Monday, January 22, 2024

"Look Y'all: Wake Up! Turn around and Be the Good News"


Sometimes when I sit down to write my sermons, I have a pretty clear idea of the direction I want to go and the message that I hope will be heard.

Other times, I feel as if I am yanking my own teeth out trying to find the right words and phrasing. 

And when the text itself feels like its own sermon, I'm thinking, "What more can I really say?"

As it happened, I was having one of those "What now?" moments with the opening of Mark's Gospel and the call of the disciples. But when I yielded myself to the Spirit to help me, guide me, give me what maybe somebody out there needs to hear...I ended up saying things that, for some, were likely the words they needed to hear...even if they never tell me that. 

I'm thinking of the new couple who came to church, seeking a place to worship, who smiled and laughed at some of my images. And the young person who brought a friend as almost a bodyguard into this strange little church that says it loves unconditionally...but do we really mean that love is for those who other churches have rejected?

No one specifically talked to me about the sermon, but in the end, I think I did God's will with my words. See what you think.

Texts: Jonah 3:1-5,10; Mark 1:14-20

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“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

I was recently having a text exchange with my mentor…Mother Lee Shafer…who serves at a church in Louisville, Kentucky.

In our back and forth…we talked about preaching and particularly about how hard it is to preach a sermon on Christmas Eve and Easter.

As preachers…we were both like, “What else can I say that hasn’t already been said, done, demonstrated in what we’ve heard in the Gospel?”

I really feel that about Easter!

I had no idea that I would have that same feeling as I looked at our reading this morning in Mark.

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

In one sentence…Jesus has basically told the whole story of this Gospel.

It’s the shortest sermon he will ever deliver.

When I was at our fall clergy conference… we talked about this line.

We noted it’s powerful declaration…that it comes so early in Mark’s Gospel.

Jesus is coming back from his testing in the wilderness. He hears that his forerunner…John the Baptizer has been arrested.

And this statement begins his ministry.

At the conference…we did an exercise where we were to say this line as we thought it should be said.

We were to bring our own voices to breathe out these same words of Jesus.

And never have you seen so many priests do anything and everything to avoid being called on to speak!

It was as if we were embarrassed to make this bold declaration ourselves…or maybe just too shy to put it out there.

Possibly…we feared what our fellow presbyters would think of us.

Thank goodness… a couple of deacons finally spoke up.

But instead of repeating the words on the page…they took it one step further…shortening the text and really making it theirs!

I’m paraphrasing but I remember one of them said something like:

“Look, y’all. Wake up! Turn around and be the Good News!”

What a great way to capture this moment!

What a way to bring what is on the page forward…and place it in our laps as the call to all of us to shake off old ways and habits that keep us from living and loving to our fullest potential.

And to understand that time for that to happen is right now.

I’m often struck by how many people think that this language about “the kingdom of God” is what we hope for when we die.

Like…physically die…stop breathing…cross over.

No: what Jesus is talking about is a death of things that prevent us from living into our potential and our call to be the lights and love of God in our world right now.

He’s talking about transformation and the grace of God that will carry us through those changes.

If there is one certainty about what happens to a person when they have an encounter with God…it’s that they will be changed.

We see it in the story we heard about Jonah…which by the way is one of the most hilarious reads in the Bible.

Jonah is this most reluctant prophet…doing everything he can not to go to Nineveh.

He hides on a boat…gets swallowed by a big fish.

When he finally does walk into Nineveh…he rails and rails about how God is going to destroy them… make mincemeat of them…if they don’t repent…and believe.

He’s got some regular fire and brimstone street preaching going on!

And much to Jonah’s astonishment…the Ninevites listened.

Even as he was cursing them…somewhere in all that hollering…the universal translator was employed…and what they heard was God saying, “Come back to me! Quit these ways that place a barrier between you and me…and come back!”

And thanks be to God….their change of heart and behavior spared them. That even through all that heat and shouting from Jonah…the call of God touched them…and moved them to respond.

We just never know what in our words or actions will become that conduit for God to reach another person.

How what words we choose to express our faith will make a difference and maybe help someone take a second look at themselves and realize that they really are a beloved child of God?

I often find myself in conversations with people who are not believers.

Some of them are more on the spectrum of not wanting to be part of “organized religion.”

Others are proud to proclaim their disbelief to me early and often as if I might’ve forgotten from the previous time before or something.

But I’ve had the occasion where someone who doesn’t believe in God…

Or more accurately…has been so hurt by those who say they believe in God that they want nothing to do with the church…that when we’ve spent time listening and talking…they’re often moved in ways they hadn’t expected.

When they’re met with God’s love….through presence and not with proselytizing…they feel that difference that maybe there’s something to this “God thing” after all.

It seems that’s what was at work with Simon, Andrew, James, and John.

Simon and Andrew were average fishermen working their nets in the Sea of Galilee…a freshwater lake that was good for fishing.

James and John were part of the Zebedee family fishing business…a much bigger operation run by their dad.

They’d probably heard about John…his whole come out to the Jordan…you sinners…and repent…and thought, “Nah. I’ll just keep fishing, thanks.”

But when Jesus shows up…and simply offers the chance to go “fish for people…” Simon and Andrew lay down their nets and follow.

Such a simple invitation…and yet it moved them so profoundly that they left behind their nets to see what this meant…this different type of fishing.

James and John…same thing. Jesus called. And they answered.

I’m not sure their dad was excited about this, but luckily he did have hired hands to help with mending the nets.

Turning around…moving in a different direction…believing and trusting in God’s grace to not fail us is a risk.

There will always be those who are the outside observers casting doubt on our decisions…or mocking us for listening to that small still voice of God within us.

But remember what Jesus proclaims in his one-sentence sermon:

God is present…right now…

Lay down those things which distract us and divert us from living in love and our fullest potential to be present.

Just our presence to those who are longing for a deeper connection to this One Love that’s around us is enough.

Or…in the words of a Georgia deacon:

“Look y’all: wake up! Turn around and be the good news!”

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

 


Saturday, January 20, 2024

"You Are My Beloved" A Sermon for Epiphany 1

 

I have been lackadaisical about updating this blog, but for good reason. My mother-in-law passed away shortly after the 1st of the year, and so I had to quickly pull some things together and make a trip to France to be with my wife and her family. And this week has been a lot of getting caught up from being away. So now I am finally posting the sermon I preached on January 7th right before I took off for Haut de Gan. 

I'm just happy the Gospel lesson was a very familiar one, and since I am involved in an intensive study of Mark's Gospel with a group at my parish, I had done a lot of the exegetical work ahead of time.

See what you think.

Text: Mark 1:4-11

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I have never been to the Holy Land…not in a real physical sense.

My Hebrew professor at seminary… a quirky guy who loved technology and gadgets…had a pair of virtual reality goggles.

Putting them on one day when we were at his house for a meeting…I was able to see the road where the story of the Good Samaritan was to have taken place.

It looked like a narrow rocky twisting and turning mountain path.

It was cool.

But…honestly…I could’ve been looking at the southwest of France and seen the same thing.

Virtual reality is still just virtual.

I’ve lived vicariously through friends and colleagues who were fortunate enough to spend two weeks at St. George’s College in Jerusalem.

They posted photos and kept running online diaries of their visits to all the places which now are far too dangerous for pilgrims and tourists because of war.

Many of my friends have had the experience of wading into the waters of the Jordan River.

Some have been deeply moved at the feeling of being in the place where Jesus was baptized.

I’ll admit…I’m a bit envious. Maybe someday I’ll go.

Recently…I was reading an account of a Lutheran pastor who also did a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

She…like others… was awe-struck at being able to stand in the Jordan River.

She thought how amazing it would be to collect some of the water and bring it back with her to the States…mix it in with the water in the baptismal font so that everyone baptized in her church would be touched by the waters of the Jordan.

She brought along a special container.

She carefully collected and sealed up her jar of Jordan River water.

She made sure to pack it carefully. And it made it through many airports and across the Atlantic Ocean.

But when she pulled it out to take it to the church…she was horrified to discover her sacred object was a filthy mess of slimy…muddy…watery sediment.

While the Jordan River starts as very clean pristine snow-fed waters at Mount Hermon in the northernmost part of Israel…as it flows southward…it picks up lots of  sand…dirt…and mud until it empties into the Dead Sea.

So much for her grand plan to put this smelly mess she had so carefully saved into the lovely, distilled water of the baptismal font!

Nice thought, but no thanks.

Still…there’s something so absolutely perfect about the idea of the Jordan being such muddy water.

Especially as we think about what John is doing…and what Jesus participates in…and the tradition we carry forward with our own baptisms.

Ritual cleansing is part of the Jewish faith.

The act of “dipping” or “baptizing” was and is still done at a mikvah. A mikvah is either a special pool or some other flowing freshwater source.

People who convert to Judaism are expected to go to a mikvah with a rabbi. The ritual is a way of bringing them into the tribe of Judaism.

In the days of John and Jesus…this ritual was about cleansing the outside of the body of things that cause impurities…blood for example.

Jews were expected to do this type of ritual cleaning before they could enter the Temple.

It was a purification of the flesh…but not of the soul.

But John wanted something more.

John was at odds with the religious authorities of his day…not to mention his objections to the occupying Roman Empire.

He didn’t think the religion being practiced in the Temple was pure enough.

So John had declared that his baptism was one of repentance: more of a national baptism for Israel…to turn around…get back to a fundamental form of Judaism…stop with the going along to get along with Rome.

It’s no mistake that John set up his community at the Jordan River.

There’s symbolism using the Jordan to baptize people.

Afterall…the Jordan River are the waters of deliverance for the people of Israel as they entered what was the promised land.

For John…his baptism was more than cleaning the outside of the body; he was proposing a radical change….an internal shift…a moral cleansing as well.

John saw his baptism as a preparation for the coming of the anointed one…the Messiah.

So when Jesus shows up to be baptized by John…this is a really big deal.

Some have wondered if Jesus really needed to be cleansed of “sin” since he was the “sinless” one?

I think it’s not so much a matter of Jesus needing to be baptized.

It’s more like this is something he wanted to do.

Like we talked about last week…in Jesus we have a vision of a God whose deepest desire is to be with us and be in our experience…not hovering above us…but being in those muddy waters of life with us.

A full participant in the human experience…and bringing humanity and divinity into close contact.

And if John wanted his baptism to move people to a higher plane of their inner beings…he got way more than that with Jesus.

Because as Jesus rises up from the water….the heavens tear apart…the Holy Spirit descends as a dove…and he hears:

“You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well-pleased.”

Nobody else heard this voice.

Nobody else saw this vision of a dove.

Nobody else was aware that the heavens had split apart.

This is a visual image that we should all park in the back of our minds because the same “torn apart verb…schizo”….will come up again later when the curtain of the Temple tears in two at Jesus’ crucifixion.

It seems that…for Jesus….this baptism is not one of repentance.

But it is one of an inner understanding of his mission…his work…and what his purpose would be going forward in this story of God’s people.

He’s in the muddy waters with us…and he’s destined to lead us to higher ground.

His baptism both defines Jesus….and gives him the clarity of who he is and whose he is.

Our own baptisms are the same…and no less instructive.

We may not have had all the fireworks of the heavens opening and doves descending and otherworldly voices whispering in our ears that we are beloveds.

Maybe we did and we just don’t remember it.

But our baptisms into the Body of Christ are an important and powerful affirmation of our place as the adopted children of God.

They bring us into a deep and abiding bond to each other and to our families…our communities…and our society to approach others from a starting point of love.

Our parents and godparents…aunts and uncles…stood with us or spoke for us…in making the covenantal promises to be the children God so wants us to be.

Children of love…bringing good news to a hurting world.

We pledged to continue in the traditions of our biblical ancestors…sharing meals…and saying prayers.

We have committed ourselves to seek out the good and to resist the things that will wreck our relationships with each other and with God.

That’s one of the toughest things to do in a world where loving neighbor and especially loving your enemy…that person you really don’t like… gets us no brownie points and may even make us figurative punching bags for the people who don’t “get it.”

But our call through our baptism is to ignore that noise…resist the temptation to give up and stay the course of remaining committed to one another.

Keep on loving…and respecting the dignity of each other.

Continuously search for the Christ in the eyes of everyone we meet.

My gosh: if all those who claim the mantle of Christ could see the Christ in the person who is different from themselves…can you imagine what a sea change that would make?

How different would things be in the world?

It might feel as profound as the heavens being torn apart…a dove descending and a voice speaking such words of wisdom as “You…all of you…are my beloveds with whom I am well-pleased”!

Then maybe God’s dream for us really would be realized.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

 


Thursday, January 4, 2024

"The Word Became Flesh for Love's Sake"

 


I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to handle preaching on the opening to John's Gospel. It has such an otherwordly quality that I find it hard to grasp the best way into it. But with prayer and lots of wandering around...I finally got to a place of "a-ha." And it seemed to really strike a chord with a number of people in the congregation. 

See what you think.

Text: John 1: 1-18

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“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Whenever I hear this prologue from John’s Gospel….I feel myself getting plunged into an otherworldly sea of poetry.

Unlike our other evangelists…who either give us a timeline of Jesus’ bona fides as the promised Messiah from the House of David…or a Jesus who’s already starting his adult ministry and preaching a one sentence sermon right off the bat…John traces Jesus back to the very beginning.

The beginning that sounds like the Book of Genesis:

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth….the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the deep…”

John wants us to know that Jesus was present with God and the Holy Spirit even in that very beginning.

The Word was there.

And the Word was with God…and the Word is God.

And this Word became more than just a Word.

This Word became flesh and lived among us.

This Word that was at the beginning when God was creating the heavens and the earth…has now come into the realm of the earth…bringing heaven together with the earth into a human form.

This Word was born through the same way most everyone is born.

The Word was made flesh and blood…bones and ligaments…and coming to life thanks to the strength and courage of a young woman who said, “Here am I. I will be this mother of the Savior.”

As one commentator put it…this incarnation of the Word made flesh is a moment where humanity and divinity has a group hug.

Because the Word becoming flesh is the ultimate testament about a God whose entire being and language is one of Love.

Why else would God have become human?

I mean…God could’ve manifested as great ball of fire…or some magnificent creature.

But rather than coming to us in some terrifying way…God came to us as a vulnerable baby.

That’s true Love.

I remember the time when I felt that Love so profoundly.

My father had died and we had had his funeral and burial in New Hampshire.

But because my parents had briefly relocated to Tallahassee…and my father had been one of the favorites at his assisted living facility…and so many of my friends wanted to have “something” to remember my dad and support me and my mom…we held another memorial service at St. John’s in Tallahassee.

My mother had been attending church there…and thought the woman associate rector was the bomb…and that I needed to meet this priest.

But I could’ve cared less about the church…or women priests…or St. John’s.

After all…St. John’s for much of the 1990s had been the home of the most virulent homophobia I’d ever heard coming out of an Episcopal Church.

Reluctantly…I agreed to having a memorial service for my father on All Saints’ Day…which was a Thursday.

That following Sunday…St. John’s had a tradition of processing banners with the names of the departed.

My mom asked me to come back to church and carry my dad’s banner.

So…again…reluctantly…I went back to St. John’s to process this banner…which they then gave to my mom to take home.

Now…I had been in church three times in about a month and a half….the most I had been to an Episcopal church in more than 15 years.

I figured… I was done.

I’d completed all my obligatory good daughter deeds and I could go back to doing crosswords and drinking coffee on Sunday mornings.

But the Word which became flesh became a DJ…spinning all the greatest hits from the 1982 Hymnal in my head.

No matter where I was or what I was doing…I was hearing all the hymns from my childhood growing up in the church.

I bind unto myself today that God is working his purpose out as we crown him with many crowns the Lamb upon his throne…(incidentally the second line of that last hymn ironically says: Hark! how the heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own!)

I could not hear anything but the Episcopal hymnal.

When the following Sunday came around…I woke up with a booming voice in my head that commanded me to “Show Up!”

I showered.

I got dressed.

And I went back to St. John’s.

And for the first time in 39 years of being an Episcopalian… I heard every word of every prayer and every hymn and every line of Scripture and it all said one…unmistakable…and overwhelming message:

“You are loved. You always have been loved. And I will always love you.”

There was no asterisk.

There was no “I love you if you do x-y-z.”

This love was deep…and broad and wide.

The Word became flesh…so that the Word could use that opportunity to infuse all flesh with this Love.

To wrap all of us up in this cosmic hug that says, “You are so loved that I want to be with you…live with you…live within you. Experience your joys….and endure your sorrows…and bring you through the foggy darkness of a world that rejects and belittles people to show you the light that leads you to better days.”

The Word…The Love…came to us for this purpose.

As we hear in John’s Gospel: “…to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”

We who gather here and come to this table every Sunday are God’s adopted children.

Through faith and grace we have become part of God’s loving inclusive family.

Now is the time for us to take what has been given freely and lovingly to us…this Word…and make it tangible for others.

I see that happening all the time here at St. Barnabas.

We bring the experience of Christ to others through such loving gestures as preparing our bags of loving kindness to those who are without a permanent home.

I see it in the way we take time to bake cookies for service members living away from their families during the holidays.

I see it in visiting with those who are homebound.

And there are so many other ways in which we manifest the light of Christ for others and remind those who are seeking to know this Love that they do matter…they are valued…and they are so loved that God sent God’s Word into the world not to condemn it…or call it rotten.

But to rejuvenate it…and remind us that the One who we call our Creator…who we say made all things…declared them…us and all of creation… good.

This One…this Word…wants us to live…and become agents of Love through grace upon grace.

 May that Love that put on human flesh at that First Christmas grow and spread like wildfire through us.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.