Resurrection Scars: A sermon for 3 Easter B

Resurrection Scars

3 Easter

Scars. We all have them. Some of them are visible to us and to others; some of them mark our souls and psyches. I’ve got a lot of them. There’s the one on my stomach that I got climbing out of an apple tree; there’s the one on my knuckle that I got playing with my dad’s woodworking tools. I’ve got an appendectomy scar—that’s pretty recent.

But my oldest scar is related to my earliest memory, when I was three years old. I was chasing my sister down the hall; she turned the corner and I didn’t, hitting my forehead right on the corner of the plastered wall. Although it’s barely visible now, it has shaped my life. For it was that event that led to the discovery of my poor eyesight, two childhood surgeries followed, dozens of trips to the eye doctor, and glasses, of course. When I started thinking about scars this week, I was surprised at how faded it is. As large as it looms in my memory, it’s barely noticeable now.

I’m sure you all have similar stories—some of you probably have scars, visible or invisible of wounds or pain that you would rather not remember, mementos of suffering that you’d rather not revisit, of trauma that continues to burden you. 

You may be wondering why I’ve started my sermon talking about scars and pain. It’s Easter season, a beautiful spring day, and who wants to think about suffering and pain now? We’ve had enough of that in recent years, enough of that in Lent and Holy Week. Well, as we turn to today’s gospel reading, I think it’s informative to keep the image of scars in our mind as we think about the Risen Christ.

I love the gospel stories of the appearance of the risen Christ to the disciples. They’re full of drama and fascinating detail and they deserve close attention and reflection. There are some very familiar stories, like the story of Thomas, which was read last week. In fact, if you remember that story, you might have been struck by the similarities between these two stories. 

Both take place on the day of resurrection, both take place with a group of disciples, both take place in the upper room. Both also emphasize the fear of the disciples when the risen Christ appears to them. Both stories deny that Jesus is a ghost. Both stories also involve touching. In John, Thomas demands, though never follows through, to place his hands in Jesus’ wounds. In Luke, Jesus invites the disciples to touch him. In both, Jesus mentions forgiveness of sins. There are differences as well: Thomas isn’t mentioned in the Luke story; and there’s no mention of Jesus eating fish in the John story.

 Among all the details in all of the stories of the appearance of the Risen Christ to the disciples, there’s one that stands out, one detail that’s common to all of them—that the disciples didn’t recognize him. That’s true of Mary Magdalene in the garden; it’s true of these stories, and of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Famously, and as the collect for the day reminds us, the disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus knew Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

This time, however, it wasn’t in the breaking of the bread, or Jesus naming the disciple, as happened with Mary Magdalene. Rather, it was when he showed them the marks of the nails in his hands and feet, when he showed them his scars, that they recognized him as their risen Lord.

There’s a deep theological truth in that fact. The idea of resurrection is hard to understand, hard to get our heads around. We often assume it’s like resuscitation and we’ve got enough models of that in popular culture to shape our thinking—zombies, for example. When we think of our own resurrections, and not that of Christ, our thinking may be even more muddled. 

We may imagine that eternal life has nothing to do with our bodies, that it has to do only with our disembodied souls. But the scriptural tradition, and early Christian theology is quite clear on this point, and it’s worth noting that it’s shared in the Jewish tradition of the day (though not so much in contemporary Judaism)—that the resurrection was about the body as well as the soul—that it affected the whole person, of which our bodies are an integral part.

I point this out because I think it’s important that the body of the Risen Christ bore the marks of his crucifixion, his scars. What I think that means is that in those scars, Jesus bore the marks of his suffering, now transformed by the healing power of God and of resurrection. His suffering wasn’t erased or forgotten but brought along into this new existence.

So too with us. We often think our pain is punishment, our wounds are the just rewards for our misdeeds, even if they were caused by something, or someone, outside of ourselves. And we may think that in a perfect world, in the resurrection, all of that would be done away with. But to what extent are our scars, our wounds part of who we are? Our identity? That’s certainly the case with the scar on my forehead—it reminds me of everything I went through as a child, all of my struggles. It helped make me who I am.

My old friend, Augustine of Hippo, said something quite similar. In the marvelous 22^nd book of the City of God, he offered his thoughts on the resurrection, and on resurrection bodies. It wasn’t that in the resurrection we would have no bodies, or that our bodies would be perfect—there were apparently some who speculated that we would all be raised to be 33 years old, in the prime of life. For Augustine, Jesus’ scars suggested that we would bring with us all of those marks and imperfections with us in the resurrection; but that they would be transformed in some way, so that everything that made us who we are as individuals would be preserved and glorified.

There’s another way to think about this. It’s important to remember that God is present with us now, in our suffering and pain, and that even if we are not healed in this lifetime, in the life to come we will be. That may make the suffering no easier to deal with in the present, but trusting in God’s healing presence in the midst of that suffering is transformative.

That’s true not only of our own individual wounds. It’s also true of the systemic violence and trauma that we experience and inflict. There’s a tendency these days to want to overlook such violence and trauma—whether it’s the history of slavery and racism in our nation or the suffering and violence inflicted on Native Americans. We want to shove it under the rug or ignore it. But there’s no way around it. Being honest about that suffering, being honest about the wounds and scars carried on the bodies of marginalized peoples is the only means of becoming a healed society.

The risen Christ bears marks of all that suffering on his body, his own and ours, and in his glorified scars, we see our healing transformed by the power of God’s grace and love, as we and the whole world are made new through the cross and resurrection. Thanks be to God.

A long, lonely walk to resurrection: A Sermon for Easter, 2024

Easter

March 31, 2024

Over the years, I’ve developed a cherished Sunday routine. I try to leave the house around 6 am. If it’s Summer, and the weather is nice, I’ll ride my bike on the southwest commuter path. Other times of the year, I drive of course, but if the sun is rising, or risen, I’ll cut down Vilas Avenue so I can catch sight of Lake Wingra and then Brittingham Bay. When I get to church, I’ll take some time to say Morning Prayer, to put finishing touches on my sermon, and then in the quiet and stillness of the nave, I’ll prepare for the early service—put out the items for the Eucharist, unlock the doors, if there’s time, just sit in the holy quiet of the morning. On days like today, there’s also the added pleasure of the lingering aroma of the incense we used last night—although I could do without the scent of lilies, even on Easter. It’s funny, really, because truth be told, I never sleep well on Saturday nights; there’s always too much to fret and worry over, but when I get here, in the holy silence of this place, my soul becomes quiet in the presence of God.

I’m sure many of you have similar routines that mark your days and your lives, and for many of you, those routines, in some way or fashion, also help to bring you into touch with the divine, whether you mean them to or not. 

On those Sunday morning drives, in the dark, or growing light of sunrise, I often think of Mary Magdalene, coming to the tomb, early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark. 

It’s a familiar story, so like all familiar stories, we think we know its details. And too often, we fill out one version of the story with details gleaned from others. That’s particularly true when it comes to scripture. So, I wonder, have any of you ever asked why Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb in John’s gospel?

No, the bit about bringing spices and ointments to anoint his body, that comes from the other gospels. In John, all that’s been done already—Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea had prepared Jesus’ body for burial. Nicodemus, we were told a few verses earlier had brought 100 pounds of spices—a wildly extravagant and superfluous amount. So Mary had not come to anoint Jesus’ body. 

She came for another reason, to mourn her beloved teacher and friend, to grieve her dashed hopes, to sit at the tomb for a while to collect her thoughts and to figure out what she was going to do next, to pick up the pieces of her life.

Imagine, if you can, Mary, on that walk from wherever she had been staying to this place, to this garden tomb. Her world had been shattered, her life upended, again. We don’t know how, or when, or where she encountered Christ for the first time. We don’t know how long she had been following him. The gospels are silent on all that, though the Christian tradition and popular culture have filled out her story with all sorts of fantasy.

What we do know, or can assume, is that her life had been changed by her encounter with Christ—the abundant life of which he spoke had been hers, or within her grasp. She had heard him speak, watched him heal and perform other signs, and only a few nights earlier, had her feet washed by him in a sign and symbol of love and service. And she had hoped—for the restoration of Israel? The defeat of Rome? A changed world? The kingdom of God on earth? What she hoped for, we cannot know. But what we do know is that all of those hopes had come to nought.

Still, early that morning on the first day of the week, she came here, alone, in the darkness, to be close to the one she had thought was her savior, the savior of the world. She may have wanted to be alone, close to her beloved teacher, to remember, to grieve, and probably to begin to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.

But instead of a silent tomb, she discovers something that adds insult to injury, that makes everything seem so much worse. The indignity, the inhumanity, the disrespect. The tomb is empty and there’s only one conclusion to draw, that someone, the Romans? The Jewish authorities? Vandals—had desecrated the tomb and stolen Jesus’ body.

This then, at last is more than she can handle by herself. So she runs back to tell the other disciples, and Peter, and the Beloved Disciple, run back with her to check out her story. And this is where the story gets interesting. 

A couple of things happen. First, the two disciples enter the tomb and see the grave clothes. And they go home. Are they so flummoxed by this turn of events that they don’t know what to do? Are they so bewildered by all that has happened that they just want to go back to bed and pretend none of it has happened? Whatever the case, they leave the scene. This is not their story, it’s Mary’s.

And only now, alone again, does she do as they had done and look inside the tomb. And only now, finally, she receives the news that Jesus has risen. And only now, finally she encounters the Risen Christ. In the ashes of her hopes, in the shattered dreams of her life, the Risen Christ comes to her, names her, and makes all things new. 

Many of us, most of us, perhaps all of us, have been on long, lonely walks in the darkness like Mary on that long-ago morning. We have wandered through wildernesses, through dark nights of the soul, grieving lost loved ones, dashed hopes, bad decisions. We have wondered what next, how we can even go on, why take the next step? We have been alone, friendless, hopeless, in despair, our lives in shambles. No doubt, some of us feel that way today.

Mary was like us. We are Mary. She came to the tomb. She encountered a gardener. When Jesus called her by name, she replied, “Teacher.” But Jesus was much more than a teacher, and in the brief exchange that follows, Mary comes to realize what it all means, what everything means. She comes to know and believe what Jesus has been telling her, his other disciples, and us, throughout the gospel. She comes to know and understand who he is, what the crucifixion and this experience, resurrection mean. When she returns to the other disciples to tell them what happened, she makes it all clear, “I have seen the Lord.”

Here we are, all of us. We have come with our hopes and desires, with our cynicism and doubts, with our faith and with our uncertainty. We have come to this place to hear again the good news of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. We have come to experience the joy of that good news. We want it tied up in a neat package, like a rolled up ball of linen. We want it on our terms, in our categories, we want it to fill our needs.

But Jesus Christ comes to us in unexpected ways. Jesus Christ comes to us in ways we can’t imagine, in encounters we can’t control. The risen Christ comes to us in bread and wine, in the community of the faithful, and in ways we can’t express. The risen Christ comes to us, to shatter our expectations, break down the barriers that prevent us from seeing and experiencing him. The risen Christ comes to us, to remake us, to fashion us in his image and likeness. The risen Christ comes to us. Dare we say, with Mary, “We have seen the Lord?”

Thanks be to God.

Alleluia. Christ is Risen!

Do We See Jesus: A Sermon for Lent 5B, 2024

March 17, 2024

Among the many things that continue to fascinate and inspire me about our tradition, our worship, and our liturgical calendar, are the ways that themes reverberate and ring changes across the liturgical seasons and years. I’ve been thinking a lot these past few weeks about how my experience and practice during Lent have changed over the years. In fact, I remarked to some clergy colleagues that I just don’t seem to have the energy and desire to engage in the sorts of spiritual disciplines and activities that used to be a central part of Lent for me. I think a bit of that can be attributed to the way in which Lent has been shaped for me by the experience of the pandemic—the shutdown, the isolation, the widespread suffering and panic. 

Still, the themes of Lent have their way of working on me, sometimes quite subtly. It can be a hymn, or in today’s worship, Psalm 51. As we were reciting and chanting the verses from Psalm 51 this morning, I was reminded that we had said this same psalm on Ash Wednesday, after the imposition of the ashes. Then, I and you were hoping for a Holy Lent, a time when we might deepen our relationship with God in Christ, experience repentance and forgiveness of our sins and grow spiritually. Now, as Lent draws to a close, those verses remind me of all the ways my actions and discipline in Lent have fallen short of what I had hoped for, another missed opportunity. I am grateful again, and continuously, for God’s mercy and grace.

I doubt few of us are sad that Lent is drawing to a close. There’s Easter to look forward to and the excitement and new life that arrives with Spring. Today is the 5^th Sunday in Lent. It was traditionally known as Passion Sunday,–and its focus shifts from themes of spiritual discipline and penitence, toward an emphasis on the cross and Christ’s passion. 

We are also at a turning point in John’s gospel. The Sunday lectionary doesn’t provide us with a lot of help in understanding the overall structure of John’s gospel, but our reading today brings to an end the first half of the gospel. In the first twelve chapters we are introduced to Jesus’ public ministry. We see him engaging with the Jewish authorities, with the crowds in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Today, we encounter Greeks. From this point on, however, Jesus will focus on teaching his disciples. In John’s gospel, the Last Supper extends for four chapters—from 13-17, with a lengthy Farewell discourse in which Jesus prepares his disciples for his departure from them. His only interactions with people other than disciples comes during his arrest and trial.

Even as this passage marks a transition in John’s gospel, it also returns us to the very first chapter; to the powerful and symbolic scene of the Jesus calling his first disciples. For Philip and Andrew appeared there as well, as the first two disciples mentioned by name. Now, Greeks come to them imploring them, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” Back in chapter 1, when Jesus discovered Andrew and another disciple following him, he turned and asked them, “What are you looking for?” They replied, “Where are you staying?” To which Jesus replied, “Come and see.” There’s something else fascinating about all this. Philip and Andrew—those two names are derived from Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic, so are we meant to imagine that it wasn’t an accident that of all the disciples, the Greeks came to those two?

Now it is other seekers who come looking for Jesus, wanting to see him—Greeks, John tells us. It’s likely that either one of two possibilities are intended. Perhaps these Greeks were Greek-speaking Jews, having come from another part of the Roman empire to observe the Passover in Jerusalem. 

It’s also possible that they were proselytes—among those non-Jews who were attracted to the high ethical standards of Judaism, and while they hadn’t undergone full conversion, they observed some of Jewish law and worshipped in synagogues. Either is possible, and either makes John’s larger point, that this is the moment that Jesus’ ministry and message is expanding beyond the Jewish community, to the whole world.

What’s curious in this episode is that it’s not clear whether the Greeks are present throughout the scene. They are never mentioned again. We don’t know if they saw Jesus.

But that’s not really the point. It’s another, a final opportunity for the gospel writer, and Jesus, to reiterate central themes of the gospel. 

There is a great deal more I could say about these few verses, but I want to focus on Jesus’ final statement. The passage concludes with Jesus’ statement, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” This is the heart of John’s gospel, the heart of Jesus’ ministry and person. In the cross, we see Jesus, in the cross, on the cross, Jesus draws us and the whole world to himself. In the cross, on the cross, we see God’s love for us.

Ponder that statement a moment, “And I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself.” Do you get the significance of it? We’re inclined to think salvation is something we need to do, to get right, to believe the right thing. We are inclined to wonder whether we are saved or not, or if we certain we’re saved, whether those people over there are or should be. Jesus, the cross, are often divisive rather than uniting but here Jesus says two things of significance: first, that it’s for everyone, and second, that he is doing the work, he is drawing all of us to him, to the cross.

These are words of great comfort, of reassurance. They remind us that the cross is about love, God’s love for us, Christ’s love for us and for the world, and that the power of that love is drawing us, all of us, the whole world to the cross, to Jesus, to God. That is the God, the Christ we see on the cross.

Did the Greeks see Jesus? In the gospel of John, “seeing” is a prelude to faith, at most, it is an inadequate, partial faith. It is a first step, an entrance and first exposure to the abundant life that is offered through relationship with and in Jesus Christ.

Do we see Jesus? Do we see Jesus in our shared life and worship as the body of Christ, do we see Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, in the proclamation of the Word of God. Do we see Jesus in our outreach in the community? Do we see Jesus?

What do others see when they come to us? Do they see, in the quality of our relationships, in the way we support and help each other, in our interactions with each other and with our neighbors, do they see Jesus? 

People come to us asking, sometimes overtly and openly, but more often quietly, leaving the question unspoken; they ask “We wish to see Jesus.” Do we even hear them? And if they are persistent, if they have the courage to ask the question out loud, what is our response? Embarrassed silence? 

As we continue to explore our mission and ministry in this neighborhood and city, as we seek to reach out to our neighbors, I would hope that these questions are at the heart of our work and our reflection. To those who come seeking Jesus, wishing to see Jesus, I hope that we can show them in our common life and in our work, that Jesus is present among us fills us with life and love, and that through us, they may not only see Jesus but enter into the abundant life that comes through relationship with him.

And for those who do not come in search of Jesus, who are blinded or scarred, uninterested or opposed, are we able to show them that their assumptions are wrong, that among us, in us, through us, Jesus offers new life and hope.

Can we see, know, and share, that when Jesus is lifted up from the earth, his love draws all people to himself? 

Wilt Thou forgive that sin? A Sermon for Lent 3B, 2024

We just sang one of my favorite Lenten hymns: “Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun”—the text is by the seventeenth century poet, and dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, John Donne. Donne is not an easy poet to understand, his images are complex, often confusing, and he often uses words that were already archaic in his day, and incomprehensible. He also often invented words. 

Donne was from a Roman Catholic family—his brother died in prison, after having been apprehended for harboring a Jesuit priest. Donne himself converted to the Church of England, probably in part to secure his career. And his call to holy orders came only when other, more lucrative career opportunities were closed off to him. He eventually became the Dean of St. Paul’s and became one of the most famous preachers of his day, a status that is largely inexplicable to contemporary readers of his sermons.

He wrote a great deal of poetry, though little of it was published in his lifetime, and his secular, love poetry is as highly prized as is his religious works like the words we just sang. His most famous poem is probably “Death be not proud” but he is probably even more famous for the words he wrote as he lay in a sickbed and heard the funeral bell tolling: “No man is an island, entire of itself …” A recent biography, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell is a beautiful and insightful introduction to his life and work.

In the hymn we just sang, Donne is exploring the various types of sins he has committed, and asking God whether God’s forgiveness extends to those and to him. He begins with original sin, “that sin where I begun;” then mentions his habitual sins, those he commits, though he knows he should not. He asks about the sins he led others into, and sins he was able to abstain from for a year or two, though he relapsed. And finally, he asks about the sin of fear, or despair, that when he dies, his sins will not be forgiven; but then he asks that God swears by Godself, that Christ will be there, shining, as Christ’s presence shines now, and forgives him. 

It’s a probing self-examination that may make us feel a bit uncomfortable, even in this penitential season of Lent. Though he speaks to our own experiences, we moderns tend not to want to examine ourselves too closely. We are quick to condemn the sins of others, to decry the systemic sins that surround us and in which we are enmeshed, but when we come to our own sins and shortcomings, we may feel a bit uncomfortable being too honest with ourselves or with others.

Perhaps my explication of the text unsettled you in some way. I know that we often don’t pay close attention to the words of the hymns we sing, we may catch a phrase or an idea, but often the words seem less important than the music as a whole, which can move us and bring us into communion with each other and with God.

There was a time, probably before I was ordained, that I often turned to Donne in Lent. He’s one of those authors who speaks to the human condition, our brokenness and sin, but also, as in this hymn, beautifully expresses the power and extent of God’s mercy and grace. When we are turned off by language of sin and repentance, we may forget that such language opens us to the riches of God’s grace and the ways that, through grace, and our repentance, God is working to remake us in God’s image.

Donne is one of those authors I often return to during Lent. There was a time, back before I was ordained, I think, when I spent considerable time with his poetry and other writings during this season. The beauty and power of his language, the clear-eyed way in which he examines himself, encouraged me to deepen my relationship with God, to lay bare my soul before God, and open myself, more widely and deeply to God’s loving grace.

There are other images and texts to which I turn in this season, and one of the most powerful is today’s reading from I Corinthians. My history with this text goes back much further than my relationship with Donne, back to my undergraduate years and the first course I took on Paul. 

Like Donne’s seventeenth-century English and his focus on sin, Paul can be off-putting to twenty-first century sensibilities. His letters bear witness to his difficult personality and the many conflicts in which he was embroiled. Many decry him for his lack of interest in Jesus’ teachings—which are what attract many twenty-first century people. He’s often difficult to read, opaque in his argumentation, and at his worst, or at the worst of his editors and transcribers, a virulent misogynist.

All that aside, Paul offers a compelling vision of God in Christ, and it is here, in these verses, that we see that vision at its clearest and most compelling. He is writing in defense of his ministry and preaching, and he appeals to the cross as testimony and proof of the truth of his teaching:

 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Paul here is alluding to a central paradox of the Christian faith, the paradox of the cross. In this horrific death by torture, a vivid demonstration of Roman power and ruthlessness, we see Jesus crushed and killed. There could be no starker display of his human weakness. Yet for Paul, on the cross we see the power and wisdom of God. 

Elsewhere, in II Corinthians when Paul is talking about his own personal physical weakness and infirmity, he says that in response to his prayer, Christ said to him, “power is made perfect in weakness.” In other words, the cross is a demonstration of Christ’s power, of God’s power. Yet, that power, an allusion to the vindication of Christ through the resurrection, that power never erases the fact of the cross. The cross still stands, Jesus’ suffering remains. 

It’s a message that’s often overlooked and ignored by Christian triumphalism. We internalize and spiritualize the cross to rid it of its revolutionary message. We ignore the pain and suffering of the cross to focus on the joy of resurrection. When Christianity becomes enmeshed in power politics, in empire, nationalism, and white supremacy, the symbol of the cross often becomes a weapon wielded against the weak, the stranger and the alien, unbelievers, adherents of other religions.

One of our great challenges as Christians in this historical moment is to proclaim Christ crucified, folly and stumbling block, or literally, scandal. Our challenge is to see and to proclaim the cross as power made perfect in weakness, not to wield it as a weapon against others. In this day, when much of Christianity seems to have become another means by which people assert their own individual rights in a zero-sum game that results in the infringement of the rights of others, preaching Christ crucified, taking up our crosses, is a truly revolutionary message and way of being in the world.

On the cross, we see God’s weakness and God’s power. On the cross we see God’s love, incarnate, and suffering. On the cross, we see Christ giving himself for us and for the world, forgiving our sins and the sins of the world. On the cross, we see Christ, showing us a new way of being in the world, forgiven, and forgiving, sharing God’s love, bring hope to the hopeless, offering love to a world filled with anger and hate. As we walk the way of the cross this Lent and into Holy Week, may we enter into the love that Christ shares, on the cross and in our hearts, may we experience the forgiveness of our sins, and share God’s forgiving mercy and grace with the world.

Good Lord, Deliver Us: A Sermon for 1LentB, 2024

February 18, 2024

I love the Great Litany! I know it’s unfamiliar and strange to most of you. We use it only once a year at Grace, on the First Sunday in Lent and I’m guessing some of you, perhaps most of you, didn’t pay close attention to the words as they were chanted by Margaret as she has done every year I’ve been at Grace.

The Great Litany is one of those things that connects us powerfully to the past—to the past of the Anglican tradition, and also to the deeper past of our common humanity. It’s actually the first liturgical text created in English by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, published in 1544 and used throughout the kingdom in the runup to Henry VIII’s military campaigns in Scotland and France. It was then included in the first Book of Common Prayer published in 1549, and republished and altered throughout the centuries.

The version we use has been cleaned up a good bit: there is no mention in the 1979 version of the “detestable enormities of the bishop of Rome” for example. But even our version connects us to the fragility of human life in the pre-modern period; reminders that childbirth was dangerous for both mother and child, that life was hard, short, and subject to the violence of nations and nature.

Twenty years ago, I might have drawn attention to the apparent dissimilarities between the pre-modern world and our own, as science and technology seemed to have protected us from so many of the dangers faced by earlier generations. But now, we are learning how tenuous life on earth and life in community are—we are living through plague and pestilence, earthquakes, fires, drought, and flood, and wars are ravaging.

To be confronted with this ancient text, its roots lie much deeper than 16^thcentury England, in fact may feel like someone has poured cold water over our heads, shocking our system, our sensibilities, taking us out of our comfort zone. In that way, the Great Litany is very much like the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. As familiar as that rite may be, to hear, or say “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” strips us bare of all of our defenses, and reminds us profoundly, and utterly, of our humanity and our mortality, and our dependence on God for our lives.

Lent should disrupt us and our lives. Just as the ashes on Ash Wednesday remind us of our humanity, mortality, and the fragility of our existence, so to does the Great Litany remind us of our dependence on God, and the struggles-physical, spiritual, communal that we face day by day. Both of them call us to refocus our lives on the God who created us and on Jesus Christ, through whose death and resurrection we begin to experience our remaking in the image of God.

Each year, our gospel is the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. That’s a little bit of a misleading title, at least for the Gospel of Mark. For in these few verses, we see it all, the transition from baptism, to wilderness, to preaching the reign of God and we’re encouraged to see the connections between these three elements. But even as we do that, we’re probably inclined to overlook the brevity and simplicity of Mark’s version of Jesus in the wilderness, and what he might be trying to teach us.

Here’s Mark’s version: 

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Perhaps the most important thing in Mark’s terse description of these events is the connections between Jesus’ baptism and the wilderness. I have stressed several times already the violent language Mark used in describing the baptism—the heavens were torn apart, ripped apart, and the Holy Spirit came down. Now, we see similar violent language in his description of the Holy Spirit.

What can Mark have meant by telling us that “immediately the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness?” “drove” that’s powerful, almost violent language, and indeed it’s the very same word that Mark uses to describe Jesus’ actions and power when he drives unclean spirits out of possessed people. And we might go further and see a deeper connection—the Holy Spirit entered into Jesus at his baptism, possessed him, we might say. 

There’s something else worth noting. Our translation says Satan “tempted” him, in fact, a better translation would be tested, not tempted. That is to say, rather than be enticed or lured away from his mission, Mark seems to be suggesting that he is being assessed, evaluated—will he be up to the task that is set before him?

All of this takes place in the wilderness, where Jesus was with the wild beasts and the angels ministered to him. That’s all Mark tells us; that’s all he thinks we need to know. We don’t know the content of the “testing” nor do we know Jesus’ mental or spiritual state as he was undergoing it. All we know is that when he returned from the wilderness and his testing, he began his public ministry, proclaiming the good news of the reign of God. 

The wilderness is a rich image, one with a lengthy history in the biblical tradition, going back to the sojourn of the Hebrews in the wilderness. Whatever else the wilderness might have been, it was wild, as Mark’s mention of the “wild beasts” emphasizes. The wilderness is not civilized; it is not a safe place. 

All of us have experienced such wild and dangerous places. All of us have sojourned in the wilderness, whether for forty days or forty years. Some of us may feel ourselves in such a place today. We may be struggling to experience God’s presence in our lives; we may sense that we are beset by wild beasts or other struggles. Our spiritual lives may seem as dry and barren as a desert. We may be lost and discern no way forward.

Certainly, today, this week, we may feel very much like we are in a wilderness, in uncharted territory, beset by dangers. And whether our wilderness is something only we are experiencing—struggles in our families or work, with illness, or doubt, or it is because of larger events in our community, nation or world, it can very much seem like we are lost and alone. 

It’s important to remember that Jesus experienced his period of testing after his baptism, after receiving the powerful affirmation of who he was. He had heard the voice from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved.” That affirmation went with him into the wilderness, into his period of testing and it went with him when he emerged and began his public ministry.

It is an affirmation we too have heard, that we are God’s beloved children. Like Jesus, we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit to empower us to do God’s work in the world. We might even see ourselves like Jesus, driven into the wilderness, driven by the Holy Spirit into the world, to do that work. 

Lent is a time when we are inclined to focus on internal work—on prayer, reflection, other spiritual disciplines. In the face of the horrible tragedies that we witness, and all of the problems that are swirling around in our culture and news, it often seems both like prayer is all that we can do, and that prayer is much too little, ineffectual. Praying the Great Litany, as powerful as its language is, may seem like little more than play-acting in the face of the world’s problems. But even as we are pleading with God to intervene, to save and protect us, the words of the litany are also working on and in us, as prayer always should. Those powerful and ancient words are shaping us, remaking us, helping us to see ourselves with new eyes and opening our hearts to God’s presence and redemptive work.

Jesus came back from the wilderness having claimed his call, found his voice. He returned from the wilderness and began his public ministry, healing the sick, casting out demons, proclaiming God’s reign. Remembering our baptisms, empowered by the Holy Spirit, may this Lent be not only a time of testing and reflection, but a time when we find our voices and call, and proclaim with renewed hope and courage, the good news of the coming of God’s reign.

Waiting, Serving, Healing: A Sermon for Epiphany 5B, 2024

February 4, 2024

Last Sunday we sang one of my favorite hymns; the great Charles Wesley, “O for a thousand tongues to sing.” It’s one of the hymns I know practically by heart, one that I’ve sung dozens of times. As familiar as it is, like many hymns, its words can strike differently in different contexts. Take verse 6, for example:

Hear him, ye Deaf; ye voiceless ones,
Your loosen’d Tongues employ;
Ye Blind behold your Saviour’s come,
And leap, ye Lame for Joy. 

On the surface, unremarkable, perhaps but it points to something significant, and challenging in our times. We hear and say a lot about welcoming people, embracing people of different ethnicities and sexualities, of accommodating people with physical or mental challenges but especially in the latter cases—there are often unspoken assumptions that may raise barriers to full acceptance or engagement in the community. We often don’t realize how our hymns, and our scriptures can be such barriers. 

When we come to Jesus’ healing miracles, we may, unconsciously or subconsciously compare them to our own common life—looking to fix or heal other people rather than seeing them as challenging us to grow, and change, and learn. Some of you may recall a sermon a year or so ago in which I referenced the book: My Body is not your prayer request in which the author, Amy Kenny advocates for disability justice in the church.

There are physical barriers that have been constructed, and there are psychological, and even religious barriers that we erect that make full inclusion difficult, if not impossible.

In this little story, in these few verses, Mark has once again packed a world of ideas. First of all, think about the difference in settings between the healing that occurs in today’s story, and the story last week. Last Sunday, a possessed man was rid of an unclean spirit in a public space, in the midst of the synagogue. Today’s story takes place in private, in a home, in domestic space. 

There is a difference as well in the healing and in its aftermath. The unclean spirit, recognizes and identifies Jesus—You are the Holy One of God, but wants nothing to do with Jesus, and we don’t know what happens to him after the exorcism. In a way, the possessed man and Simon’s mother-in-law are in the same situation. They are both debilitated by their maladies, and by definition, they are robbed of whatever status and role they might have had. The possessed man can only disrupt synagogue services, and Simon’s mother-in-law is bed-ridden. Jesus’ act of healing, in both cases, restores them to their roles. 

There’s something else worth noting in Mark’s brief description of the healing. There’s a tenderness, an intimacy in Jesus’ actions. He reaches down to touch her, and “lifts her up”—language evocative of other healing stories in the gospel and of the resurrection.

Cured of her illness, Simon’s mother-in-law served Jesus and the others. But it is interesting. It’s interesting not because it is behavior we might expect of a woman in a traditional culture, or too often, in our own. Our culture, indeed our church continues to be conflicted about such roles. In the context of Mark’s gospel and early Christianity, her serving takes on added significance. For one thing, the term used is the greek word, diakonia, which of course is the word from which our own word, deacon, comes. But there’s more, much more. It’s the same word that appears just a few verses earlier, in Mark’s description of the temptation in the wilderness. V. 13 reads: “He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” The word translated here as “waited” is the same word used in our reading of Peter’s mother-in-law: “she began to serve them.”

 Much later, at the crucifixion, Mark tells us that there were women watching from afar, and Mark writes that these women had followed Jesus and “served him” in Galilee. They were his disciples, and as we shall see, in some ways these women were model disciples, disciples who stayed with him, while the men ran away.

To put it clearly. Jesus’ healing of Simon’s mother-in-law is not just about restoring her to her community and to her role. It is about equipping her to be a disciple. She got up and served them. We might be tempted to see this as her simply returning to the traditional, role of a wife and mother in a patriarchal culture. But for Mark, it’s more than that. She stands as a disciple, one who follows Jesus and ministers to him. She stands as a contrast to the unclean spirit who wanted to have nothing to do with Jesus. She also stands in contrast to those other disciples who came looking for Jesus when he went away for prayer and solitude.

This little gospel reading is challenging in so many ways, not because we have to struggle to make meaning out of it, but because it reflects our own situation, our own relationships with Jesus. Imagine the scene, after these two healings, everyone with a problem comes to Jesus. They’ve heard of his miraculous powers, and they want him to help them. We can imagine the scene. Dozens, hundreds of people waiting in line, pressing at him to get his attention, to feel his healing touch. At the end of it all, Jesus is exhausted, worn out, and he goes away by himself to pray and recover. Mark writes: 

“In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”

It’s a telling moment in Mark’s gospel, a rare occasion when Jesus is off by himself. After all that excitement and work, he needs to be by himself, recover and rejuvenate, to pray, to be with God

But even then he’s not left alone. His disciples come after him. The text says, “they hunted him down.” And what do they do? Do they ask, “How can we help? How can we serve you?” No, they tell him the obvious, that everyone’s looking for you.

Jesus responds enigmatically, saying, we’re not going back. We’re moving on. I’ve got more work to do. “I have to go elsewhere, to other towns, and proclaim the good news there.” Jesus turns his back on Capernaum, he turns his back on whoever back there he might not have healed, or whoever might have come late and missed their chance, and he moves on proclaiming the good news, of the coming of God’s reign.

In a way it’s a fitting end to this story, and brings us back to the beginning of my sermon. For even Jesus couldn’t do it all; he needed time to regroup, time to be with God, to deepen his relationship with God before embarking on a new mission in new territory. None of us can do it by ourselves. To respond to God’s call, to serve those in need require skill, and energy. But it also requires us to make room for others, to enable others to serve and do their part. 

One of the things I’m learning as I enter this stage of my ministry, is to make room for those others, to give others space and opportunity to use their gifts and skills, to follow their passions, to respond to God’s call in ways that are appropriate to their context, their experience, and their abilities. As a congregation, we would do well to hear that message, to follow Jesus, to equip and make room for everyone to serve the body of Christ, to be the body of Christ.

The words from Isaiah call us to remember the importance of bringing those burdens to God, as Jesus brought his to God in prayer. As we think about the upcoming season of Lent; they may inspire us: 

but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

Amen.

A Whale of a Sermon: Epiphany 3B, 2024

 “Whale Pulpit” Ss. Peter and Paul Church, Duszniki, Poland. Photo by Magdalena Łanuszka, http://en.posztukiwania.pl/2016/05/06/big-fish-in-a-pulpit/

It’s one of those great ironies, and perhaps an indictment of the 3-year lectionary cycle, that the Book of Jonah gets so little love in the Sunday Eucharistic lectionary. I mean, if you ever went to Sunday School as a kid, if you had a story bible, if you know anything about the Old Testament, and even if you don’t, you’ve heard something about Jonah and the whale. It’s a great story, full of drama, big fish, and lots of humor. But we will only hear from it once in the three-year lectionary, this reading of a smattering of verses from chapter 3 (the same chapter comes up as an alternative reading in year A).

I get it; I get the discomfort. I had figured out the problems with a literal, historical reading of Jonah when I was a young boy. Whales can’t ingest humans; people can’t survive for three days in a whale’s belly; a whale couldn’t get from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf to spew Jonah out, and on and on. One commentator remarked that of all the details in the story of Jonah, that he was eaten by a whale is the most plausible. But it’s a great story!

The cultural and theological significance of it go far beyond the story’s detail. Look at that image on the front cover of a pulpit in the shape of a whale. What must it be like to preach from such a thing? It certainly would enhance one’s sense of responsibility, of obligation and authority and it draws attention both the brevity of the sermon Jonah preached (six words in English, five in Hebrew) and the amazing response to that sermon by the people (and cattle) of Nineveh. 

On Friday, I had a conversation with some clergy friends that detoured into talking about preaching and about what we expect our sermons to do. Oddly enough, none of us brought up Jonah’s example as a sermon either to emulate, or to expect that level of response from one’s congregation. 

Well, let’s dig in a bit.

For if there’s anything unlikely, unbelievable, it’s the effect of Jonah’s preaching. The text says that Nineveh was a large city; it was a three-day’s walk from one end to the other, and that when Jonah arrived, he walked a day into it, and there preached his message of doom and destruction. That’s all it took. One lone voice, six simple words in Hebrew. Just this, coming from a foreigner, and the whole city, man and beast, put on sackcloth and ashes, and repented of their wickedness. It could happen, I suppose.

What comes next is equally surprising. Having prophesied doom and destruction, Jonah leaves the city, finds a hill overlooking it, and settles in to watch the carnage. God provides him with a bush that grows up to give Jonah shade from the hot sun, a turn of events that made Jonah quite happy, but the next day, God caused a worm to kill the bush so that it withered and Jonah got sunburnt. He also got angry.

If you were Jonah, how would you respond to this development? One would think he would be pleased with himself, proud of the effects of his preaching. But no. He complains to God, saying that the reason he didn’t want to go in the first place was because he knew this would happen. He knew God was a gracious God, full of mercy, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, ready to relent. In other words, if Jonah was going to prophesy doom and destruction, he wanted to see it happen.

So what should we make of all this? A prophet who doesn’t want to be a prophet, certainly doesn’t want to be a successful prophet and resists his call. On that level, we can understand the story all to well. We can imagine resisting the tug of duty and responsibility, turning away from what we know we ought to do. We can even imagine, most of us, sensing God calling us in a certain direction, calling us to deeper commitment, to a richer spiritual life, and turning away.

That’s all easy to imagine, and in that sense, Jonah represents us, everyman. But there’s more to the story than just Jonah. Besides Jonah and God, there’s another actor, or set of actors in the story, and that is Nineveh itself. Now, Nineveh was the heart of the Assyrian empire, one of the great empires of the ancient near east, and one of the most brutal. It was Assyria that had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8^th century bce. Nineveh was the evil empire. Its power dwarfed all of its neighbors, including the kingdom of Judah. That makes Jonah’s resistance to God’s call all the more understandable, even if that’s not the excuse Jonah gave himself.

In the end, the book of Jonah is not primarily about Jonah. It is about God. It is a story of God’s love, mercy, steadfast love. It is about proclaiming not just God’s displeasure and threatening destruction, it is about knowing who God is, and proclaiming that message of love, mercy, and steadfast love. 

When God rebukes Jonah at the end of the story, God points out that if Jonah was concerned about a bush, how much more should God be concerned about the city of Nineveh with its more than 120,000 inhabitants, and also animals. This is a story about the universalizing of God’s love and mercy. Jonah, and the original readers of this text, were being challenged to expand their notion of God and of God’s love. For all God’s love and concern for the Jewish people in the post-exilic period, the Hebrew Bible and the book of Jonah, bear witness to a growing understanding that God is God of all creation, the God of all humanity and God’s love and mercy extends to all humans, even to one’s enemies.

I wonder how many of us are like Jonah, so hardened in our attitudes, so critical of those with whom we disagree, that what we really want is to see them destroyed by God’s wrath, embarrassment in the media, or humiliating political defeat? We proclaim God’s judgment on our opponents but do we ever consider what might happen if they changed their minds, if they repented of the actions that we regard as sinful, evil, oppressive and unjust? 

Are we like Jonah, who having delivered our prophetic message in the most self-righteous of language and attitude, are now sitting above the city, waiting for its destruction? Or can we imagine that God might accept the repentance and show mercy?

And that’s the message for us as well. Like Jonah, that is what God is calling us to, as individuals and as a congregation. The God who is calling us is not a God of wrath and destruction, no matter how much some Christians in our culture would have us and everyone else believe it. The God who calls us is unimaginable in the extent of the love, mercy, and patience God has. It is that God we have experienced ourselves in the forgiveness of our sins. It is that God we are called to share with a world that knows hate and fear and violence. It is that message, a message we know for ourselves, that we need to bring to those around us. And we need to proclaim it throughout the our community and the world. Wherever there is animosity and hate, whatever enemies we fear, God’s steadfast love and mercy is present even there, even among them. God is reaching out, seeking the lost, extending God’s love to the unloved, the hated, the reviled, whether they live on the other side of the world, or right next door. 

Wordle and the Word: A Sermon for Christmas Day, 2023

December 25, 2023

Do any of you know the New York Times word game “Wordle”? It became an internet sensation during the lockdown. The goal is to guess a five-letter word and you have 6 chances. It’s rather addictive, and for many months, everyone would post their results on social media. That’s become somewhat less common over the years, but yesterday, a former parishioner emailed me his results. On the third try, he got it “GRACE.” Over the course of the day, and night, yesterday, others mentioned it to me as well. 

Yes, I do it, but I’m rather embarrassed to admit that it took me 4 tries yesterday. On attempt 3, I went with “BRACE.” In case you’re curious,  I’m currently on a 239 day streak. And also, in case you’re wondering, I do them all: the crossword, the mini, spelling bee, and now connections. They’re all part of my morning ritual.

Words are fascinating things. That we play games with them like WORDLE is evidence of the power they have. They amuse and divert us; they hurt and heal us. They help to share our deepest thoughts and feelings; and are also woefully inadequate to express those thoughts and feelings. We are bombarded with words; we bombard others with words. And now, thanks to Chatgpt, we can use artificial intelligence to manufacture words for ourselves, for others, or for class assignments. You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that preachers are using AI to manufacture or produce sermons.

That’s quite an irony, isn’t it, given today’s gospel reading: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” 

I said to a couple of people last night as they were expressing sympathy for me having to get up today and do this service, that for me, in many ways, as beautiful and powerful as the Christmas Eve services are, with choir, and carols, candlelight, and a full church, this service is the one that matters most to me—and it’s for one reason, that I have the great honor and privilege to proclaim this gospel text: John 1:1-14, and to preach the good news from it. Although I’ve preached on this passage more than twenty times, it will never get old; I will never exhaust its meaning, and I will never fully comprehend it.

In the beginning was the word. In principio erat verbum. En arche en ho logos. The Greek word behind our translation of word is “logos.” It means much more than “word.” In Hellenistic philosophy, it referred to the underlying order and reason of the universe and many scholars think that the author of the gospel, or the author of the hymn on which the gospel’s author was drawing, used another Greek word—sophia, or wisdom, which in Greek thought and in Jewish scripture, was the personification of wisdom. Because it is in the feminine gender it is thought, it was changed from “Sophia” to “Logos.”

But word, or reason, or order, or even wisdom points to something deeper. It’s not just that the Word, Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity was present at creation. It’s that God created through the Word, by speaking. As Genesis 1 states, “God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.

This is powerful stuff. There’s another image that I find particularly compelling. When the great Dutch humanist Erasmus went about publishing the first Greek New Testament, and then re-translating the Greek into Latin, he recognized the inadequacy of “word” as a translation of “logos.” So he chose another Latin word “sermo.” While it’s the root from which our word “sermon” comes, it actually means something quite different: “conversation.” 

That image intrigues me. Erasmus is implying that at the heart of God’s nature, at the heart of the Trinity, is conversation, communication. I find it wonderfully reassuring that in spite of our experience of the inadequacy of words, and of communication, that in the Trinity, in God, there is perfect conversation, perfect communication.

Of course, all of that is fine theological speculation; much more than a word game, but also, in a way, a word game. To place Christ at the very beginning, in creation, the means of creation, is to say something or many things, about God’s nature, and about the nature of God revealed in Christ.

But our gospel goes further; our faith goes further. The majestic language, the lofty theological reflection that is revealed in the opening cadences of John 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” concludes, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” 

That’s the message of the gospel, the message of Christmas. In fact, the Greek could be translated “tabernacled” or “tented” among us. Again, there are multiple meanings here. John is referring back to the way God was present among the Israelites during the Exodus, in a tabernacle or tent but there’s also a powerful sense, that he is alluding to the temporary, ephemeral nature of a tent. Like our bodies, tents are not permanent, they lack solidity; they are easily damaged. 

That is to say, the word took on frail human flesh to be like us. But John goes on and in one of his key paradoxes, reminds us that in that temporary dwelling, we catch sight of God’s glory.

So we are back in Bethlehem, back in the confusing paradox that God became incarnate in a very ordinary way, in the poorest of circumstances, in the weakest of all human forms, a baby. And it is in that paradox, that we see God’s glory. For John, it is the same paradox as the cross, which he almost always refers to as the glorification of Christ. What he is telling us is that in these moments of weakness, we see God’s majesty and power.

But we have the reality of that incarnation before us in many ways. We see it, we taste it in the bread and wine of the eucharist, when we receive the body and blood of Christ. We see it in the very imperfect Church, both our local community, and the worldwide communion, bodies filled with flaws and imperfections, but also, mysteriously, the body of Christ. And finally, we may see it in ourselves, imperfect human beings though we are, but by the grace of God filled with the presence of Christ. May this Christmas rekindle in all of us the knowledge of Christ’s presence, of Christ’s glory, in ourselves, in our church and community, and in all the world.

Christmas Rubble: A Sermon for Christmas Eve, 2023

December 24, 2023

At first glance, at first reflection, all seems as it should be. There’s something so seductive, so reassuring about entering a beautiful space like Grace Church, decorated as it is every year at Christmas time. There’s the garland, the wreaths, the beloved creche in front of the altar with the exquisitely carved magi and entourage in the back of the nave as they’ve begun their journey to Bethlehem. 

It all sounds the same, too, with familiar carols and our lovely choir and musicians. Where have you come from this evening? From holiday tables at restaurants, or festive gatherings with friends and family? Some of us may even be planning on going to other gatherings; others of us will make our ways  home at the end of a long, and exhausting Sunday. 

It’s so similar to so many other Christmases, my fifteenth here at Grace. Some of you have been coming much longer than that and are settling into the beauty and familiarity of rituals and memories that may go back decades. But those memories are also tinged with sadness as we remember those who aren’t here any longer.

But beneath that familiarity and beauty, tucked away in our memories, or perhaps shoved out of our immediate attention by that beauty, are other memories, other images—of those Christmases in 2020 and 2021 when there were no services here because of the pandemic. We’re reminded that the pandemic has not left us, that our return to normalcy takes place while many continue to contract the illness or suffer the effects of long covid.

There may be other images, other emotions that are hard to repress right now. One image that haunts me is a photo shared by the pastor of the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, Palestine. The Churches in Jerusalem and the West Bank announced recently that there would be no public celebrations, no public displays during Christmas, so this pastor, instead of erecting the usual creche like ours, did something else in his church. He brought in a pile of rubble, and in the middle of it lies the Christ child, wrapped in a keffiyeh, the symbol of Palestinian peoplehood. It speaks directly and eloquently to the humanitarian crisis that we’ve watched over the last nearly two months, an indiscriminate and horrific destruction of a people who have been driven from their homes, oppressed and practically held captive for the last nearly 75 years.

The plight of Christians, and Muslims, in the West Bank receives less attention than that of Gaza, but their lives are also under attack on a daily basis, their existence and presence in their homeland more precarious than ever. In Gaza, our Christian siblings are being killed, their ancient churches bombed to rubble. Of course, it’s not just Christians who are suffering there. The bombs don’t distinguish on the basis of religious commitment. On top of the thousands dead and homeless, now we’re hearing of starvation as aid continues to be blocked. The world watches; our own government is complicit in the atrocities. War continues in Ukraine as well, and even where there is no war, there is famine, hunger, and homelessness, poverty and disease. 

As we celebrate Christmas with carols, happy gatherings, and parties, we know that across the globe, people are suffering. We have learned hard lessons over the last few years. We have learned and re-learned about the fragility of life—how easily and quickly loved ones may be snatched from us by disease. We have learned about the fragility of our political institutions, our national life. We see daily evidence of the fragility of the human global community, and we are growing more aware, even as many deny it, of the fragility of life on this planet. 

So too, do we know the fragility of our faith. It is easy to grow disheartened, for our doubts to spiral into despair. In the presence of all the world’s ills, to lose hope seems not only natural but obvious. We reel from broken relationships, from trauma that continues to haunt us. It may very well be that it took all the courage we have left in us to venture out this evening to this place, in a desperate, unspoken plea for God to speak to us, to heal us and the world.

But the disconnect between our lives and our world and that of first-century Palestine may seem greater than ever. What can an ancient faith, a familiar story say to us in the face of millions suffering and global climate catastrophe? Can the story of Christ’s birth still speak to us? Can the carols we sing, the familiar decorations, the season’s joys, fill our hearts?

 The story Luke tells is not only about the birth of Jesus Christ. He interweaves that story with the story, and the reality of the Roman Empire. And it’s not because Luke was one of those 21^st century bros who thinks about the Roman Empire every day, as the recent internet meme would have it. He did think about it every day because it was an all-encompassing, totalizing reality. It insinuated itself into the lives of everyone from the British Isles to the Indian subcontinent—and even beyond as its cultural influence extended almost everywhere.

Luke is writing within the Roman Empire, to citizens and inhabitants of the Roman Empire. The subjects of his story belonged to a people who were prone to rebellion, repeated small ones, but larger ones, like the Jewish Revolt of the late 60s ce, which would have been fresh in Luke’s memory, or the one a generation later in the 130s, after which Rome razed Jerusalem, and forbid Jews to live there. 

By placing his story in the context of the Roman Empire, Luke is highlighting the contrast between that reality, and the reality of God’s reign, coming in a very different way, in poverty, humility, and weakness. Not the power of Roman legions, or tanks or military force, but the power of vulnerable and fragile, a baby, swathed in love, bringing love, inviting us to love.

We desperately want certainty, unmistakable signs of God’s power and might, fixing us, fixing the world. Instead, we get this: a baby born in a dusty town in a far-off place and a far-off time. We get stories of angels, shepherds, and magi. We want God to solve our problems, fix our world, to show Godself to us with power and majesty. Instead, we get this: a tiny new life, utterly vulnerable, utterly dependent, the fragility and weakness of an infant. And this, we believe, is God.

This is God: this tiny, utterly dependent and vulnerable baby is God come into the world. This first time, Christ did not come in power and great majesty, but quietly, almost unnoticed, in a remote corner of the Roman Empire, to a young woman who seemed wholly ordinary and unremarkable.

This is God, in Christ, coming to us, in all our fragility, vulnerability, and suffering, coming into our broken lives and broken world. A baby, coming into the rubble of our lives, the rubble of our world, filling it, and us, with grace and hope and love. Thanks be to God. 

Advent Poetry: A homily for Advent 3B, 2023

December 17, 2023

There’s something about the season of Advent that always draws me to poetry. It may be the ambiguity of the season, the idea that we are waiting for Christ coming to us in multiple ways. It may be the binary opposites of light and darkness, goodness and evil, that permeate the traditional imagery of the season, of our hymnody and scripture readings.

This week I’ve been reading the latest work by Christian Wiman, a poet and theologian who now teaches at Yale Divinity School. For many years, he was the editor of Poetry magazine. He writes with beauty, power, and elegance about his ambivalent faith and his decade-long struggle with cancer. His latest book is entitled Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries against Despair. 

While there is a great deal that is worthy of reflection, the thing that stopped me cold—and keeps drawing me back, is a poem by Anne Carson that he includes and upon which he reflects. It’s entitled “God’s Justice”

I love that image: “on the day He was to create justice God got involved in making a dragonfly and lost track of time.” It alludes to something that I have come to believe more and more strongly—God’s boundless and infinite creativity, a joyfulness and play at the heart of creation and at the heart of God. 

But there’s something else here that’s poignant and sad—perhaps. The sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world as we experience it—that it isn’t just and right. We know that all too well—the suffering in the world and in our lives, the pain inflicted on human beings by other human beings and the inability, unwillingness to try to make this right. We know the evils of the world and, as the prophet does in today’s reading, we cry out for justice. 

In the beginning there were days set aside for various tasks
On the day he was to create justice 
God got involved in making a dragonfly
and lost track of time.

It was about two inches long
with turquoise dots all down its back like Lauren Bacall.

God watched it bend its tiny wire elbows
as it set about clening the transparent case of its head.
The eye globes mounted on the case.

rotated this way and that
as it polished every angle.
Inside the case

which was glassy black like the windows of a downtown bank
God could see the machinery humming
and He watched the hum

travel all the way down turquoise dots to the end of the tail
and breathe off as light.
Its black wings vibrated in and out.

Our lessons today remind us of where our focus should be, where and how we should proclaim Christ, where and how we should work for justice. 

The reading from Isaiah, the first verses of which provide the text for Jesus first public proclamation in the Gospel of Luke, offer both reassurance and command. As Christians, we read these words as promise of Christ’s coming, of the future reign of God that he proclaimed and for which we hope. We see ourselves as recipients of that good news, and of the promised healing and release.

At the same time, we must see ourselves in this story, not just as recipients of God’s grace and justice but as participants in the coming of that justice. We are called to rebuild the ruined cities—and here we might think not only of literal cities, but of all the ways that human community, the common good, have been undermined and attacked in recent years.

Even stronger are the words from the Song of Mary. It’s always helpful to remember just who she was—a young woman, likely a teenager, mysteriously, shamefully pregnant, as vulnerable in her historical context as a similar young woman would be in our day. Yet from that small, unlikely, reviled person, comes this powerful hymn that witnesses to God’s redemptive power:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,

my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; * 
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed: *
the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him *
in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.

This familiar hymn has suffered for its popularity and familiarity. Its use in worship over the millennia has numbed us to its revolutionary power. We need to reclaim it today, sing it with meaning. We need to do more than sing it, we need to work so that it comes into being. We need to imagine the possibility that God is working in this way, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, in spite of all our fears, doubts, and despair. We need to believe that the words of a first-century teenaged single mom can inspire to see God at work in the world around us. For remember, the world in which she lived was unjust and violent as well, and for many people hopelessness and terror were ways of life.

Like the poem with which I began, Mary’s song is a thing of beauty, sung in the midst of injustice. It calls us to see beauty in the broken world around us. It calls us to see God at work in those beautiful things created by God, even in us. It calls us to to the hope that in spite of the ugliness and suffering in the world, God’s beauty and justice are present, making all things new, and through God’s grace, remaking us as well.