Give Me that "True" Religion

Photo from Sojourners (sojo.net)

For those unfamiliar with the Episcopal Church, we often begin our services with a hymn, a short prayer (called the Collect for Purity), another short song of praise or "the Gloria" and then the priest offers a prayer out of the Book of Common Prayer that is called "The Collect of the Day." 

The "Collect" (and we pronounce it CALL-ect, not co-LECT) is a prayer that is supposed to set the scene or at least summarize the themes of the Scripture readings we're going to read that morning. These collects are assigned as the "proper prayer" for whatever Sunday we're in this long season of After Pentecost. I have my favorites, and there are those which are just kind of "meh" in my opinion.

But the one for this past Sunday...to be read at the Sunday closest to August 31st (which happened to be Sunday's date)...seemed to call for me to do some teaching. Especially in this time where white Christian Nationalism is on the rise in the country.

See what you think.

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Texts: Collect for Proper 17; Luke 14:1, 7-14

I don’t often find myself guided by the words that are in our collect of the day when I write a sermon.

But there is a phrase that comes up in this one that always grabs my attention.

I should’ve known it was coming because it’s always the one we read right around Labor Day.

At the beginning of our worship… we prayed:

“Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion;”

The first part…”Graft in our hearts the love of your Name” is a play on words found in the First chapter of the Letter of James.

But it’s that second part—“increase in us true religion”—those words always make me pause.

So…I went looking for some explanation…and pulled out my very worn out copy of Marion Hatchett’s “Commentary on the American Prayer Book” which has the extended history behind everything the committee studied and looked at as they created the Book of Common Prayer we now use.

Thomas Cranmer…the Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of King Henry VIII and author of our first two Books of Common Prayer in the middle of the 16^th Century…wrote this collect.

According to Hatchett…this idea of “true religion” was likely Archbishop Cranmer’s reflection on the state of the times in the English Church back in the middle of the 1500s.

Those were bleak and dangerous times of struggles between the Roman Catholic Church with its adherence to the Pope and its beliefs about what happens at the Eucharistic table when the bread and wine are blessed… and Henry VIII’s desire to be the head of his own Protestant Church of England…taking over Catholic Church property as he divorced and killed his wives.

When Henry died…and his sickly son Edward took the throne at 10 years old…Cranmer and others solidified England as a Protestant country.

But when Edward died only about seven years later…and his half-sister Mary became Queen…she not only turned England back to the Roman Catholic Church…she went on the warpath against Protestants…including Cranmer.

There’s a reason she was called “Bloody Mary.”

Cranmer was forced to recant his protestant reformation-minded theology…but then…while in prison…he stiffened his spine and refused to deny his beliefs.

Queen Mary ordered him burned at the stake…and he famously insisted on putting his writing hand first into the fire as a further sign that he was sorry for ever having signed off on recanting Protestantism.

So…for Cranmer…”true religion” was about “church as state politics”….and “who was the more theologically correct Christian” in the struggle for national power.

We have come a long way from burning each other at the stake in Christianity. 

But we still have our own version of churches splitting…and personal prejudices masquerading as church doctrine…and pursing earthly…nationalistic goals…

 All in the name of “true religion.”

None of it seeming to pay attention to the actual teachings of Jesus…our Lord and Savior who shunned such power.

For Jesus…what makes any religion really “true” is whether we are treating creation…from the earth and the sea and the animals all the way up to our fellow human beings…as the beloved of God that we all are.

That’s what we’re hearing in this morning’s Gospel.

Now…once again…the reading we’ve heard is not complete.

The diviners of the lectionary have left out a portion of the scene.

So let’s fill in some blanks.

First thing to know is that before Jesus shows up to a sabbath meal at the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees…a group of Pharisees went to Jesus to warn him that he faced serious danger from Herod if he went into Jerusalem.

I think it’s important to mention that because too often…we tend to see the Pharisees as “the bad guys.”

And like so many groups of people…they weren’t all bad.

Jesus encounters the Pharisees so much because they were the predominant Jewish group at the time that the Gospels were written.

In this case… there was this group that worried about Jesus and what was going to happen to him if he took on the Roman power structure.

Jesus isn’t deterred by this news.

He says some sassy things about Herod being a fox…and then laments over Jerusalem…which was the center of Jewish worship that had been so corrupted by Rome.

As he’s entering the house of the leader…he sees a man who has terribly swollen legs…dropsy or edema.

There all these Pharisees and lawyers at the house…so Jesus asks if it’s lawful to cure on the sabbath?

They don’t say anything…but Jesus does.

He heals the man and sends him on his way.

And then he looks around at the group and wants to know if one of their children or an ox fell into a well on the sabbath…would they not rescue them?

Still…they all look at him without answering.

We might imagine Jesus shaking his head at their silence as he goes inside for the sabbath meal.

Once inside…he sees that the guests of the Pharisee leader are taking all the choice seats.

Still fresh in his head that he just saw this same group standing by silently as they saw a man suffering on the sabbath…Jesus decides to do a little schooling.

And that’s where we come back to our Gospel reading…with this parable about where to sit at a wedding banquet.

The custom in ancient Palestine for a wedding was that men reclined on couches…with the couch in the center being the place of honor.

The place of honor was reserved for those with wealth and status.

If someone of a lesser station took a seat too close to the center and someone with more privilege were to show up…the lesser man would have to move…and it would be an embarrassing faux pas.

So he’s looking at this room of those who have presumed a place of honor…and warns them not to be so sure of their station.

As one commentator notes…this isn’t so much about Jesus giving First Century Miss Manners advice to his audience.

Rather he’s telling them something about the kingdom of God.

That one should not presume a more lofty place in God’s kingdom.

And then he talks about the host…and who should be invited to this meal.

Should it just be those who might be able to turn around and invite the host to equally wonderful spread?

Nope.

Blessed are those who are the forgotten…the easily ignored…like that man with dropsy who Jesus just healed and nobody knew what to say or how to appropriately respond.

Again…this is about the kingdom of God.

We can’t presume that because we have a particular status in society that we are automatically the favored ones of God.

That’s why the whole “prosperity Gospel” business…that God somehow rewards people with lots of money… is a bunch of bunk.

We see throughout Jesus’ ministry…and even here in this Gospel…that God isn’t interested in our economic systems.

God is always and forever looking to expand and widen the circle of inclusion….and is always about siding with those who have nothing to give but themselves…their brokenhearted…worn-out…overworked…and yes…even joyful… selves.  

And God’s commandment to us is to put our efforts into the building up of people…to look for those whom others are rejecting and invite them to the literal…and even the metaphorical…table of God to experience what means to be loved beyond all measure.  

Getting to know the stories of others…meeting and greeting people who aren’t our “kinfolk”…is an important part of that building up process.

The more we know another’s story…their history…and the more we openly swap our stories with one another…the stronger the foundation of community.

Both out in the world and inside the church.

I’ve mentioned before about how in an Education for Ministry seminar…one of the first exercises is sharing our spiritual autobiographies.

I can tell you that so often I would listen to someone else’s story… a person completely different from me in all kinds of ways…and yet as I listened to them talk about their experiences with God…I could hear things that made me think, “Oh, yeah: I get that!” or even a “Wow! You, too?”

Sometimes…one of the most religiously…and maybe even politically…conservative men in one of my groups would come up to me afterward and take me aside to express gratitude about things that I had shared about myself and my journey.

Like me…they could hear in something that I had said a word or a phrase that broke past all the artificial human barriers that keep us divided from one another to understand a simple truth: we’re all children of God…created by God out of Love…for the purposes of Love…with mission to share that Love with others.

Which brings me back to “true religion.”

“True religion” isn’t about holding the right belief for political power.

It isn’t about controlling the earthly levers of government…or even about asserting some kind of Christian supremacy.

“True religion” is about hope.

Hope which is found in the God who is Love.

Hope for a world where we care enough about each other…have enough empathy for those who are the have-nots…that we seek mercy…compassion…and justice for all.

The rest of our collect for this morning asks for God to “nourish us with goodness…and bring forth in us the fruit of good works.”

May we carry that prayer in our hearts as we meet the many challenges of our world.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Called to Hope

 

I love reading the call stories of the Biblical ancestors. I especially love reading them now, in a time where the United States is under the threat of losing democracy to authoritarianism and fascism. 

These stories are the reminders that we are not in some unknown, foreign weird landscape that the world has never seen before. It has. The sadness, for those of us here, is that we are used to reading about this sort of stuff happening in the past, or on some other continent. I know that when I studied German as my foreign language (and therefore was exposed to the history of Germany and the Holocaust) I resented my fellow classmates who acted as if there was something weak or intrisically wrong with the German people that we "exceptional" Americans would never be that bad. 

I knew they were wrong. I knew that human nature was such that people would rather look for scapegoats rather than to face their own failures, or in this case, see that they're regarded as cannon-fodder or-- as Elon Musk referred to the rest of us---NPCs or Non-Player Character, those computer generated "others" in a video game. Nobody likes to feel as if they're worthless. But that is how we're viewed by the tech bro billionaires.

I didn't think I would actually live to see our country fall prey to the same evil that led Germans to put their trust in Hitler, scapegoating Jews and labor unions and other minorities like gypsies and queers, and building camps that becamse killing grounds.

We don't have ovens. Yet.

Again...there is nothing new about any of this. And that includes the response of those who are the marginalized. The thing that kept the Underground Railroad running...and saved the lives of countless others who have faced evil extremists: Hope.

And that was my main message this week. See what you think.

Text: Jer. 1:4-10; Luke 13: 10-17

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Anyone who has ever felt called by God to do something always seems to have the same response.

“Really, God? Are you sure?”

Moses told God, “Listen, God: I’m a stutterer.”

God said: “Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m going to send your brother Aaron with you to talk to Pharaoh.”

Mary…looked at the Angel Gabriel in disbelief when he told her she was pregnant…and she said, “But I’m a young woman. How am I supposed to have a baby?”

And Gabriel said, “Nothing will be impossible with God.”

There’s always some apprehension…a level of confusion…and a good dose of humility when God decides to pick on someone to step out of their ordinary life and take up the cause of the holy.

And in the case of Jeremiah…it was a lot of risk.

We’ll be hearing more bits and pieces from that book over the next several weeks.

But the thing to remember is that he has been tasked with warning people of an impending invasion.

Nobody really likes what he has to say.

Nobody really wants to hear what he has to say.

He’s going to be severely beaten and punished and hated for speaking the words God is going to put into his mouth.

There will be plucking up and pulling down.

Destroying and overthrowing.

His people are going to be living in exile.

So…it shouldn’t surprise us that Jeremiah’s initial reaction to this assignment from God is, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”

A poetic way of saying, “Please God: not me. Go find someone else. Can’t you pick on somebody else for all of this?”

But even in the midst of all the tragedies…and that sense of things falling apart…God also says to Jeremiah that he is going “to build and to plant.”

From the ashes there will be new life.

Because God is not going to give up.

That is one of the most consistent themes in Scripture: in God…there is hope.

We may be ready to throw in the towel… and we may feel overwhelmed.

But thanks be to God—God does not stop the relentless pursuit of us and finding a way forward where there appears not to be one.

We get confirmation of that message in the Gospel reading from this morning.

Here’s a woman…who has clearly been in pain for years.

A “spirit” had crippled her.  

That’s the First Century science that thought any sort of ailment must be because of some kind of “sin” on the part of the sick person.

But looking at this through my eyes as a massage therapist…I think we can read this as her body telling a story of what has been going on inside of her head and her heart.

Depression can do that to a person.

I’ve seen it in my practice.

The weight of the world…troubles at home or at work…can manifest outwardly in a person’s posture.

We hear that this woman has been bent over this way for eighteen years to this woman…eighteen being the numeric value of the Hebrew word “chai” as in “life.”

Life has left her crippled.

Notice that she never asks Jesus for anything.

Yet Jesus sees her…he calls her…and he heals her.

 She stands up straight and tall and bold…and praises God for this gift…instantly becoming a witness to what happens when Love touches the wounded soul.

Of course…then a controversy ensues about healing on the sabbath…and Jesus not only defends his actions.

He shames those who would object by pointing out their hypocrisy….one might even call it their misogyny.

He notes that these naysayers think nothing of doing the work to take care of their donkeys on the sabbath.

But how dare he take care of a woman!

Is she not as important as their donkeys?

And—again—this happened without her saying anything to him or asking him for help.

She may have lost all hope that she would be cured.

But God saw her pain…and in that healing…God restored her hope.

And that’s what we’re asked to do: maintain hope…in the face of trouble and difficulty.

That’s hard work.

Every day seems like another bad news day in America with masked federal agents and civil rights getting trampled on.

In fact…one of my friends…a priest at an Episcopal church in the northwest part of DC…posted on Facebook last Sunday that he had to cancel his service that morning.

The members of his congregation…many of them Latino… were too afraid to leave their homes.

A number of us offered our love and support to him in having to make such a difficult decision.

My hope is that he’s able to hold church this morning…so he can offer love and support to his people who are so scared.

It’s hard to hang on to hope in moments like now.

But hope is that lifeline that’s thrown to us so we can weather through the difficulties and sadness and anxiety and fears.

I heard a wonderful quote this past week during my morning prayer time that I think captures the importance of hope as we live into this moment.

It’s from an essay called “The Small Work in the Great Work” by the Reverend Victoria Safford.

She was reflecting on the resilience of those early pioneers of the gay equal rights movement.

Safford writes:

“Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope. Not the prudent gates of optimism which are somewhat narrower.

Nor the stalwart boring gates of common sense.

Nor the strident gates of self-righteousness which creek on shrill and angry hinges.

Nor the cheerful flimsy garden gate of ‘everything’s gonna be alright.’

But a very different, sometimes very lonely place.

The place of truth-telling about our own soul…first of all… and its condition.

The place of resistance and defiance.

The piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is…as it could be…as it might be…as it will be.

The place from which you glimpse not only struggle…but joy in the struggle.

And we stand there beckoning…calling…telling people what we are seeing…asking people what they see.”

Like Jeremiah…we are being called to be witnesses to those around us…to name those things that are not good…and commit to the building and the planting when the time comes.

We’re being called to speak to what we are seeing…listen to what others are seeing…and together work to keep those mighty oak doors of hope open for all.

We can do this…with God’s help.

God’s promise to the prophets of old…to the disciples of then and now…is to give us the words to speak when we must…and to help us stand up tall when we are feeling broken.

Trust in that promise…and may the hope of God give us that joy…peace and quiet confidence that we need to meet the moment we’re living in now.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

Division and Fiery Jesus

 

DEA agents at the Lincoln Memorial (Getty Images/Rolling Stone)

The clash between what's happening in culture and what the lectionary presents us to wrestle with continues to heat up. This time it the Gospel of Luke and Jesus's "baptism of fire" speech.

Honestly, in light of things happening in the country with a hostile takeover and occupation of Washington, DC, by our own federal government, and word that there is a case going to the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the same-sex marriage decision of 2015, this Gospel felt a little too "present day." 

I also had a week of providing a pastoral presence in the midst of crisis with folks not associated with the church. 

Division was definitely front and center. 

And the more I thought about it...the sense of division and separation that Jesus talked about made more sense when I considered what happens when Love presents itself. It is not always welcomed. 

It also made me recall a story I had read about one of my Episcopal heroes, Jonathan Myrick Daniels, the seminarian killed during the civil rights movement in 1965. 

All of it came together to create this sermon.

See what you think.

Luke 12:49-56

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For a number of years…I was a student…and a co-mentor…and finally a mentor of an Education for Ministry group…or EfM for short.

For those unfamiliar with EfM…it’s a four-year education program designed by the Episcopal seminary at Sewanee to allow those interested to do a deeper dive into the Bible…church history…and theological concepts.

Like going to school…an EfM group meets once a week for a couple of hours over  a nine-month period.

One of the hallmarks of the program is that everyone must present a spiritual autobiography at the beginning of the year….sharing the ways and times that they’ve felt God show up in their lives…or when they’ve felt God decidedly silent and absent.

And every year that I heard the same complaint:

Why do I have to do this again? I did it last year!

And my consistent response: well…you’ve had another whole year of walking this journey; hence you’ve had time to pick up new insights on old experiences while gaining more knowledge of your relationship with God along the way.

The same can be said of what happens when we encounter Scripture.

Our lectionary calendar really doesn’t change all that much. We have the same readings assigned for a particular Sunday.

The church calendar is set up in a three-year rotation…this being Year C where our emphasis is on the Luke Gospel.

And so every three years…about this time…this reading from Luke comes along…giving us a chance to hear it…read it…mark it…learn it…and inwardly digest it…so that we might move a little closer to God through Jesus.

And I might have looked at this reading in the past and thought, “Oh, man! After weeks and weeks of talking about Jesus as this loving…caring…nurturing man…who is this guy who wants to break up families…and baptism of fire?!”

This reading may feel particularly intense right now.

There’s no shortage of news about our divisions in this country.

We now have the National Guard patrolling northwest neighborhoods of Washington DC.

A Kentucky clerk of court is taking her ten-year-old grudge over same-sex marriage to the U.S. Supreme Court.

With all that is happening in the world…we probably are looking for a Jesus who is that Prince of Peace…rather than one who is coming with balls of fire!

Yet…fiery Jesus is exactly the Jesus for this time…and for us to consider today.

Following Jesus…really paying attention to his teachings…and living into our baptism into Christ…will put us at odds with some of those closest to us.

Especially those people in our lives who are conditioned to  accept the belief that wielding power-over others is better than finding power-with others.

It will put us out of step with the folks who have been told that God is a vengeful mean God…a stern father-figure waiting to wrap us on the knuckles.

Following Jesus…being faithful to Love…standing up for those who are the powerless…will make some people uncomfortable.

I know some have already had a taste of this in their own families.

Our toxic and divisive politics in this country have made Thanksgiving dinners a lot more stressful…if not impossible for some households.

Jesus was aware that that this would happen.

His brand of Love was going to challenge the status quo…the people who had power…and those who had figured out how to fly under the radar of the Roman Empire.

We might say that Jesus was a disrupter…a person who spoke truth to power…putting his words and eventually his body on the line for the purposes of showing the world a better way…a loving way of being.

The fire he so desired to kindle in the hearts of everyone was to take the faithful risk to embrace empathy…mercy…and get them to walk humbly with God.

He also knows the fragility of those who are the tyrants and bullies.

He understands that they believe violence is the only way to challenge a system.

But Jesus knows that Love…reckless and relentless Love…is not only disarming.

It can be contagious and it will inspire the song of hope in the throats of the weary.

This past week…we marked the 60^th anniversary of the martyrdom of Jonathan Myrick Daniels.

Daniels…like me…was a native of New Hampshire and was a seminarian at Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge Massachusetts at the time that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the march from Selma to Montgomery.

Daniels went to Alabama…and became involved with registering black voters and protesting against Jim Crow laws.

Charles Wohlers posted this entry from Jonathan Daniels’ diary on his satucket lectionary page.  

Daniels wrote about an incident during one of the freedom marches in Selma:

“After a week-long, rain-soaked vigil, we still stood face to face with the Selma police.

I stood, for a change, in the front rank, ankle-deep in an enormous puddle.

To my immediate right were high school students, for the most part, and further to the right were a swarm of clergymen. My end of the line surged forward at one point, led by a militant Episcopal priest whose temper (as usual) was at combustion-point.

Thus, I found myself only inches from a young policeman.

The air crackled with tension and open hostility.

Emma Jean, a sophomore in the Negro high school, called my name from behind.

I reached back for her hand to bring her up to the front rank, but she did not see. Again, she asked me to come back.

My determination had become infectiously savage, and I insisted that she come forward--I would not retreat!

Again, I reached for her hand and pulled her forward.

The young policeman spoke:

"You're dragging her through the puddle. You ought to be ashamed for treating a girl like that."

Flushing--I had forgotten the puddle--I snarled something at him about whose-fault-it-really-was, that managed to be both defensive and self-righteous. We matched baleful glances and then both looked away. And then came a moment of shattering internal quiet, in which I felt shame, indeed, and a kind of reluctant love for the young policeman.

I apologized to Emma Jean. And then it occurred to me to apologize to him and to thank him. Though he looked away in contempt--I was not altogether sure I blamed him--I had received a blessing I would not forget.

Before long the kids were singing, "I love ---."

One of my friends asked [the young policeman] for his name.

His name was Charlie.

When we sang for him, he blushed and then smiled in a truly sacramental mixture of embarrassment and pleasure and shyness.

Soon the young policeman looked relaxed, we all lit cigarettes (in a couple of instances, from a common match,) and small groups of kids and policemen clustered to joke or talk cautiously about the situation.

It was thus a shock later to look across the rank at the clergymen and their opposites, who glared across a still unbroken "Wall" in what appeared to be silent hatred. Had I been freely arranging the order for Evening Prayer that night, I think I might have followed the General Confession directly with the General Thanksgiving--or perhaps the Te Deum.”

Love made a connection across a protest line.

The fire within Daniels heart burned bright enough…that he had to face his own selfish actions… made clear to him by his opponent…the young policeman named Charlie.

And out of this intense moment… the flame of Love lit cigarettes…and bridged a divide with a song.

Daniels died later that summer in Hayneville, Alabama when a white Alabama highway man aimed a rifle at his black teenage friend and fellow activist named Ruby Sales.

Daniels pushed Sales out of the way and the shotgun blast to his chest killed him instantly.

Standing up for what is right…challenging the status quo…being a disruptor can come with that sort of high cost.

Jesus knows that cost.

Yet he’s still pumping the bellows in hopes to fire up that Holy Spirit within us.

Not only so that we’ll stand for peace and love and live into our baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being.

But to get us to pay attention to our own self-righteousness…and our own sins of “othering”… the ways we are failing each other…and come back to God.

Because that’s his ultimate mission.

Jesus notes we’re able to figure out when the rain and scorching heat is coming.

Jesus now wants us to figure out how to live and love as God has loved us first.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

Faith Means Taking Risks

 

My faith is getting put to the test every week in this country as more and more outrageous news comes pouring out of Washington, DC. 

And Austin, TX.

And Tallahassee...always.

So I felt fortunate to have heard the "Strict Scrutiny" podcast where they interviewed former SCOTUS clerks who had served with late New Hampshire justice David Souter. As I listened to them reminiscing about him, it felt familiar, soothing and sad. Souter's demeanor and his way of viewing his role as a justice reminded me of my dad...and a brand of conservativism that wasn't destructive and crazy, but was deliberate and worked to find the best answer to pressing issues.

I miss my dad. And I miss a judiciary that behaved more responsibly. I didn't always agree with every ruling. But at least I had a fair shot at thinking they might have done the right thing instead of cringing as the SCOTUS aids and abets the destruction of democratic norms.

I mean, I seriously wonder if we're going to be at a place in the not too distant future where a lawyer stands before the nine justices and starts, "May it please the court, f---k you!" 

Justice Souter died in May at age 85. May he rest in peace and rise in glory. 

And may his approach to justice that helped start this sermon on faith resonate with you. 

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40

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I was recently listening to a podcast where I heard an interview with two women who had clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

During the course of their reflections and remembrances of their former boss… they talked about a commencement address that he had made at Harvard University.

So naturally…I went scouring the internet to find a video of his remarks.

It was an excellent speech about the judiciary…and especially the way in which Souter approached his role as a judge looking at the United States Constitution…and how best to apply the law in any particular case.

Justice Souter talked about one of the greatest fallacies that’s out there when it comes to thinking about the Constitution.

So many of us expect it to be straightforward…and can be read plainly.

For instance…the Constitution makes it very clear that in order to run for the United States Senate…a person must be at least 30 years old.

That’s an absolute…a certainty.

But Souter says so much of the Constitution has competing good things.

There’s a desire for security on the one hand…and liberty on the other…and that’s where he saw the breathing room in the document.

Paying attention…and honoring the different ideals in the Constitution…requires reason…and discernment…and a sense of the real people…not just theoretical ideas… but the actual flesh and blood humanity…that would feel the effects of whatever decision that was rendered by the court.

And while he didn’t use the word…I would say that what he was talking about requires faith.

As our Letter to the Hebrews says:

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Faith requires us to let go of certainty…and live into the true ambiguity of the world.

Faith means that we put our trust in God…this unseen power of Love that surrounds us…that has made a promise to us over and over never to leave us…or abandon us…even in those darkest hours of our souls.

As we see in this anonymous Letter to the Hebrew followers of Jesus…the author cites the many examples of our biblical ancestors who…despite any misgivings or doubts they might have had…still put their trust in God and took risks that might have seemed illogical.

For example…Abraham and Sarah set out on a journey.

They moved away from their familiar land…and were in fact…dwelling as foreigners in a strange place.

They had no guarantee of anything good coming from this.

But acting on faith…they followed God’s lead.

Sarah…who was an old woman…didn’t think it was possible for her to have a child.

And yet…she bore Isaac.

Isaac…who would miraculously…and fortunately…be spared from getting sacrificed by his father.

Because he survived that terror…Isaac would marry Rebecca…who would bear and raise twins…one of whom was Jacob.

Jacob would then become Israel…and the story goes on from there.

All of this done in the uncomfortable space of not knowing…no absolutes…. only hope in the assured promise that God would be with them.  

Faith requires us to allow God to lead us…and that can be terrifying for the human mind that so desperately wants to be in control.

It’s hard to let go and let God when you have bills to pay…or when you’re not feeling well in your body.

To live into a life of faith is to be willing to take risks.

I think that’s why it’s important for us to hear what Jesus is saying in this morning’s Gospel.

We can’t always be 100-percent sure of what’s coming next…like the owner of the house knowing what time the robber is going to show up to ransack the place.

But even so…we also can’t live in fear…and put multiple locks on our doors…or as the parable said last week…build a bigger barn so we can hoard away all our ‘stuff.’

Because “stuff” isn’t what matters to God.

What matters to God is us…and how we care for the creatures of God.

And we must be prepared to follow…to take the risk of answering the call that God places on us.

That’s why we gather here…Sunday after Sunday.

Our prayers…our rituals…are not the “thing”…but they are the means by which we continue to open ourselves up and invite God to do the work in us to prepare us for the greater acts that we must do out in the world.

How we treat our loved ones and our friends on a day-to-day basis.

 

The way we interact with our colleagues at work or at school.

The willingness to go into those places that take us out of our comfort zone…and do the things we do to bring about a more just society.

We’re living in a time of turmoil…and fear…with players who are intentionally and deliberately undermining our sense of a shared common humanity.

They are provocateurs of our basest instincts…and preying on our most atavistic fears…leading us into “us” vs. “them” camps.

And while this all may feel like some fresh new hell for us…sadly it is not.

As our wise writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes says:

“There is nothing new under the sun.” (Eccl. 1:9)

This is not anything God…or Jesus…or the Holy Spirit haven’t seen and experienced before.

The cruelty inflicted on immigrants…the whipping up of worries about transpeople…and the pain and destruction of war from Ukraine to Gaza.

The Scapegoating.

Betrayals.

Violence.

We need only remember the crucifixion to know that Jesus is keenly aware of how evil manifests in the human heart.

But we also look to that same cross and know that Jesus shows us that sin and death did not defeat goodness and love.

In all of it…our Holy Trinity is still with us…working in us and through us…even with tears and sighs too deep for words.

This is how keeping the faith…the hope in those things that are unseen…can helps us.

If we can remember that God is never far from us in our struggles…it can be like an extra battery charge when we feel our energy getting drained by the world around us.

Faith means to take the risk of living into Love in a world that doesn’t reward us for caring about those that the powers-that-be would have us despise and call “other.”

But this is the risk God is commanding us to take with the promise that we are trotting the   path of our biblical ancestors.

And we are never walking this path alone.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

 

"God's Dream for Us" Feast of the Transfiguration

 

It's not every day that a major feast of the church falls on a Wednesday. But when it does...I figure: hey, let's have church tonight. 

Being bivocational and very part-time in this vocation limits my ability to do a lot of the "things" they told us we'd be doing when we were in seminary. But I do love sharing the faith, and especially the key elements of the Christ story. And so if the holiday happens to be at the time I would normally be in Valdosta....bring a potluck dish for afterward and let's gather! 

Luke 9: 28-36

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Our Gospel presents the human Jesus at a critical moment.

He’s steeped in prayer.

Suddenly he becomes bright and glowing.

This light is enough to catch the attention of his sleepy-eyed friends.

And what they saw were the two giants of Judaism…Moses and Elijah…on either side of Jesus speaking to him.

Moses…the one who brought the Torah to his people…and Elijah…the prophet who lived and breathed and demonstrated Torah in action.

The symbol of the Law and the Prophets.

We don’t know what these two were saying to Jesus.

Perhaps this appearance was the answer to Jesus’ prayer up there on the mountain.

Maybe Jesus was seeking the strength to carry on in the mission that had been laid upon him when he came out of Jordan at his baptism.

Or when he read the prophetic words of Isaiah in the temple.

It’s possible he was seeking a clearer sense of what his purpose was on earth.

Moses would know and understand the struggle to lead people and guide them to stick close to God when there were so many temptations not to do so.

Maybe Elijah was there to give him the reassurance that he must make the trip to Jerusalem…even though it was not going to go well.

Elijah knew what it meant to be rejected!

Sometimes…we get so caught up in emphasizing Jesus as part of the Godhead that we forget he was not play acting at being human; he was human.

And his humanness shows up at different times in the biblical stories.

I think this is one of those times where the human Jesus…after so much teaching and healing…needed a little help from his friends.

And of course…this moment on the mountain top…doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

In the ten verses before our Gospel…Jesus is again praying…alone. He then goes to his disciples and asks,

“Who do the crowds say that I am?” (Lk. 9:18c).

Like you and me…Jesus knows fear.

He’s undergone testing in the wilderness and understands that he’s on a mission.

He also knows that this calling is leading him into the mouth of a roaring lion called the Roman Empire.

And he knows that he’s going to pay a price for that.

Do the people get it? Do they know?

His followers give him various answers to this question—“Oh, some think you’re John the Baptist, others say your Elijah, maybe one of the other prophets”

Everyone with their ear to the ground is playing a guessing game about him.

But Peter is the one who blurts out “You’re the Messiah of God!”

You—Jesus—you’re the one who is going to take the fight to the Roman Empire and save the Jewish people from this oppressive regime.

This is what Jesus has in his head and what’s weighing on his heart as he takes Peter along with James and John to the mountain top about a week after this conversation.

And he prays.

And God comes to him…with Moses and Elijah…to illuminate his mind…and to command to his friends:

“This one…this Jesus before you…he is my Chosen One. Listen to him”

There’s quiet. And as the cloud lifts to the astonishment of Peter and the others…the only one before them…the chosen one…is Jesus.

They’ve now witnessed something breathtaking. The scales have fallen from their eyes and they’ve seen that this teacher who they’ve been following is embodying something more than just rabbinic wisdom. This is God’s son.

Not only have they seen Jesus changed. They’ve been changed because they have been witnesses to this change.

This is a lot to process.

Life is different now for all of them.

For Jesus…this mountain top moment is the final sharpening and shaping of who he is and what he must do.

Because… fifteen verses later in this chapter of Luke…we will hear that “the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:51)

I think this feeling of groundbreaking…and life-changing shifts in the world…is something we all can relate to.

Those of us who have lived for any significant amount of time have seen lots of world-changing events.

We’ve likely felt those moments where we bear witness to something and know that this is so big…nothing will be the same.

I like history.

In my home office…I have calendar that focuses on big moments from our past.

And on this particular day…as we are celebrating the Feast of the Transfiguration…we are also marking sixty years since the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

Talk about a moment of illuminating the conscience of the nation.

Despite amendments made to the Constitution at the end of the Civil War granting black men the right to vote…several Southern states found ways to disenfranchise blacks.

They’d make up all kinds of trials and tests.

Hopeful black registrants would be asked to recite the U.S. Constitution.

Clerks of Court would require them to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar.

What finally moved President Johnson to act on behalf of black voting rights were the images of peaceful protestors marching from Selma to Montgomery in March 19-65.

When white police attacked the black marchers with clubs and dogs on the Edmund Pettus Bridge…that was enough.

About a week after the incident…Johnson spoke before a joint session of Congress and demanded they pass voting rights legislation…and within four months…both chambers overwhelmingly adopted the Voting Rights Act.

The legislation banned the use of literacy tests….provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the non-white population had registered to vote… and authorized the U.S. attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local elections.

While it didn’t solve all the problems of racism in America…it was a momentous occasion that shined a new light on the abuses occurring…and brought more people into participating in democracy.

And it worked.

In Mississippi…in 19-64…blacks made up six percent of the voting population.

Five years later…by 19-69…it was 59-percent.

The tragic violence of the March to Selma caused a new light to shine in the country that moved us forward.

A light that should and must be passed on from one generation to the next…shared from parent to child…so that all will be lit up with that sense of self-worth…knowing that they have a stake in the larger world.

That is the struggle we’re in now…to keep the light of love…life…and liberty shining.

That is the dream of God…that we learn to live in Love with one another and all of God’s creation….granting everyone respect and dignity.

Because Love is the source of life and liberty.

May we continue to work toward transforming this world from God’s nightmare into God’s dream.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.