Don't Give up on Hope

 

We're starting a new church year with a Gospel focus on Luke. And as always the first Gospel reading is one that sets a scene of a people living with uncertainty and things falling apart around them. 

What timing for us as we face a world that is turning toward authoritarianism and anti-democratic "norms." 

Thankfully, the Gospel...as dire as it sounds...also is a story of Hope and of Love that overcomes all attempts to kill it. May that be the thing that we look to in these upcoming years.

Text: Luke 21: 25-36

+++ 

Happy Church New Year!

And welcome to Advent…a season of waiting and preparing for the coming of birth of Jesus.

We’re moving on from hearing stories from the Gospel of Mark…and turning our focus to the Gospel of Luke…with the usual smatterings of lessons from John as well.

Luke’s account of the life and ministry of Jesus is very orderly…and directed mostly to the newly arrived Gentiles into the faith in ancient times.

Luke also is a Gospel for the underdogs: caring for women, children, the sick and the poor are important to Luke…and they are the central characters in Jesus’s healings as told in this Gospel.

And since caring for widows and orphans and the downtrodden and destitute were commands made of Jews…once again…we must remember that Jesus is giving us a perfect demonstration of how to live as a faithful Jew.

His chief mission was not to start a church…but as Bishop Michael Curry says…Jesus was about starting a movement…to recapture the imagination of the Jewish population.

Unlike Mark…the writer of Luke’s Gospel was not a first-hand witness to Jesus. 

Luke follows most of Mark’s story…and adds some color and gives more examples of Jesus’s teachings in the form of parables.

As I like to say…Luke is a little bit like the Rogers and Hammerstein of the Gospels.

There are moments where something big happens in the story… so big that the characters must burst into song.

Now …that didn’t happen in today’s Gospel.

And if it did…I imagine it would not be a sweet and uplifting tune like the Magnificat.

Today’s Gospel would more likely be set to some screaming death metal guitars or a punk rock anthem.

“Signs in the sun…moon…stars…nations confused…roaring seas…powers of heaven shaken.”

If we’re having some déjà vu…it’s because this is the same “Little Apocalypse” language we heard two weeks ago as we were finishing Mark’s Gospel.

And for the original hearers of this message back in the First Century…they were a people who were feeling and reeling from cataclysmic events that had left them shaken. The attempted uprising against the Roman Empire had resulted in the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem for a second time…and the people had scattered in fear. To them…their world was crashing all-around them…and the promised return of Jesus…the Messiah…hadn’t happened as predicted.

We may not be able to relate to that sort of worldview…sitting here in 20-24 America. 

Or maybe we can understand it…in our own context.

Think of what it was like when Hurricane Idalia swept through the area.

Large branches and whole trees came down on homes and cars.

Power was out for a period of time.

All of it causing the headaches of finding roofers…and tree removal companies…and adjusters.

And then…just as things were coming back to something more normal…there was the overnight hours of Hurricane Helene this September…a storm that was initially forecast to be much further east of Valdosta.

More trees crashing into homes…blocking streets…the whole landscape of Valdosta State’s main entrance off North Patterson Street showed that nature had decided to clear cut the campus forest.

Power poles all around the area were snapped in two.

So many were without electricity for days and weeks.

Even the people in the higher elevations in the Carolinas were not spared as Helene’s rains wiped out whole areas with mudslides.

And all this coming after living through the COVID pandemic which seems to have left everyone more irritable and impatient than they were before 2020.

With wars overseas…and our anger-fueled politics in this country causing us to become the Divided States of America…maybe we can tap into those fears that our biblical ancestors were experiencing when the Roman Empire was trampling them down.

And that’s where it becomes important to hear again Jesus saying…”raise up your heads…your redemption is near…because even when heaven and earth pass away…my words will not pass away.”

Just as the prophet Isaiah offered comfort to the exiles returning from Babylon…Jesus is saying to the disciples of then…AND now… if we experience feeling as if the tectonic plates of our lives are shifting… hang on to my words… my love… my peace… my hope.

That’s what we need to always keep in front of our eyes.

It’s no mistake then…that on this First Sunday of Advent… as we hear disquieting words of people fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming…we are lighting a candle for hope.   

This hope is the promise that nothing…not death…not rulers…not things present or things to come…or any powers…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39).

It’s this hope burning like the flame on that candle that represents a light so powerful that no darkness can overcome it (John 1:5).

People will try.

There are always going to be those who push fear and attempt to snuff out that powerful fire of Love by cutting people down…and telling them the lies that they don’t matter…that our lives aren’t worth anything.

But hope is always there to remind us that if God loved the birds and the bees and the lilies in the field…then guess what: God loves you and me even more!

This is same hope that the 20^th century theologian Howard Thurman found as the source of encouragement in the face of the racism and white supremacy in the country during his days.

Thurman understood that it was the hope found in the life of Jesus…who stood up to the hypocrisy and cruelty of the systems that existed in the First Century…that pointed the way for all those who have ever felt like their backs were against the wall.

By drawing upon that hope…anyone who has ever felt like one of the left behinds or forgotten could keep their light shining within their heart.

Because ordering one’s inner life around the teachings of Jesus provided that outer shell of protection from the furious fearful winds kicked up by those committed to darkness.

And that’s the key here to hope…

We must pay attention and order our inner lives…and focus on that sixth sense that tells us God is with us…God is living and breathing through us. And God is never far from us or leaving us to fend for ourselves.

Stick close to that source of light and hope…and make room in your hearts for the mercy and love of God to be your guide through this season and beyond.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

 

 

 

 

Brood of Vipers? It's Not Too Late to Change: a Sermon for Third Advent at Christ the King

What a strange set of readings for this Sunday! There's such hope and joy coming from Zephaniah. Then there was Paul's Letter to the Philippians, a church he actually liked, which starts with "Rejoice! Again rejoice!" 

And then John the Baptizer is screaming insults at people coming to be baptized. 

This was possibly the last sermon I am going to be preaching to the congregations of Christ the King Episcopal Church in Valdosta. I have enjoyed preaching there because the congregation is more likely to spontaneously respond to what I'm saying...not something that is typical of most congregations in the Episcopal Church. But then again, CtK is not your typical Episcopal Church. They were, until 1988, an Assembly of God congregation. 

I put my theater skills to work in this sermon, which shocked the 10am congregation. They weren't expecting someone to scream at them "You brood of vipers! Who told you to flee the wrath that is to come?!" 

But then...I don't think "the crowd" was ready for John's smackdown either!

+++

Prayer: God, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing;

Let there be moments when Your Presence, like lightening,

Illumines the darkness in which we walk.

Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns unconsumed.

And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness,

and exclaim… in wonder… how filled with awe is this place…and we did not know it. Amen.—Shabbat Evening 1, Mishkan T’filah, 53.

I wish I could claim the words of this prayer as my own…but truthfully I lifted them from the prayer book at my wife’s Jewish temple. We were at the Friday evening Shabbat service for the sixth night of Hanukkah. Everyone had been invited to bring their menorahs from home and set them up on tables at the front of the sanctuary to light for the service. During a moment of silent prayer and reflection, my eyes landed on these words…which seemed so perfect in that candle-lit space. They work well with our own season of Advent…where we are constantly being reminded to look for the light of God’s presence in our world which is often full darkness.

And speaking of one noticing the light in the darkness…we have John the Baptizer in the wilderness. Now…last week…was John One-point-oh. His was the voice crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way…make the crooked paths straight. And perhaps we didn’t quite get it the last time…so this week…on “Stir up Sunday” it’s John Two-point-oh. He’s not just crying out somewhere off at the county line anymore. Now he’s all up in the faces of the crowd:

“You brood of vipers!! Who warned you to the flee from the wrath that is to come?!!”

Well, OK, then!

I wouldn’t recommend “brood of vipers” as a Christmas card greeting. No wonder Hallmark doesn’t have a niche market for Advent cards!

The choice of words is strong. And insulting, really. Vipers have these really long venomous fangs and had the reputation for eating their way out of their mother’s body…thus killing their own mama.

In Luke…we hear that John is slinging these words at “the crowd”; in Matthew’s version of this same moment, it’s the Sadducees, scribes, and Pharisees. These are the groups that our hippie hero prophet John, who’s out there in the wilderness eating locusts and wild honey, has tried to escape. He’s on the outskirts of town to get away from what he thinks of as a corrupt religion and has become the leader of another group of Jews…the Essenes…in what he believes is a purer religion that’ll get back to being in right relationship with God.

There’s this word…”brood.” One commentator I read noted that the word “brood”—and what word that is “brood”—is not the actual pit of vipers itself but the offspring of these snakes. So this “brood of vipers” represents, for John, generations of dull and corrupted Judiasm.

Add to this the presence of the tax collectors: now THERE’S a particularly hated group, right?

Nobody likes the I-R-S…and in those days…the I-R-S was really hated because they were Jews hired by the Roman Empire to collect the taxes from their fellow Jews. They were seen as traitors. And it didn’t help that there were many who would engage in fraud, overcharging the taxed and pocketing the change.

Oh, and then who else is in this crowd but the soldiers! They were kind of like “Herod’s henchmen” who would bully and shake down the Jewish citizens.

So all kinds of representations of Empire and Classism and Brutality…everything that is the polar opposite of John…they’ve all come out into the wilderness…seeking John’s baptism in the River Jordan. You can imagine how thrilled he was to see them!

After John gives this brood of vipers a tongue lashing…they look at him, blinking, and say, “What then should we do?”

“Well,” John says, putting his hands on his hips…

Soldiers: don’t extort or threaten people.

Tax Collectors: only get the money actually owed.

Jewish leaders: You know what the code says: You have two coats: give one to the person who has none.

To put it another way: “You need to get yourself right! You need to take a good look at yourself and realize that there are things you’re doing, behaviors you’ve had, that have been harmful to your fellow human. Get yourself right with God…now! Because the Light is coming…capital “L” light…is coming.”

And we know that’s true even today.

Each week…one more candle gets lit on the Advent wreath…to remind us that even in the midst of days that are growing darker earlier…during times where we might feel down, depressed or overwrought…the Light is coming and getting brighter and brighter. And, as difficult as it can be to hear that accusation—‘brood of vipers’—we need to hear John’s message behind those words.

Because we are the crowd, too.

Just like that crowd at the Jordan…we are products of the society in which we live that has allowed for disparities of wealth and divisions among people to grow. We may not be actively participating in causing harm to others, but we often benefit from the way our society is structured that keeps some on the margins…out of sight and out of mind.

I think about what happened with all the shutdowns that came with the pandemic. Suddenly, we learned that “essential workers” were not just nurses and doctors in the hospitals; it was their janitorial staff.

Essential workers were stocking shelves and checking out people at the cash registers in grocery stores.

They were… and are… farmworkers and the meat packers in neighboring communities, helping to keep the supply chain of food going so that there would be something in the grocery stores and restaurants (another set of “essential workers”).

While some of us stayed at home, others simply could not.

Let’s not even get started on the disruption to education. Some school children could get on the internet and attend classes remotely; many others didn’t have a stable enough connection. Some classes could switch over to remote learning; others were far more challenging…and to the point where some teachers put away their planners for the last time and took early retirement.

As long as we’re comfortable and undisturbed by the gaps that exist in our community, and as long as we sit idly by when we hear phrases such as some place being in the “good part of town,” we run the risk of being just like that clueless crowd out in the wilderness, looking dumbstruck as John gives them what for.

And that’s why we need John…and we need Advent.

We need to get that push… that shake up… to take a look at ourselves and what’s around us.

Last week…we prepared the way for the Light’s return. Now John is saying…get rid of the behaviors and let go of those things which are holding us back.

When the light illumines a place and reveals what has been hiding in the darkness…don’t look away.

Address it.

Deal with it.

The answer to “What should we do?”

Be ready because “the way things have always been” is coming to an end and a new thing is about to happen.

And let the church say, “Amen.”

 

Living Our Faith in Troubled Times: A Sermon at St. Barnabas, Proper 17 Year B

 

This past week has been really terrible in the world. 

The United States withdrawal from Afghanistan has been fraught with danger and bombings that killed civilians and soldiers outside the Kabal airport. The COVID Delta variant is spreading like wildfire, especially in Florida and South Georgia. Parents in Florida actually had to bring a lawsuit against the Governor because he has been threatening to withhold education funds from school districts that mandate mask wearing inside public schools. Friday, a judge in Leon County found in favor of the parents because Governor Ron DeSantis does not have the constitutional authority to override the decisions made by local school boards. And the rare, and present, danger of COVID breakthrough infections claimed the life of my friend and longtime civil rights and social justice advocate Agnes Furey. As one might imagine, the shock and pain and hurt of losing a person who lived her life as close to the Gospel as any person I have ever known devastated many in Tallahassee and only further upped the anger and resentment that is boiling over about people who are willing remaining unvaccinated against COVID.  

In a climate of anger and division the Sunday lectionary readings gave me something to think about, especially as I looked at the Letter of James laid alongside the Gospel lesson from Mark. The gorgeous love poetry of the Song of Solomon added the perfect balm for the past week. 

+++

Texts cited: Song of Solomon 2:8-13; James 1: 17-27; Mark 7:1-8;14-15; 21-23

Prayer: Blessed God who caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant us so to hear them , read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life. Amen. (Collect for Proper 27 aka "The Lee Graham Collect")

There are some weeks when the Sunday lectionary readings are hard and complicated…like what we’ve been hearing from the Gospel of John all month. There are sometimes when I know I want to just pull the covers up over my head and avoid what’s in the readings. And then there are weeks like this one where things all seem to fit together well…even if the ultimate lesson is one that makes us pause to take it in and know…” Yeah, we need a refresher course in what it means to be a Christian.”

 I imagine y’all are familiar with the cartoon Hagar the Horrible, the one with the guy who’s a Viking and his wife Helga. A friend who serves on the school board in my Florida county posted a Hagar cartoon.

Hagar has come through the door.

He has arrows sticking out of his helmet and shield. His sword is bent, and his brow is sweaty and he’s announcing into the room “I’m home from battle!”

In the next frame, Helga steps out of the kitchen. Her face is bruised. Her nose is bandaged. Her dress is disheveled. There are stars floating around her head as if she’s taken a few blows to her brain.

She leans on a cane and says, “I’m home from the school board meeting!”

It’s really come to this now. We live in a world where serving on a school board…an elected office where you’re charged with making decisions to aid the learning and protect the students and employees in public schools…makes you a target for abuse. And all because of a requirement to wear a mask while in school. 

I heard on the radio about a woman who is a school board member up in a small county in southern Indiana. She now has a baseball bat by her door underneath the photos of her grandchildren because she’s been threatened by her neighbors.

And while I haven’t visited her town, I am sure there is no lack of churches…and those who consider themselves regular church attendees…happy to praise God on Sunday…while beating up a child of God serving on a school board the other six days of the week.

This is the type of hypocritical behavior that gives Christianity a bad name.

And this is what our letter from the apostle James…the just leader of the church in Jerusalem... is talking about with his mirror analogy.

He says that if we hear the right prayers without doing the right actions in our lives…that’s no better than looking at ourselves in the mirror and admiring how good our hair looks…and then walking away and forgetting about that fantastic coiffe we just saw in the mirror.

This is an important tenet in Judaism…one which has been passed along to us from our Jewish parents…that the prayers we say, the words of Scripture we hear, the hymns and songs we sing are not just to be mouthed. We are to sit with them and study them…and take them into our hearts to do the work of transformation. With that new heart…we are led back out into the world to do action of our prayers “to show forth God’s praise not only with our lips but in our lives” (BCP, 101).

This is the same idea that Jesus was driving at in this exchange with the Pharisees. This is so much more than disciples having grubby hands when they’re eating. Jesus isn’t dismissing the Pharisees for their commitment to the ritual of handwashing; he understands the significance of following the tradition of the elders. What he is saying is that if they’re washing their hands without feeding the poor, releasing the captives, and taking care of widows and children then their handwashing isn’t much more than a mechanical function. There are portions of this passage from Mark Chapter 7 which the lectionary diviners left out, probably to keep the narrative easier to follow and not complicated by details relevant to First Century Jewish worship. But the bottom line is that if the ritual act doesn’t point the person toward doing the act of caring for all of God’s creation…human, animal and mineral…then it is an empty gesture and a sign of an empty faith.

The same applies to us. If we come here week after week and say all the right prayers and do all the right gestures, but then do nothing to make life better for another person or (worse) actively engage in activities that hurt someone or something in God’s creation, then it renders our prayers and praise meaningless. It reminds me of a bumper sticker I once saw: if going to church makes you a Christian, does going to the garage make you a car?

This is not the same idea as “I have to do good things in order to be on God’s good side.” We don’t earn frequent good person miles with God; God’s grace has already been extended to us. This isn’t about us doing anything for God’s love. This is about us doing acts of kindness because we know deep inside us that God did such acts of kindness and so much more for us already. This is about us letting these prayers and these Scriptures we say and hear shape our outlook and guide our wills.

And what a beautiful starting point for us in this inner work than our first reading today.

If we look at the reading from the poetry of the Song of Solomon, we get a glimpse in these five verses of God as the lover, calling and beckoning to us.

God whispers to us, the beloved, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.”

Such words, such loving and tender words, spoken to us now in our world swirling with anger, division, and discontent. Bullies and soul-crushing reports on the nightly news.

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away”

Come away, my beloved child: I am your God who so loves you. I am the love that will not give up on you. I am the love that will make it possible for you to love one another even in the face of rejection.

“Arise, my love, my fair one…and come away”

Now what if we have been hurt by someone? What if we have felt the sting of betrayal? What if we are carrying around the scars of our life that make it hard to love? I don’t think there’s a person in the world who hasn’t known some level of suffering. And those wounds left untended…untouched by God…can manifest in ways where we hurt others. I’m not talking just about physically abusive behavior, but even the dismissive ways we speak to one another because someone dismissed us. Or spread gossip about someone because a part of us is insecure and wants to feel a level of self-righteousness. This is all part of the human condition stuff…and is a symptom of the hardening of our hearts brought about by being in the world.

The challenge for all of us is to remember that all those hurts inflicted on our souls are not the definition of who we are. They are only part of us, not all of us. We can turn these hurts to God’s good purposes when we use them to inform how we deal with each other in that compassionate way…that way where we understand the other because we have been through the fires of Hell and back, too.

With prayer, Scripture, and music as the tools that God uses to reach us in our worship to shape us and prepare us for the week ahead, we can learn the practice of listening…being slow to anger…and be prepared to exercise the true religion of caring for those around us.

In the name of God…Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.   

 

Do not fear; only believe: A Sermon for 5 Pentecost

 Preached at St. Thomas Thomasville, June 27, 2021, the day after my diaconal ordination. Text is Mark 5: 21-43

For more than thirty years, I have been a member of a theater troupe in Tallahassee. The Mickee Faust Club, is best known for writing original skits and songs that poke fun at everything and anything that has a pulse or a point of view.

But the company’s real trademark is that it provides people who otherwise might never be seen in society a place to shine on stage.

While most of the pieces are humorous, Faust has often taken on doing serious projects. One of those is the periodic workshop-to-stage undertaking called “Actual Lives.” Participants get a prompt…something like…”write about an obsessive habit”…they’re given time to write out a short couple of paragraphs which they share with the group. These initial musings then get worked on and developed into a piece that the person presents as part of a performance.

The most recent Actual Lives project this past spring featured an African-American woman who I will call “Dominique.” She shared that she had been a victim of childhood sexual abuse, which left her feeling broken for most of her life. Then one day, when she was in her forties, she saw one of her friends reading the Bible. The friend talked with her about Jesus and encouraged her to start doing Bible study. And the story that struck her the most was the one we heard this morning from Mark about the woman suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.

It is a really powerful story, and for Dominique it planted the thought in her head that maybe, just maybe, this was something that could heal her, too.

So while she was in church, and her pastor was preaching and moving about in the nave, Dominique pretended to bend down and tie her shoe. As the pastor moved by her, Dominique reached out her hand to touch the hem of her robe. The pastor felt that tug. She stopped her preaching, looked at Dominique, and—clearly having a sense of what was going on here—the pastor said, “Your faith has healed you.” And Dominique said in that moment she felt her heart was healed…as she said, “It was no longer sealed in bricks. No longer wrapped in barbed wire. I had a new heart and I was able to love again. I was able to function again.”

A new heart.

Chains that bound her removed.

A woman Renewed. Restored.

Dominique’s story is a present-day testimony of the experience we heard in this gospel of the unnamed woman who had faith that there was enough power in Jesus that even touching the hem of his robe could make a difference in her suffering. Dominque identified with this woman who in her own First Century time also was broken. Her excessive and constant bleeding meant she was always in violation of the Levitical purity laws of her day, so she should not have even been in the crowd…let alone near Jesus.

This unnamed woman in Mark’s gospel was an outsider among her own Jewish population and they were already living as a minority under Roman imperialism.

Biblical scholar Ched Myers notes that the fact that she had spent all of her money on physicians who couldn’t cure her is another clue that this poor woman is about as down and out as you can get.

But even with all the odds stacked against her, something inside her made her persist. Something told her that if she could just touch Jesus, just the bottom of his robe, maybe that would take away this pain, this bleeding, this scourge that was keeping her apart from her community. And as Jesus felt that need tugging at him and looked upon this desperate person, he noted that indeed…her faith…that mustard-seed sized faith…had healed her. And her healing was so immediate that it left her trembling.

She probably never forgot those twelve years of agony. But those years of suffering would no longer be the definition of who she is.

Now…we can easily get lost in the awe of this moment in the story because it is such a great and powerful part of the Gospel. However, there’s more…much more going on here.

As my New Testament professor Kathy Grieb describes it, this Gospel text is a typical Markan sandwich. So we’ve been looking at the meat of the story, but there are two slices of bread on either side that are of great significance. And that’s the story of Jairus’ daughter.

Remember how this whole episode starts: Jesus has gotten out of the boat on “the other side”. Scholars suppose the location to be west of the Sea of Galilee. He’s approached by Jairus, who is described as a leader of the synagogue. Lawrence Wills notes that “leader of the synagogue” doesn’t mean that Jairus is a religious leader; he’s more like one of the pillars of the community, a prominent person with lots of influence. A man who has standing and therefore not only does he get to have a name in this story; he can move to the front of the line without fear or doubt. Jairus begs Jesus on behalf of his daughter to come quickly and lay his hands on her to heal her. And Jesus agrees.

But then here comes this anonymous woman who is a nobody and interrupts the mission to heal Jairus’ daughter. And because Jesus stops to meet her need—indeed makes this nobody into a somebody by calling her “Daughter”--we hear that Jairus’ daughter has died.

Now, Jesus knows the daughter isn’t really dead and tells Jairus “Do not fear, only believe.”

Believe, Jairus.

Don’t despair, Jairus.

Have faith, Jairus.

The people at Jairus’ house are weeping and wailing, and when Jesus says, “The girl’s not dead, she’s sleeping” they thought he was joking.

But restoration, rejuvenation, and renewal are not a laughing matter for Jesus. He told the naysayers to leave, and kept the girl’s parents and his inner circle of disciples with him.

“Do not fear, only believe”

Jesus took the girl’s hand, spoke to her, and this daughter…presumed to be dead… came alive.

Make no mistake here: these two daughters are about more than miraculous healing stories.

Mark’s Gospel is about showing how the last will be first.

Jesus was on his way to a house of power and privilege in the Jewish community, but he stops to heal and restore the health of a woman with nothing and who the systems of that society had failed.

It’s not that he won’t heal the ones who are the haves…but he will not do so until the have nots have been lifted up….the valley raised and the mountain lowered…so that everything is equal and equitable.

This was Jesus’ mission…and this is our work to bring about societal equity.

This past year forced most everyone to go into a pandemic pause. And that pause laid bare the realities which face those who are the poorest, the most marginally employed and in the most vulnerable professions.

Some people simply could not work from home.

And they put their lives and those of their families at risk so those of us who could work from home would still have a hospital or a grocery store with packaged meat when we needed it.

As we now slowly come out of the pandemic and attempt to find our way back to this thing we call “normal”…we cannot take anyone for granted nor is it right to leave them struggling to make ends meet. Too many people have died for us to ignore the inequities that continue to put those who are last at the back of the line.

That’s not the way of Jesus, the way of Love.

The way of Love calls us to acts of courage and having enough faith…like Dominique, like the hemorrhaging woman, like Jairus… that when things in society or in our lives are broken, we have a God ready to meet us, heal us, help us and empower us to repair the breaches.

We have a God who seeks not our death, but desires us to live and be made whole.

We have a God who will stop to help the nobody and will still be able to help the somebody in need…no matter the race, the ethnicity, or the identity.

And we are to respond in the same way in this community.

We must keep moving in that Godward direction of making this world equal and equitable for all people.

Is this hard work? YES!

Do not fear, only believe.     

 

 

The Love That Makes Us Free

I’m in the middle of a class right now on the life and writings of the theologian and mystic Howard Thurman. Thurman is one of the leading religious thinkers in 20^th century American Christianity. He was born and raised in Daytona Beach, Florida, and was the first African-American to complete eighth grade there and go on to high school in Jacksonville. His father had died when he was a boy, and his mother had to work to support the family so his maternal grandmother helped to raise him and his two sisters.  And it was this lady, his grandmother, Nancy Ambrose, who pointed Thurman to Jesus.

Ambrose was born into slavery in north Florida. She couldn’t read or write, so Thurman would read the psalms and the Gospels to her. She never wanted to hear Paul’s Letters…because white preachers on the plantation would only cite Paul’s words about slaves obeying their masters. In the hands of these preachers, the Bible became a weapon.

But Ambrose told him that…once a month…a black preacher…a fellow slave from another plantation would come preach to them. And it was that preacher who spoke the truth: he said, “You’re not slaves: you are precious in the eyes of God as God’s own children.” Thurman said when his Grandma Nancy would tell this story, her spine would straighten up as that deep profound love of God filled her body with self-worth.

It was from this preacher…Ambrose learned to distinguish for herself the difference between liberty and freedom. She taught Thurman that liberty is what someone else gives you. BUT freedom was the love of God found within yourself.

It’s too bad that Paul’s Letters left such a rotten taste in her mouth because today’s portion from his Letter to the Romans confirms that same message of what it means to be free.

We hear from Paul that there is nothing…absolutely nothing…that will separate us from the love of God. God’s love has no borders or boundaries…cannot be legislated or segregated. It is higher than mountains and lower than the seas. It is the coolest most refreshing drink to sustain us on the hottest most humid days of life.

And we can’t earn it because it just is. If we allow ourselves to feel loved that strongly, that deeply, that much…Yowse, my friends! That’s freedom! That’s power! For you, for me, for everybody.

 Acknowledging and accepting that God has loved us, does love us, and will always love us wipes away fear.

Fear is what motivates those in positions of power to act in ways that hurt and devalue another person.

Fear is what paralyzes us from taking action to help somebody.

Fear is what starves us of the Love that frees us.

If God is for us…whether we are the powerful or the powerless…than who can be against us?

Nobody. Love gives us freedom from fear and puts us in right relationship with each other.

I think that’s critical to our Gospel lesson as well. As the commentators note…what Jesus is telling us about the kingdom of heaven is we can find it in things like a trash tree…or in this case…a trash bush. Seriously: farmers in the First Century who had laid out perfect rows for their crops wouldn’t have been happy to have a mustard bush growing like kudzu in their field!

And that’s Jesus’ point: The kingdom of God is about a love that is wild and free…disorderly and disruptive.

It’s the love of unwanted leaven that makes an amazing sourdough. It’s a love that gives up old habits, and former beliefs, to gain something new and greater.

It’s a free love found in little things, ordinary things, unwanted things.

And notice that when he asks, “Do you get it?” everyone tells Jesus, “Oh, yeah, we understand what you mean, man!” 

But…did they really?

Do we really understand how deeply God loves that even a trash tree symbolizes the kingdom of God?

Have we grown so used to the order of the way things are that we can’t even imagine how they should be? 

I think at a time of this viral pandemic…that’s a pressing question for the Episcopal Church, not just St. Thomas, but the broader Episcopal Church.

Right after the Fourth of July, three Episcopal priests…the Reverends Winnie Varghese, Stephanie Spellers, and Canon Kelly Brown Douglas…released a letter called “Speaking of Freedom.” It was an open letter to our denomination. These women, distinguished leaders and preachers…two of them Black and one of South Indian descent, placed the challenge before us as Episcopalians to address our history as the church of the powerful…and the slave-owners. 

Their letter calls on us to be the baptized beloved community we say we want to be. Really fulfill the promises we make with each baptism to resist evil, return to God, and respect the dignity of EVERY human being.

The truth is we often don’t do those things.

We all fall short of living into and promoting the freedom found in the Love of God.

What would it be like for the Episcopal Church to fully show up for Jesus?

Tap into our inner freedom that knows the love of God’s kingdom is like that unwanted mustard seed growing big and wild in that otherwise ordered field.

These women of our church are challenging us: can we white Episcopalians yearn enough for Jesus and God’s message of radical inclusion to let go of the things that keep us separated from our siblings of color…and finally live fully into our baptismal covenant so that we can be free?

Good news! I’ve seen it happening.

White Episcopalians I’ve known in Tallahassee who never spoke out on any social justice issue are now posting links to anti-racism resources on Facebook.

I’ve seen videos of white friends joining in marches right here down Remington Avenue for Black Lives Matter. I call such actions praying with one’s feet.

Paul has already declared to us that God loves us beyond all human comprehension with a love that frees us in such a way that nothing can stop us. This is the love that empowers us and frees us to have the courage to look closely and critically at our church’s history. Such an examination may feel disruptive and uncomfortable. But God is for us. And like that unruly mustard seed…such a push for an honest examination will grow a healthier, more vibrant, more loving Episcopal Church.

And so we pray,

O God of peace, open our hearts, guide us in your path, and lead us as your children to live more freely and fully into your commandment to love one another as Jesus has loved us. For it is in the loving that doubt and fears give way to faith and hope. Trusting in you and your love, we are made free.

(To see the service and hear the sermon, click HERE. Make sure it's for July 26th.) 

Comfortable Words in an Uncomfortable Time: A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

Preached for online Morning Prayer worship, St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Thomasville, GA.

These last few lines from our Matthew reading this morning are among my favorites in Scripture. I remember when I was a child in my church up in New Hampshire hearing our curate Rich Weymouth read them aloud right before the offertory. His voice conveyed such tenderness and kindness that it felt like a friend was pulling up a chair, wrapping their arm around my shoulders, and giving me reassurance that everything was going to be OK.

The disciples needed to hear these comforting words, too. Jesus has told them they’re gonna face resistance. Even when they’re speaking words of love and freedom…some people will not want to hear it. This God work is not easy.

To illustrate this…Jesus paints a picture of this resistance. This generation…his generation…are a people who don’t respond appropriately to anything… good or bad. Play the flute, be joyful, dance and be happy...this generation sits on the sidelines and mutters they don’t take part in such silliness. Come crying and mourning at loss and death? This people shrugs and laughs it off: it’s no big deal. They say that John the Baptizer’s religious practice of self-denial is demonic…and Jesus’ ultra-inclusive religion of love is not orthodox enough. Nothing will satisfy or convince this generation. They know better. Good luck to the disciples dealing with this mess!

Why aren’t the people convinced? Why do they resist so much? Why are they afraid to turn around, to change?

I feel like these are the same questions that we are wrestling with today. We celebrated Independence Day, but it hardly feels like a time of celebration. Racism is still dividing us, and we are caught in the net of a viral pandemic that has left many of us feeling very dependent. I’ve been shocked as I watch videos of grown men and women going ballistic in a grocery store when a teen-age clerk asks them to put on a mask. It makes no sense to me.

I know people who have or have had COVID-19. Some have died, some are still suffering from constant headache and short-term memory loss. Others have recovered relatively unscathed but may have lingering effects crop up years down the road. I can’t ignore how COVID-19 has exposed the gaps in our healthcare system and is disproportionately affecting racial minorities and the poor. All that makes me cringe as I watch the unmasked person screaming at the store employee while hurling packaged meats and loaves of bread to floor.

Is this rage really because of a request to put on a mask?

In seminary, one of the things they ask us to do is to pay attention to people and listen with what they call “our third ear.” It’s a way of being compassionate in times of high emotions and anxiety. And while I can’t say that I would have the patience to engage a person screaming at me and throwing things on the floor, I think that behavior might be pointing to something larger than a mask and more universal to all of us.

I think we are scared. This virus makes it impossible for us to go about our lives as we always have. We can’t gather together. We can’t sing in groups. We can’t go out to eat or drink. Businesses are closing. Unemployment benefits go unpaid. We are facing the uncomfortable truth that we are not in control. And when doctors and scientists come to us and say, “Put on a mask and keep social distance,” we become like that generation who thought John the Baptizer had a demon and Jesus was a glutton and drunkard.

But still…the doctors persist. The nurses keep emphasizing the public health advice. And now, even more politicians on both sides of the aisle are saying we must accept the reality of this virus, so please wear a mask in public.

Yet the resistance to these instructions continues.

So, do we give up? Do we say as Paul wrote to the Romans that we know what we ought to do, but we do the thing we hate?

We are living in a time of trouble on so many fronts. Life is hard, overwhelming and scary. Change is difficult. But Jesus’ message is that we must keep pressing forward even though we will suffer at times and may even lose a friend or two along the way. That’s part of the cost of discipleship…which brings us back to those comfortable words.

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

Taking just a minute here…Imagine for a moment what troubles you? What makes you uncertain?

Now think of what it feels like to have someone be with you in that place of discomfort and fear. A friend or a loved one who listens attentively and stays with you in that place.

Now…imagine for a moment another person…someone who is a stranger to you. Are they feeling troubled? Do they feel anxious? As you listen to them…what are they telling you?

Ask yourself: what might I do to make their burden a little bit lighter?

This is where the Spirit of God is meeting us in this time. When we can find fellowship and kinship with another…when we can hear in their experiences echoes of our own…we come closer to living out our faith as Christians to be the true friend to another child of God.

The tasks and the difficulties before us…our race relations or COVID-19…are no less weighty…but we are not alone. Jesus is with us. He’s teaching and leading us in how to take care of one another and have compassion even when we meet with resistance. This is what it means to walk the path of Love.

We who have ears to hear, listen.