The Light that Shines in Darkness

During the winter months in the northern hemisphere, when we are experiencing winter and long nights and short days, light becomes an important symbol synonomous with hope. I am keenly aware that many are sitting on pins and needles right now because we know that the incoming presidential administration is hell-bent (and I do mean hell) on revenge and retribution because there were those people who stood in the way of grift and greed. There are presidential advisors who harbor hatred toward foreigners, LGBTQ+ people, and anyone who is seen as "non-Christian" (although their version of Christianity is a far cry from the Jesus of the Gospels and Epistles). 

With these thoughts in mind...I wrote this sermon based on the opening of John's Gospel. See what you think.

Text: John 1:1-18

(n.b. we learned of former president and Georgia favorite son Jimmy Carter's death later in the afternoon. May the light he lit in the hearts of many remaining burning and not allow the darkness to overcome it.)

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It’s not every year that the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah lands on our holiday of Christmas.

In fact…the last time that happened was almost 20 years ago…in 2005.

It will happen again in 2035.

Hanukkah is one of those many moveable feasts…and is dependent on the solar and lunar cycles…and not our Gregorian calendar; so all of the Jewish holidays tend to fall within a date range.

Since my wife converted to Judaism…we have had double celebrations in our house…marking both Christmas and Hanukkah.

Chrismakkuh is a regular happening in our home.  

The main ritual of Hanukkah is the lighting of the menorah.

The holiday celebrates a bloody victory in the second century BCE over an oppressive Greek regime that had tried to force the Jews to adopt pagan beliefs.

When the Jews recaptured the Temple in Jerusalem, they found only one vial of oil to light the menorah…but miraculously…that vial kept the eight lights burning until they were able to get more to consecrate.

We light one candle…called the shamash or “helper” …which is then used to light the others.

We say a prayer as we hold the shamash:

“Blessed are you, Adonai, our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to kindle the Hanukkah light.”

And then we light the candles…and open the window blinds across from our fireplace mantle so that the light might shine out into the world.

With each night…with each candle…the light grows…piercing the darkness.

Similar to our Advent wreath…we can think of the light being passed…one candle to another…as we grow that light for the world.

Humans need light in order to see their way through the dark.

We aren’t like cats with their large corneas and pupils that allow them to see enough to hunt prey at night.

And so it makes sense that when our evangelist John talks about the inbreaking of God into the world…the birth of Jesus…he uses the language of light.

If Luke is the Rogers and Hammerstein of the Bible…John is the Poet Laureate.

Besides the apostle Paul…John is one of the biggest contributors to the writings of the New Testament.

He is the only apostle of the original twelve to have lived a long life and died of old age instead of martyrdom or in the case of Judas…suicide.

His Gospel was the last of the four in our canon…and the one that makes the strongest case for his community of followers in 100 CE that Jesus was God incarnate.

His opening prologue that we heard this morning is a lyrical remix of the First Creation story from the Book of Genesis.

Instead of “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…” we learn that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

And this Word came down and took on human flesh to live and dwell with us… as one of us.

This Word will grow from a tiny infant…totally dependent on human parents to raise him…filled with Holy Spirit from his first breath…and committed to a mission of Love that would challenge the bullies and tyrants of his day.

John tells us this Word is the Light of the World.

This light represents life.

In this case…the life is very specifically Jesus.

This is John’s way of telling the same birth story we heard on Christmas Eve from Luke.

It’s a reminder for those of us who gather to worship here…

That we, too, are incorporated into this light…and life.

Each time we profess our faith…every time we come to this altar to receive the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ… we are becoming one with this light and life.

We are re-ignited with that light of Christ…that light of God…within us…to go back out into the world…and be like that shamash on the menorah…passing our light to others.

We…. as people who put our faith and trust in God…have lives and light that are important to God no matter what we might think of ourselves or what others may have said or done to try to diminish our light.

As long as we stick with that source of the Great Light that has come into the world… we can withstand and shine through any darkness that tries to snuff it out.

That theme of “light” is an important one for John.

As I’ve said…he has a number of writings in the New Testament…including three relatively short letters written to his community.

The First Letter of John…which actually reads more like a sermon.. has a lot to say about this idea of “light.”

Very early on …John writes…

“God is Light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness…we lie and do not do what is true, but if we walk in the light as he himself is the light, we have fellowship with one another.”

So what does this mean for us…walking in the light?

John wants us to think about the way we treat each other.

Further into that same letter…John says we can’t claim to love God…who we have not seen…while we hate other people…the very people who we do see.  

We can’t say we’re following Jesus…walking in “the light”…while we add hardships to others…figuratively flipping off the light switch on them and leaving them hopelessly in the dark.

For us to “walk in the light” we have to be willing to be changed…at the heart level.

Because when we open our hearts to God…we are saying “yes” to allowing God to strike the match and light the wick…or put in the new lightbulb…pick your metaphor...and accept the values of Jesus.

And that assignment?

We work to free the captives…liberate people from their oppression…love people without coercion or demands.

When we decide to live into this way of Love it will change us…and our whole outlook.

And it will expand us in ways that are loving…and life-affirming…and in that process liberating for us and for others.

We aren’t going to be perfect at doing that all the time.

There’s a reason we say that Confession of Sin every week.

But when we find ourselves becoming uncaring or callous…we are invited to once again…add a little more oil to our inner lamp and shine on and meet and greet one another with love.

Because God loved us first…from the start.

Why else would the Word that was with God and is God have taken the risk of becoming a human baby…gone through the trouble of healing, teaching and preaching, and dying at the hands of an unjust system… if not for the enormous love for us?

And that way of love…that light…which came into the world is meant to be passed on…so that no darkness can take it away.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

Peace, please

 

 

One of the things I am aware of serving at St. Barnabas is that we are the closest Episcopal Church to Moody Air Force Base; hence, when members of the Air Force look for an Episcopal Church, we're the ones they're most likely to find first.

With the war ragining in Gaza, one of our members was deployed in late October for an undetermined amount of time. The deployment left all of us a little nervous. And we were especially concerned for the kids. 

Thankfully...he made it back...and just in time to help us light the candle for Peace on the Advent Wreath. 

Texts: Is. 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8

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Abandonment has got to be one of the loneliest and most fear-filled feelings in the world.

The ache of wondering if you’ve been forgotten…or worse…intentionally left behind to fend for yourself in an unfamiliar place.

Maybe some of us remember a time when we were little kids and we’d have gone shopping with mom.

Mom was on a mission to get what she needs.

But we’d become enthralled with the toys strategically placed at kid eye-level.

Mom…focused and intent on getting in and out of the store…would go about her business.

She needs to get these items.

She’s not there for trinkets and plastic and sparkly things.

So she moves on with finding the essentials….while we’d still be fixated on the bright shiny object.

Mom…her shopping…was of little interest or consequence.

Until we became aware that mom was no longer with us.  

Separated…and mom nowhere sight…we’d start to panic.

We’d look down this aisle…over here and over there. Nothing. Our brains would start to pester us with questions:

Where did she go? Why did she leave me? Where am I?

And then we’d hear a voice calling out our name.

The store manager on the loudspeaker would be summoning us to the front of the store to be reunited with mom…who…by the way…was just as panicked and probably fearing the worst circumstances…realizing she’d lost her focus on us.

That’s the sort of feeling of “abandonment” I’m talking about and on a small scale…caused by a momentary lapse in attention.

But imagine that same sense of abandonment on a bigger scale.

The despair that arises when we’re forced into a situation we’re in some place foreign…with no idea when or if we’ll ever get home.

That’s the wilderness…and it can feel a little like abandonment.

We have no sense of up or down…left or right.

There’s no compass to help guide our feet in the direction of the town.

It’s unknown territory.

That’s the situation of the people Isaiah is speaking to in our first reading.

The Israelites had be invaded by the Babylonian Empire. Their best minds and tradespeople had been captured and taken away to a foreign land.

Those left behind in the ruins were like a rudderless ship.

This was the wilderness…another time when the people of Israel mourned for losses…and the exiles wondered if they’d ever see their native land again.

Now… the prophet is announcing the good news that those who had been scattered can return home.

Persia and King Cyrus had defeated the Babylonians.

The Israelites who had been exiled can return!

All is well now…

” Comfort o comfort my poor beleaguered and suffering people.

You are saved. God is with you!”

We can hear in this passage an exchange of voices…the one announcing to prepare the way! Make a straight path in this wilderness!

There’s dialogue of exuberance:

 “Cry out!” says a voice.

“What should I cry?” asks the prophet.

The cry is to be a proclamation:

humans are mortal…and like flowers and grass they fade away…but God endures forever.

We can get a sense of this as a moment of such joyousness.

It’s like listening to the end of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, where he thundered out “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty we’re free at last!”

This is the same declaration we’re hearing in the Gospel from that wild and hotheaded character John the Baptizer.

Like the prophet Isaiah…John knows that he is not the almighty.

His baptism is not like the one that is coming to the people.

He knows that the people are about to receive a baptism that will set them free once and for all.

Wait and see!

“You who are feeling hopeless...lost…abandoned…get ready! Freedom is coming!”

These messages of freedom…of merciful release…of return from that place of feeling lost and abandoned carry a particularly urgent tone in our world today.

During that brief period of the ceasefire in the Middle East…the world could sigh with some relief as groups of hostages…particularly young children…were freed from underground tunnels in Gaza.

At the same time…Israel freed several Palestinians…a number of them teenagers…who they had detained for minor and sometimes no offenses.

There were signs of celebration as families were reunited.

But sadly…the war rages on.

The fate of the remaining hostages is unknown.

Families of those who have been released…both those being held hostage by Hamas and some of the Palestinian prisoners…are revealing stories of mistreatment and abuse since this conflict began on October 7th.

All of this has spilled over into hostilities in this country.

Arab and Palestinian Americans as well as Jewish citizens are reporting an increase in harassment and abuse.

We’ve heard reports of people getting shot, some have been stabbed and beaten all because they wore the Palestinian scarf…the black and white checkered kufiyah…or the Jewish head covering…the kippah.

Thursday night was the beginning of Hanukkah…an eight-day celebration in which Jews remember another time when they were attacked and overcame adversity…even having enough oil to keep their candles lit.

Sadly…some have felt they can’t safely engage in this candle lighting practice because of the anger and backlash for the war in Gaza.

In fact…my state representative sent out a plea to non-Jews in her district to light a menorah as a way of showing solidarity with their neighbors and allow them to mark their holiday tradition without fear.

(Not a problem in my household since we are an interfaith couple).

It makes sense then that on this second Sunday of Advent…we’ve lit a candle for peace.

Because we could stand to have more peace… less war… less violence… occupying our every day lives in this world.

None of us here may be able to stop to the geopolitical conflicts of the world…in the Middle East…Europe or Africa.

The one thing we CAN do is to commit to asking for God’s guidance to lead us to be peace makers in our families and our communities.

We can take this time of Advent to consider the ways we engage with those around us that might influence others toward a more peaceful coexistence.

Like the ripples on water when you drop a stone into the middle of a pond…our actions and behaviors can affect others to model and change their behavior.

 The words we choose when we’re in conflict with someone can make a difference in resolving a dispute.

Taking a breath before responding in anger or frustration with our colleagues and loved ones…may save a relationship.

Such actions may seem small…but they do add up.

And in this time when people seem to feel free to say the most hateful things online…and in person…to one another…we have an opportunity and a covenant to keep building people up and not tearing them to shreds.

Isaiah was proclaiming a time of God’s salvation coming to a hurting and scattered people.

John was declaring God’s presence was not far from a disillusioned and depressed people.

Now it’s our turn to speak words of comfort to our friends and neighbors as we pray…

“Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

 

Christ the King: A Sermon for the Last Sunday After Pentecost Year A

 

At long last, we've reached the end of this very long season of "After Pentecost." Ready or not, Advent is coming...and that means new projects to run alongside that idea that we're supporsed to be "waiting with anticipation" the coming of Christ. Seems the way of the church is to get as busy as possible before Jesus shows up!! 

I'm taking on a fun, and ambitious, project of doing a staged reading of the Gospel of Mark. The script is almost 90 pages, meaning that this will probably take anywhere from 90-100 minutes to do this reading. I'm hoping we'll get an audience for it. It's slated to go up on Saturday, February 10th. So we'll see what happens.

OK...back to today. I found myself this year bothered by the idea of "Christ the KING." It isn't the Christ part that was troubling; I'm really cool with the idea of Jesus being the head of things. 

It's this "King" business which was troubling. There are a lot of political leaders these days who think that they are the King of the country, or the city, or the state. The Matthew Gospel has the king deciding who are sheep and who are goats...something that...again...our political leaders have engaged in this behavior way too much lately. 

So most of this sermon was really me wrestling with these questions...and taking the congregation on a ride with me. See what you think.

Texts: Ephesians 1: 15-23; Matthew 25: 31-46

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Good morning! And welcome to the Last Sunday After Pentecost…also known as Christ the King Sunday.

It’s odd to call this Christ the King Sunday.

One could argue that in any Christian Church…Christ ought to be King every Sunday.

And it was relatively recent history that this last Sunday following Pentecost became Christ the King Sunday.

This whole idea started in 1925 with Pope Pius XI.

At the end of World War I…there was growing secularism in Europe and fascism was beginning to take root.

The Pope decided the best way to combat these dual pressures on the church was to declare…emphatically…that Christ is King and to mark a particular Sunday…the last one in October right before All Saints’ Day… as Christ the King Sunday.

In 19-69…Pope Paul VI thought the Last Sunday After Pentecost…and right before Advent… was the better placement for the celebration of Jesus as Lord of Lords and King of Kings.

And so that’s where we are today.

This celebration of Christ the King does raise some interesting questions for us in our time...particularly when we think about that whole history of how this day came to be a special day on the church calendar.

Just as in the era of the 1920s…we here in the 2020s are living at a time when more and more people are identifying as “Nones.”

That’s N-O-N-E-S.

They’re not interested in Christianity or any religious group.

In this country and around the world…our politics are skewing in the direction of authoritarianism…a system which centralizes power to a few and demands loyalty to an ethic that runs counter to that of a God of Love and Prince of Peace.

Perhaps we need to make a renewal of our commitment to this idea of Christ as King.

But then that poses another problem.

We live in a pluralistic society…one where we must contend with the idea that not all people who profess a faith in God also understand Jesus as the Son of God…let alone believe in a God who comes to us as the Holy Spirit, too.

We have a very particular understanding of who Jesus is.

And our thoughts on Jesus are not the same as our fellow descendants from our Biblical ancestor Abraham.

And then there are Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans: oh, my! They too live in our society…and they worship in a faith that calls them to a higher good for all creation.

It might then seem a bit arrogant for us to assert Christ as King.

Here’s the good news: we don’t have to diminish Jesus or shy away from our belief in Jesus as Christ the King.

We can have our beliefs about Christ as King and love and accept our siblings of other traditions or no-traditions at all.

Because they’re not excluded from the kingdom of God in Christ…even if they don’t profess Jesus as the Son of God.

One of the early church fathers…Irenaeus… found this hope for inclusion of all in the Letter to the Ephesians that we heard this morning.

For Irenaeus… this passage reiterates the idea that Jesus’ life, ministry, and death was in fact for all of humanity…and not just an exclusive few believers.

Jesus came into the world to be a Second Adam… restoring all people to the right relationship with God that was lost in the Garden of Eden.

The twentieth century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer also emphasized that point. In his “Letters and Papers from Prison,” Bonhoeffer says that Christ wasn’t just a person; he was the person who represents all of humanity…no divisions between people. He is all people…and came as a savior for all of the world.

Karl Rahner…another twentieth century Jesuit priest and theologian…put forward an even more radical and controversial theory.

Rahner suggested that people who never heard the Gospel are “anonymous Christians”…having benefitted from Christ without even knowing it. His theory was highly influential on the Roman Catholic Church’s Vatican II statement. The Roman Church had to struggle with its antisemitism following World War II and the Holocaust. Rahner’s theory helped them find their way toward issuing an apology.

All this sounds fantastic, right?

It keeps asserting that Christ is King.

But then what about this passage from Matthew’s Gospel?

Aren’t some people sheep and others goats?

Doesn’t this sound like a more exclusive…only Christians get eternal life…talk?

I suppose one could read it that way…. if we believe that only Christians do the clothing of people, feeding them, offering them water when they’re thirsty, being kind to strangers, visiting the sick and those in prison.

But we know that’s not true.

In fact, we know plenty of people who call themselves “Christian” who not only don’t do these things; they have invested more time and energy in attacking fellow followers of Christ.

We can see that playing out right now with our siblings in the Methodist church.

And even the Southern Baptist Convention has turned on some of its own.  

The English hymnwriter and minister Samuel John Stone captured this well with these words in the old standard “The Church’s One Foundation”:

“Though with a scornful wonder men see her sore oppressed

By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.”

Thank goodness Stone completes that stanza with “soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song!”

When we sit in judgment of each other…deciding who is a sheep and who is a goat…we’re putting ourselves in that seat at the right hand of God…and making ourselves King or Queen of the universe.

I think if we are honest with ourselves…we’re all bouncing back and forth between being a sheep and being a goat.

There are days when we get it all right… and others where we fall short of this expectation that we will care for the least and lowest among us…either out of ignorance or exhaustion or both.

What I think is so telling about this vision of the kingdom is that those who Jesus declares as “righteous” and even those who are “unrighteous” are totally taken off-guard.

Both groups are like, “Huh? When did I do all that?” or “We never saw you in need? When did we miss that?”

The message seems to be that we can’t know which group we’re in.

Nor should we be so quick to assume which camp we belong to.

What we can do is take in the lessons Jesus teaches through the Gospels…trust in the power of God’s love…and then do our best to emulate Christ…both in our giving and receiving.

By making that our priority…and our ethic of living…we establish Christ as the King of our hearts and minds.

In that way we can only hope for a world where God’s kingdom will not only come on earth as it is in heaven…but will be seen and experienced through us.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

The Greatest Commandment at a Time of Greatest Need

This has been another terrible week in the world. Not only are things escalating in the war between Israel and Hamas, I was shocked and deeply saddened when I opened Facebook about 9:30pm on Wednesday and saw a message from one of my friends marking them "safe" from the mass shooting in Lewiston, ME. 

Lewiston is not a huge metropolitan area. By Florida standards, it might be considered a large town or a very small city. The population, roughly 36,000 people, is one of those places where you know your neighbors in ways that most urban areas don't. 

To have 18 people killed...and more than a dozen wounded? My New England heart felt the injury. 

The next day...listening to the news was an exercise in collective grieving. And it was those thoughts that I had to sit down and start writing my sermon for the 22nd Sunday After Pentecost. 

Text: Matthew 22:34-46

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“The world is losing its humanity.”

I heard that statement on the radio this week.

Philippe Lazzarini said it.

He’s the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. He was speaking of the humanitarian crisis growing in Gaza…a result of Israel’s retaliation for the brutal and horrific attack unleashed on them by Hamas a few weeks ago.

In that same radio hour that I heard Lazzarini’s interview…I also listened with a heavy heart to a shell-shocked and saddened reporter in Maine.

The otherwise small and quiet city of Lewiston has joined the list of places in America reeling from a mass shooting event.

No one knows why it happened.

The gunman was found dead after a massive manhunt.

A report on the CBS Evening News suggested that this man…who was an Army reservist suffering from mental health issues… may have become enraged over a breakup with his girlfriend.

But that’s only speculation…as people try to make sense of a senseless act of violence.

“The world is losing its humanity.”

I thought about this comment…and the news of the week… as I stared at the words of our Gospel lesson.

I thought about the time frame in which this Gospel was written…roughly twenty years after the second destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

The original hearers of this Gospel…just like us…were living in a time of upheaval…violence…and uncertainty about the future.

Judaism has lost one of its major structural grounding points…the temple.

A new thing…which would come to be called Christianity…was emerging for those who found Jesus as the way…the truth…and the life amidst the chaos of the world around them.

With that in mind…Jesus appears in this Gospel lesson as the symbolic representation of the beatitude: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

In this scene in our Gospel…we see another attempt to get Jesus to indict himself…and lose credibility among the people who are listening to his reinterpretation of the law.

He’s already dealt with business about paying taxes.

In the exchange right before this one…he’s had to answer a question about the resurrection to people who didn’t believe in resurrection.

Now here comes a smarty-pants lawyer asking him a question about the commandments.

It’s really a silly question in some ways to pose to an observant Jew.

The First Commandment…one Jews know as the Shema…is a phrase which is recited every day.  

Any Jew worth their salt would know that the first command is to love God.

God is one…love God with all our heart, soul, mind, strength.

These were the words Moses spoke in Deuteronomy.

The fact that Jesus could rattle that off probably didn’t surprise anyone.

What this cheeky lawyer wasn’t prepared to hear was Jesus’ further commentary on his question. Jesus expounds upon the law…drawing on a phrase found in Leviticus… that one must love the neighbor as one’s self.

He then ties the two together by saying that to love God and love your neighbor… are the underpinning to the rest of the law and everything the prophets ever said.

If we’ve been paying attention throughout this year of Matthew…we remember that Jesus famously told those listening to his Sermon on the Mount that the love of neighbor means not just loving the people you like to hang out with.

Loving our people…the ones who look like us…talk like us…think like us…is actually a pretty easy thing to do.  

But in addition to loving our own kind…Jesus expects his disciples…which includes us…to love our enemies.

As Jesus said:

“God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

Tough as this is…what Jesus is saying is that to love God with our all and all means that we must love the things that God loves: which is basically all of creation.

The trees…the birds… the animals…the waters…and most importantly….the people.

All humankind.

All the things who God has made in God’s image.

That sounds good, right?

Putting it into practice?

That’s where we hear again the lament: we are losing our humanity.  

At times of war…in the face of such horrific atrocities…how does one love the enemy who kidnaps and kills innocent people?

How does one love the enemy who retaliates with dropping bombs from the air with no concern for those getting killed on the ground?

How can one’s heart not harden with one mass shooting after another and no effort to change that narrative?

The phrase “thoughts and prayers” rings so empty now.

And yet the words in today’s collect…where we ask God to “increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity” and keep us moving in the direction of loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves…are so timely for this moment.  

It’s when the world seems to want to jack up our fears that our faith in a God who loves must become stronger and more resilient.

Much in the same way our ancestors heard these Gospel messages when they were facing times of crisis in their world…we must resolve to not give up hope…to not lose sight of those helpers who show up and stay with us during moments of pain and suffering.

Helpers like the 23-year-old Palestinian ambulance driver who stayed to administer aid to those Israelis wounded by Hamas gunmen at a music festival.

Or the doctors and nurses in Lewiston Maine who rushed back to work on a Wednesday night to treat people injured by high-powered bullets.

It was the PBS host and Presbyterian minister Fred Rogers who encouraged the young viewers of his television show to “look for the helpers” when they’re feeling scared and under threat. 

Look for those who show the love of God through the way the show up for others.

Not only can we be that for each other…we can look for those people in our lives.

We can elevate those stories and give thanks for those who despite efforts to undermine peace and justice…persist in never giving up on Love as their truth…their way.

Perhaps then we can hope to recover our humanity.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.