem to push them underwater.

Probably the group that felt it most keenly is our beloved church camp Honey Creek.

With the forced cancellation of so many youth group activities such as Happening and other diocesan programs all moving online…the camp saw its revenues plummet.

Now… I didn’t grow up in the diocese of Georgia… and there was no such thing as Happening when I was a teenager in the church.

But I could sense in the room the sadness at the thought of how many kids had missed out on the experience of going to that quiet thin spot tucked in among the live oaks on Georgia’s coast in Waverly.

And it’s starting to come back to life again…just not at the level it was in 2019.

Now… we could all sit around bemoaning the fact that our camp isn’t burgeoning with activity.

We could mourn that youth who had been going to activities at Honey Creek just aren’t any more.

We could fret that there are 19 of the 68 parishes in our diocese currently without even a part-time priest.

We COULD spend all our energy wanting to not only set our clocks back one hour…but move them back to about August of 2019… the time before any news of a strange and deadly virus in China.

Or we can hear what Jesus is saying to us and really take it to heart:

“But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

We can’t go back to the world of 2019…or even 2018.

(Selfishly, I don’t want to go back that far because I’d be back at the beginning of seminary and one time through was enough, thank you!)

But Jesus is reminding us that if we stick close to the Source of our strength… and draw on that… we will make it through.

Make it through difficulties in the church.

In society.

The economy.

When a crisis occurs…it is an opportunity to step back… reassess… and make way for a new thing to happen.

Something that Bishop Logue repeated throughout his sermon at the diocesan Eucharist on Friday night was that the reality of God is that God is always meeting us in the moment…whatever that moment is.

God’s purpose is getting worked out in ways that may not always be readily apparent to us but will lead us in a direction of light and love… because that is who God is and intends for us to be.

God’s desire for us is to lay down our almost pathological need for certainty and allow God to do the work of transforming our anxious selves into opportunities for us to thrive.

Messy.

Scary.

Sometimes topsy-turvy transformation that breaks us open and places a new heart in us.

A heart of flesh instead of stone.

Stone hearts kill the body because they are no longer beating.

Hearts of flesh take blood into the chambers…clean it up and send it back out to keep the body alive.

 We can’t live in the past, and we can’t predict the future. But we can live in the present moment… and take it as a chance to envision a future.

Here at St. Barnabas…we have a vision statement…crafted by your vestry… that we want a church… and a Lowndes County…that is a place of health, healing and hope with unconditional love.

We have a God whose spirit ready to meet us in that vision and make it the new real reality.

Let’s go!

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

 

Finding the Blessing in the Woe: A Sermon for All Saints' Sunday, Year C

Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity 
By Anonymous - http://days.pravoslavie.ru/Images/ii2736&4000.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20576321

For all the saints who from their labors rest... 

St. Barnabas again celebrated All Saints with committing and interring ashes instead of baptizing people. It was good to give a measure of closure to a family, while also commemorating the place of the saints in our lives as those who are still with us...even if we don't see them any more. 

The Gospel was Luke's version of the Beatitudes. It was interesting to me to consider the blessing of being persecuted as a "saintly quality." And then I remembered my first church history lesson in seminary. 

And thus begins this sermon for All Saints' Sunday, Year C....

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Texts for the Sunday: Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Psalm 149; Eph. 1:11-23 Luke 6:20-31

Prayer: O God, open our ears that we might hear you; open our eyes that we might see you; open our hearts to the wonders of your love. Amen.

 

As I was studying our Gospel…with Jesus giving us a litany of blessings and woes…and thinking about this being our celebration of All Saints Day… I was reminded of two of our very earliest holy women: Perpetua and Felicity.

Who are they? I’ll tell you!

They were two women of the third century … who faced persecution and were martyred for being Christians in the time of Roman oppression.

Perpetua is the one we know the most about because she kept a diary of her ordeal.

Both she and Felicity were pregnant and gave birth in prison and surrendered their children to family members to raise and care for them. Perpetua’s father kept pleading with her to renounce her beliefs, but she refused. She had visions while in prison… a little like a reading from Daniel… where she felt confirmed in her faith in Christ and her rejection of the demands of Roman society. Perpetua was supposed to devote her life to caring for her father. Instead…she was devoted her life to Christ.

Eventually, she and Felicity and the other Christian martyrs were brought to the amphitheater, whipped by gladiators…and then the Romans unleashed a boar, a bear, a leopard and a wild cow to attack them. An editor finished Perpetua’s diary…noting that after the wild beasts had had their way with the Christians… these Christians gave each other a kiss of peace as soldiers stabbed them with swords. Perpetua’s executioner was apparently new on the job and not very skilled… so she reportedly took his weapon and helped him…with joy… to slash her neck. And the story ends with extolling the virtues of these early martyrs of Christianity.

Such an account of a life certainly leaves one to ponder the meaning of “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.”! (Lk.6:22)

At the Inquiry class on Wednesday night, a question came up about saints and the meaning of saints. Do we worship saints?

The short answer is “No, we don’t worship them. We look to them as examples of a life well-lived in a Godward direction that we should learn about and then emulate.”

Fortunately, we aren’t living in a time and place where we’re jailed for our Christianity.

And—thanks be to God—we don’t have to worry about being fed to wild animals as sport for the masses to show our faithfulness to Jesus.

But what we can take from a story of two women such as Perpetua and Felicity is an example of remaining faithful and sticking close to the Source of our faith even when all the odds are stacked against us and there is enormous pressure for us to turn away from our faith.

That tension still exists in our world today in big and small ways.

Election season always seems to bring out the worst in us.

I was once asked how the state legislature in Florida might address the problem of bullying in schools.

“Well,” I said, “We might start with the political ads y’all run during the campaigns. Kids see their political leaders mocking and attacking each other; what do you think they’re going to do in school?”

(I was never invited back to participate in such public policy discussions again).

We didn’t hear this part today…but Jesus’ address to the crowd with these blessings and woes was delivered “on the plain.”

In Matthew’s version, they’re with him on the mountain.

But here in Luke…Jesus is on the level with everybody…laying out the Beatitudes.

How do we take what Jesus says here?

Some have read these words as saying that things will be so much better for those who are poor, hungry, and weeping when they die and go to heaven.

Your life is terrible on earth; it will be so happy when you’re dead.

I don’t believe that’s what Jesus is saying.

What we must remember…especially since this is Luke’s Gospel: Jesus IS the poor, the hungry, the weeping.

Jesus is talking in the present moment… both his and ours.  

Jesus is a member of the oppressed… and occupied… Jewish people living under the rule of the Roman Empire.

These words…which seem so contradictory to logic… are a way to remind his disciples… both the ones who were with him in the First Century Palestine… and those of us still following him in the 21^st Century… that God is with those who are facing the powers and principalities hard at work to undermine the confidence in Love.

Jesus is with us…especially the “us” being pushed aside.

One man who knew this well was the 20^th Century theologian Howard Thurman.

Thurman is among my favorite religious thinkers. He wrote several books…his most well-known one is called “Jesus and the Disinherited.” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. carried it with him everywhere he went.

It contained the basic ideas that would become King’s non-violent approach to the Civil Rights Movement.

Thurman had seen and experienced racism growing up in Daytona Beach, Florida. Because he was black, there was no school for him to attend beyond the seventh grade. But Thurman was determined. He was home-schooled with the help of a school principal.

He completed and passed eighth grade and went on to live with a family member in Jacksonville where he attended Florida Baptist Academy. He graduated from Morehouse College and earned his seminary degree…and would go on to start the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco.

Thurman’s vision was to create a worship space where all people--white, black, brown, Asian—could come together in the presence of God…and through God…discover the common bond that weaves us altogether.

The church had challenges.

There were disagreements.

But it is still in existence today.

No amount of racism or bigotry or obstacles thrown in his way would stop Thurman from pursuing the dream of building Beloved Community in the still very segregated era of 1940s America.

Thurman drew his strength and determination from his deep belief in Jesus as one who knew what it was to be a disinherited.

A person for whom society was determined to keep down and press their back against a wall.

And Thurman saw how Jesus answered the hate of his day by remaining doggedly committed to acting out of a place of Love.

And so he made that same commitment.

While Thurman is not in our pantheon of Episcopal saints… his is a life such as his that one can look to and see how the light of Christ burned brightly in him.

That same light exists in each one of us.

We can live lives worthy of emulating.

We may never start a church… or go to our deaths proclaiming our faith in Christ in the face of a bitter enemy.

We can see the anger and the hurt and discord in our world…and face it with a spirit of mercy…compassion… and love.

Blessed are you who risk ridicule from the world to remain steadfastly on the side of Love.  In the name of God…F/S/HS.