7 Pentecost, 2025-C: One foot in each realm

Lectionary: Hosea 1:2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19); Luke 11:1-13

En el nobmre del Dios quien es nuestro creador, redentor, y santificador....  In the name of God who is our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.Amen. 

One of the greatest influences in my spiritual life was my Puerto Rican grandmother, Mercedes. Her nickname was Chere, cherished one, and she was that to me. My grandmother didn’t finish the 3rd grade, but she was one of the wisest people I’ve ever known.

You have often heard me recount her wisdom to me: ”If it doesn’t bring you joy, stop doing it.” This has guided my whole life, including my ordained ministry, and it’s why I was led to stay as your rector. I experience true joy being among you as one who serves.

My grandmother’s spirituality was complex, but her connection to God was solid and simple. She was a holy woman, a practitioner of herbal medicine, a victim of abuse, and possessor of the softest skin on the planet.

When I was a child, my grandmother told me that I was a holy woman too, a healer, and she instructed me to remember that as holy ones, we must live with one foot in each realm - the realm of heaven and the realm of earth.

My siblings in Christ, we are all holy people. And as we pray in our Collect, “may we pass through things temporal, but lose not the things eternal”... just a fancier way of saying what my grandmother said.

The Episcopal Church is an Incarnational Church. We focus on the incarnation of God in Jesus and what that means for us. In our baptism, we acknowledge our oneness with Christ who joined his divinity to our humanity. Jesus is the first-born of this reality and has made us the next-born of it.

We are, in our earthly bodies, temples of the heavenly Spirit of God. As we heard in the letter to the Colossians: “For in [Jesus] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him…”

What we do with that reality remains our choice. Our Old Testament story from the prophet Hosea illustrates for us what happens when we ignore the heavenly realm and focus on the earthly realm, which tempts us to believe that we have power and privilege. All of the earthly rulers in the OT who believed that fell to the consequences they created: destruction of themselves and the people they were entrusted to lead.

The Hosea story takes place in a time when Israel was divided into the northern kingdom of Israel (where Samaria is) and the southern kingdom of Judah (where Jerusalem is). This split happened right after King Solomon had turned away from God and fallen to ruin. His son, Rehoboam, took over as king.

It’s a hard story to read, but one of its main messages is clear: when one community has two opposing factions, the whole community is harmed. Think of our own Civil War. We died on both sides of that war, and the fallout from it lives on in our own divided northern and southern “kingdoms” to this day. We still haven’t healed. We’re still arguing over flags, memorials, and “heritage.”

That’s why it’s so important to remember that while we live in the earthly realm in this moment, we also exist in the heavenly realm eternally - both at the same time. It’s when we approach the earthly realm without consciousness of the heavenly realm that we begin to perceive our neighbors as “other” or worse, as our enemy.

The way we maintain awareness of the eternal realm is through prayer. Prayer is not about asking the great Santa in the sky for what we want. I love the wisdom of Janis Joplin’s parody on prayer: (sing it with me!) “O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz…” The car, of course, representig any outcome we seek in the earthly realm.

In our gospel story, Jesus encourages us to knock on God’s door and ask for what we need, “Ask and it will be given you… for everyone who asks receives.” Then he tells us what we will receive, and it’s not a Mercedes Benz.

What we do get is so much more than that! We are given the Holy Spirit, consciousness of the heavenly realm in us. That awareness assures us that God is present, guiding, and redeeming - in this moment and for the good of all.

Many of you have experienced this with me in the ancient practice of healing prayer with anointing. I usually offer this kind of prayer when someone comes to me with a medical or mental health issue and asks for prayer.

I have had a healing ministry since my childhood - something my grandmother recognized in me. I didn’t know what it meant or how to use it until a professor in seminary helped me ground this ministry in my faith. What I’ve learned over the years is exactly what Jesus is talking about when he teaches the disciples to pray.

When we pray, we intentionally and consciously enter into the heavenly realm, while remaining firmly in the earthly realm. We don’t escape our humanity, which God declared very good in Genesis (1:31); we magnify it! As Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” (Lk 1:46)

We go into prayer knowing that God already knows what we need and is already at work on it. The earthly outcome we seek may or may not happen, but we are assured that God will not give us a snake or a scorpion.

Prayer, as Jesus taught us, begins with our consciousness of the heavenly realm, which is imminent and intimate. Jesus uses a word that is plural, meaning both Father and Mother, but is also intimate and familiar: like Papa or Mama, which would have shocked his listeners to attention. Papa/Mama, your name, your nature, is holy.

Then he says, "Your kingdom come…" Kingdom is a hard word for us in 21st century America. We rebelled against our last king and established our freedom from earthly kings along about 1776. But kingdom is a word we inherit from our Jewish forebears and it refers to God’s reign over all that is because God created, redeemed, and sustains the whole cosmos and all of us in it.

Give us this day our daily bread… God’s provision, whether in the form of earthly or spiritual nourishment, is for what we need right now. The bread reference points us back to the manna in Exodus, which would spoil at the end of each day, encouraging the Israelites to learn to trust in God’s continued provision.

Every exodus is a process of rebirth, moving us from where we are to where God wants us to be, and that takes time. This is especially hard on our modern sensibilities. We want to make a plan and get it done - but that’s focusing on the temporal.

We are called to "Trust in the Slow Work of God,” as Jesuit priest and paleontologist, Pierre de Chardin wrote in his poem by that name. I’ve linked this poem to this sermon and I highly recommend you read it.

Jesus followed his teaching on prayer with a parable about persistence in prayer. This parable has three main characters: 1) God, 2) the host, and 3) the neighbor. This harkens back to Jesus’ recent teaching on the summary of the law: love God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.

Dr. Amy Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University, says the command to love your neighbor as yourself would translate better as: love your neighbor who is a human like you. Think about that and our current treatment of our immigrant neighbors, the poor and people of color among us, or those in any war-torn area of the world. So we must be persistent in prayer not just for ourselves but for the sake of the whole human community.

When we persist in prayer, we remain conscious of our unity in the love of God. This is what Episcopal theologian and racial unity activist, Dr. Catherine Meeks, calls development of our “inner community” where there is no other, no stranger, no enemy.

Prayerful consciousness enables us to be in a state where God’s heavenly realm can manifest through us into the earthly realm. As my grandmother said, we must always live with one foot in each realm.

When it seems like God isn’t present, doesn’t know or care about what we need, or isn’t responding, our prayerful consciousness reminds us that what seems like God taking too long may actually be God working with another soul or souls for their reconciliation. As we heard last week, God’s plan is for the reconciliation of the whole world, even the wicked tyrants.

God is counting on us to be faithful and prayerful, keeping one foot intentionally in each realm, while this larger plan of love is manifested - on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

6 Pentecost, 2025-C: Go prayerfully into the Presence

Lectionary: Amos 8:1-12; Psalm 52; Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42

En el nombre de Dios, quien es nuestro creador, redentor y santificador...

In the name of God, who is our Creator, Red

I often remind people what seems obvious: we are the church, people of God, which means we are a people of prayer. Prayer, as we know, often uses words and symbols, but these are signs that point to something bigger. They always point to God’s plan of love being actualized.

For example, when we see a cross, it means so much more than two planks of wood fastened together. It’s more than an ancient Roman tool of execution. For us, the cross points to Jesus’ sacrifice of himself for our salvation. It is the symbol of Jesus’ victory over the power of sin and death. While it looked like the death of hope, it was actually the divine doorway to new life.

People of God look for the larger meaning behind the words, symbols, and events of our time. We know they point to something bigger, for in them God is continually revealing how God’s ultimate plan of love is being actualized.

Our Old Testament story begins with God showing Amos a basket of fruit, asking, ‘What do you see, Amos? What do you perceive from this?’ Amos replies, “I see a basket of summer fruit.”

It might be helpful to know that the “basket of fruit” reference is a wordplay in Hebrew. The word that translates as basket of fruit sounds like the word that translates as “the end.” God asks Amos, ‘What do you see?’ and Amos says, “the end.”

Today’s story continues from the reading from last week when Amos was prophesying against the way the people in the northern city of Bethel (which means house of God), so how the people of God were living. In response, the king, Jeroboam, told Amos to leave and never return. As Amos left, he shook the dust from his feet, saying, 'The worst things you can think of will happen to you unless you change your ways and get back in line with God’s will for all,' which is what the plumbline meant. God set the plumb line, the way of living, among them, and the prophet declared that God would never again ignore the people’s errancy. The high places, including their altars, will be destroyed, the rulers will die in the violence they have precipitated, and every bad seed they planted will destroy all who follow their ways instead of God’s way.

Today’s story picks up by affirming that God, in fact, does see what’s happening among them. God repeats, “I will never pass you by,” which means 'I am in the midst of you;' and what God sees is that they are living lives that are unjust and discompassionate.

Hear this, God says: I see you trampling on the vulnerable, and oppressing the powerless. I see you practicing financial deceit so that you can build your own wealth. I see you snatching suckling babies from their mothers and putting my beloved ones in cages. I see all of what you are doing, God says, but you don’t see me.

You are bringing yourselves to the only end you’ve made available to you: your own undoing. When that starts happening, you’ll realize how wrong you’ve been, and you’ll look for me to save you, but you still won’t see me. You have so perverted my Word to support your evil schemes that I have been made irrelevant, invisible, and unavailable to you.

The psalm picks up the theme of calling out the tyrants for their cruelty. “You love lying more than speaking truth. You love all words that hurt.” Now, I am not God, but I can see the very issues discussed in the psalm playing out in our world today, and if social media and the many requests I’ve had for pastoral conversations are any indicator, I’m not alone in this.

That’s why I love the Psalms. They speak so truthfully to our frustration, our sense of powerlessness, and desperation for justice. The author cries out, ‘O that God would hear our prayer and utterly demolish you wicked tyrants, topple you, and root you out of the land of the living.’

As honest as this prayer is, we need to remember that God’s plan of love is for the redemption of the whole world to God – even the wicked tyrants. Seeking an outcome that seems just to us is common, but outside our lane, as they say.

The desire for justice, as frustrating as it is, reflects God’s own desire burning in us. How blessed we are to be so frustrated, for it is evidence that we are sharing God’s heart of love. So then, what is our recourse until the justice we desire is actualized? To go prayerfully into the presence of God, where our hearts can be moved from “demolish them utterly” to “I trust in the mercy of God for ever,” as we see in the Psalm. Only then will our responsive actions be faithful.

The news has been so disruptive to my peace lately. In my busy-ness, I’ve had to be intentional about stopping to pray and rest in the love of God, to listen for my Savior’s voice of comfort, to be strengthened by it and led back into peace – into Christ’s peace. I’ve had to make time to sit at the feet of my Redeemer, like Mary did in our gospel story, or risk being sucked down into the whirlpool of the chaos of the world.

This story of Martha and Mary from the gospel of Luke is often discussed in ways that pit Martha against Mary in a competition for holiness. I often hear people say, “I’m a Martha” or “I’m a Mary.” The truth is, we’re all both.

Why our translators changed the word here from ‘the good part’ to ‘the better part’ escapes me and is part of the reason we hear this as a competition. Mary didn’t choose a better part than Martha. When Jesus called Mary’s choice good, he was saying it was admirable, deserving of respect and approval, and he gave it all of that.

Martha’s frustration in this story is that her ministry teammate, Mary, isn’t doing her usual part as they offer their gift of hospitality to Jesus and the disciples. The burden of their whole ministry falls to Martha who tries to go it alone but finds herself bitter and resentful about it.Note to church leadership: this is such a great description of a potential trap regarding ministries in our churches.

Jesus responds with a soothing: Martha, Martha… you are worried and distracted by many things, but there is only one thing that really matters. Look, Mary has chosen the admirable part and it will not be taken from her.

Choice is a sign of our freedom. Jesus affirms this for Mary, a woman of her time who wouldn’t have been allowed in the inner sanctum of the temple to worship, but had the right to choose for herself, and she chose to listen to and be with Jesus.

To all of us who are worried and distracted by many things, Jesus assures the Martha within us, and it sounds something like this: Be still sometimes, all you Marthas. Just be with me. You have no praise to earn, no expectations to meet. You are already beloved. Come and be with me. I will fill your emptiness, restore your hope, and prepare you for your work in ministry.

I often say this is like breathing. We can’t just breathe in or just breathe out without passing out. We must have a rhythm of both. Likewise, we can’t breathe out our ministries until we have breathed in Jesus.

One of the things I love about our diocese is that there are deeply spiritual, prayerful people, and also passionate advocates for justice and peace. While all of us have both qualities, some among us may be more inclined to advocacy than to prayer, others to prayer over action, but as a whole community, we have it all. Our task is to keep a balance of inward forming and strengthening of our souls and outward actualizing through service.

The church, like the house of Martha and Mary, is a center of holy hospitality. Each week, we breathe Jesus in together. We make and share the holy food of Communion with our friends and ministry teammates. Then, strengthened and restored by Word and Sacrament, we are sent into the world to love and serve in the holy name and loving way of Jesus.

There is so much injustice, insult, and damage to life out there, but if we try to serve without first making time to sit in God’s presence, we may end up doing more harm than good. 

So, for this moment, let us rest at the feet of our Redeemer, where we will receive the only thing that really matters. Amen.

5 Pentecost, 2025-C: The neighbor is YOU

This sermon can be watched live on our YouTube channel at 24:49.

Lectionary: Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37 (Proper 10, Track I)

En el nombre de Dios, cuyo camino es un camino de amor, vida, restauración, sanación y comunidad armoniosa… In the name of God, whose way is a way of love, life, restoration, healing, and harmonious community. Amen.

I begin today with our Psalm, which has a superscription that it was written by Asaph, a Levite and musician, appointed by David to assist with liturgy. This Psalm contains the surprising notion of a council of heaven consisting of other gods, a strange thing for a religion steadfastly devoted to there being only one God.

The word “gods” as used here did mean divine beings, but also referred to human magistrates, judges, who were socially elevated by power, prestige, and authority. It is these that God declares corrupt, saying. “How long will you judge unjustly and show favor to the wicked?” It’s important to note that ‘wicked’ means those who deserve the punishments they are imposing on the underserving.

God then issues clarification on the true responsibilities of those magistrates: “save and rescue the weak and the orphan, defend the humble and needy, and deliver them from the power of the corrupt leaders who walk in wrongdoing. They have made the whole world unstable; the foundations of the earth are shaken. They think themselves immune to the consequences of their actions, but, God says, they will fall and die like any other ruler.

Most importantly, in this psalm God reminds those in positions of power and authority: ALL of you are MY children. The psalm concludes with a plea: Arise, O God, and rule your way. Save and rescue the weak and the orphan, defend the humble and needy, and deliver them from the power of the wicked leaders. Then all the nations of the world will belong to you.

That is my prayer today.

A similar theme is played out in the OT reading. Amos is prophesying against the way the people in the northern city of Bethel are behaving. In response, the king, Jeroboam, tells Amos to leave and never return.

As Amos leaves, he shakes the dust from his feet saying, the worst things you can think of will happen to you unless you change your ways and get back in line with God’s will for all, which is what the plumbline represents. God set this plumb line, this way of living, among them, and the prophet declares that God will never again ignore the people’s errancy. The high places, including their altars, will be destroyed, the rulers will die in the violence they have precipitated, and every bad seed they planted will destroy all of you who follow their ways instead of God’s way.

At this point, we almost need a moment to catch our breath as we realize how apropos this is for our time! Thankfully, we have the letter to the Colossians, which reminds us, that Jesus has rescued us from the power of dark leaders, and in him we have redemption by the forgiveness of our sins. 

But what does this promise really mean? What is redemption by the forgiveness of our sins?

First, as familiar as this particular phrase is, it appears only in the letters that most scholars agree were not written by Paul. This letter to the church in Colossae was probably written by a student of Paul’s, maybe even by Epaphras, who founded this Christian community. It was written to encourage them to be strong in their faith in Jesus as religious leaders around them argued over whether or how to combine their Greek philosophies and Jewish rituals.

Redemption is a reclaiming. God finding us when we’ve lost our way and returning us to divine safety. Any parent who has lost a child at a store or public event knows the joy this sort of reclamation enkindles. Sometimes, the child is blissfully unaware they were even lost or in danger. The metaphor works spiritually too. 

…by the forgiveness of sin… This is key for us. As we heard in the psalm, we are all children of the Most High. God pardons all we may have done while we were lost and rejoices when we are found and reclaimed – as per Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son.

It’s a hard concept, really, because it pricks our sense of justice – usually applied to someone else’s sins. This is where our gospel story comes in and it completely obliterates our tendency to live from an “us and them” perspective

The lawyer in this story is an expert in Jewish law. His question: “’What must I do to inherit eternal life?’” is meant to challenge Jesus’ understanding and interpretation of Mosaic law.

We could spend the next three hours discussing just this question, but I have an appointment after church, so instead, let’s just look at a couple of the important points it contains:

First, I ask you: who is the subject of this question? The lawyer. He wants to know what he must do for himself. How does he inherit eternal life? It sounds like a prize or reward, doesn’t it?

So then, what is eternal life? Despite the Church’s habit of treating eternal life as an afterlife reward for good behavior, eternal life is very simply living – right now – in the presence and purpose and will of God who is eternal.

Sensing the challenge, Jesus turns the tables on the lawyer. You’re the expert. What do you say is written in the law?

The lawyer knows the answer, and even shows some familiarity with Jesus’ own interpretation of the Torah by connecting the same dots Jesus was publicly connecting: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind [from Deuteronomy 6:5], and your neighbor as yourself. [from Leviticus 19:18]”

Right, Jesus says, do this and you will live. But the lawyer needed more. Don’t we all?

He asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus answers with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

A man was traveling alone on a road known to be filled with violent thieves. He is, unsurprisingly, attacked, robbed, and left for dead.

Jesus doesn’t tell us if this man is Jewish, Samaritan, or a foreigner. Since he was stripped of his clothes, and was unconscious so he couldn’t talk, his identity category remains unknown.

Both a priest and a Levite, considered to be learned and trusted religious leaders, come along and see the man. Both go around and past the dying man, and go on their way.

Then a Samaritan man comes along, sees the dying man and is moved with pity. Jewish people in the region hated Samaritans, reviling them as unclean, mixed-blood, half-breeds who don’t worship right. Even though the Samaritans knew and kept Jewish law, they were hated by folks like this lawyer and Jesus’ other listeners.

The Samaritan tends to the man and carries him to a safe place where he pays for medical care and lodging for him, promising to return and pay more if more was needed. In this Samaritan man, pity, which is a feeling, became mercy, which is an action.

Notice what Jesus asks next. It wasn’t, was this dying man a neighbor deserving mercy? He asked, which of the three who saw him was a neighbor to him.

The lawyer replied, “the man who showed mercy.” I wonder if the lawyer’s habit of hate for Samaritans rendered him unable to even say the word “Samaritan” in his response…

Jesus said to him: Go and do likewise. Do, Jesus said. The lawyer was used to knowing, interpreting, and teaching. Jesus here tells him to act on what he knows is true: that loving neighbor as self is an action, commissioned by God.

Thus, Jesus not only obliterates the division between “us and them” for all time, for we are all children of the Most High, he also turns the focus from the suffering to us who see it.

Therefore, as we watch the endless news reals, and scroll through story after story of people suffering the consequences of corrupt leadership around the world, we remember that we are called to be a neighbor, to show mercy to anyone who is suffering, weak, alone, poor, or needy.

We remember that God tells us to do that because we have been reclaimed by God, who sought us out, took us in a divine embrace, and holds us close. This is eternal life, and it’s ours right now. We don’t have to do anything to inherit it. We have only to live it.

Let us pray our Collect again, changing the person from “they” to “we.”

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that we may know and understand what things we ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

4 Pentecost, 2025-C: Essential humility

Lectionary: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

En el nombre del unico Dios, santo y vivo. In the name of the one, holy, and living God. Amen. 

Our readings today highlight how essential humility is for us as followers of Jesus. We begin with one of my favorite OT stories, the healing of Naaman.

Naaman is a privileged and powerful military commander who has leprosy, a disease that slowly eats away at a person. When the leprosy progresses, he’ll lose his position of power because in those days, a person with leprosy was exiled in order to keep the disease from spreading. Leprosy was thought to be punishment for sin, so not only were they exiled, they were also shamed and blamed.

Hearing about Naaman’s condition, a young Israelite slave girl (notice the vulnerability in each of those descriptors: young, Jewish, slave, female) who served Naaman’s wife offers some advice: Why doesn’t Naaman go see the prophet of God in Samaria? He could cure him.

So the King of Aram sends his military commander to find this prophet, carrying with him lots of expensive gifts. Naaman announces his importance by arriving with military pageantry. But Elisha doesn’t even come out to greet him. Instead, he sends a lowly messenger to tell Naaman to go and wash in the River Jordan seven times.

Naaman is highly insulted and angry. ‘That’s it? I thought the prophet and his God would put on a great show of healing magic because – well, it’s me! And why would I go to the Jordan River when we have all the best rivers in Aram.

It isn’t until Naaman humbles himself that he’s healed. In that moment, power is redefined for all who read this story and have ears to hear it.

The unnamed slave girl in this story exemplifies what Jesus is teaching his followers about being laborers for God’s harvest. She notices Naaman’s weakness and tends to him. His physical weakness is the skin condition, but his real weakness is spiritual: his attachment to having and wielding earthly, coercive power.

There are plenty of Naamans among us today. There always have been and probably always will be.

It’s important to note that the unnamed slave girl didn’t need to tend to Naaman. She could have let his disease progress. It’s likely that his downfall would have led to her freedom. But she was a laborer in God’s harvest, one in which every fruit, every person is worth serving.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is sending 70 followers into the harvest, but first he tells them to pray for themselves: “…ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” The reason is, prayer is where we learn and practice humility. It’s where we surrender ourselves and our wills to the will of God.

Praying before they went would help the 70 remember that it’s God’s harvest, not theirs. God has done the work: planting the seeds, growing them in the womb of the earth in secret, nourishing them, and bringing them to ripeness, ready for harvesting.

They are sent two by two - because we don’t do the work of God alone. We also don’t carry expensive gifts as Naaman did. We carry only the peace of Christ, which unleashes God’s powerful, redeeming love into the world.

Jesus sent the 70 to share his peace with everyone they meet – everyone, that is, who will receive it - because some won’t. When that happens, Jesus tells them to shake it off, as Taylor Swift would say, and walk away, allowing God to work that reconciliation another way at another time. What happens to those who refuse Christ’s peace is God’s business, not theirs, but do tell them, Jesus says, that the kingdom of God has come near to them.

In Galatians, this point is taken even further. Paul talks about those living outside the love of God as lost, and teaches us that when we find someone who is lost, we “who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.”

Followers of Jesus must never be tempted to violence, coercion, or contempt. We must, instead, always remain open to the grace of the Holy Spirit, because by that grace we will not only remain devoted to God, but our unity and tenderness for one another, even those who challenge us, will be complete, and in that completeness God’s love restores them.

When they returned, the 70 were excited to tell Jesus about what happened: “In your name even the demons submit to us!” When we hear that, we often think of otherworldly beings who tempt, damage, or possess humans. But demons are also humans who are fierce and skilled in making their evil, selfish, destructive plans succeed – usually by coercive means.

Even these demons submitted to the peace of Christ brought by the 70 followers. In response, Jesus cautions them to remember that it is the unity of their spirits with God’s Spirit and their wills with the will of God, they should celebrate, not a newfound power over anyone or anything. That power belongs to God alone.

“Do not be deceived,” Paul says in Galatians, for “God is not mocked.” In other words, you can’t claim God’s power as your own. “If you sow to your own flesh,” what you will reap will be your own corruption. 19th century historian and moralist Lord Acton said it like this (I think you’ll find this familiar): "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

Jesus calls them wolves and instructs the 70 to go out like lambs among those wolves. We don’t need to be powerful. We need to be humble, remembering that any power we carry into the world belongs to the Lord of the harvest, and God’s power doesn’t destroy – it transforms, reconciles, and re-creates. Therefore, we don’t grow weary in doing what is right, and whenever we have the opportunity, we work for the good of all. “All, all, all, all, all” as Archbishop Desmond Tutu said.

Being lambs among wolves feels rather appropriate right now, doesn’t it? When modern day demons are working to destroy the vulnerable among us, we want to fight back, by pushing against their power with our own, but that will get us nowhere. We need to be like the 70 Jesus sent out carrying nothing but his peace. The demons submitted then, and they will submit now.

Do we trust that?

It’s hard to be humble in the face of violent power, but thankfully, Jesus modeled that for us too - at his trial before Pontius Pilate. What followed next, his crucifixion, seemed like the end of hope, but it was, in fact, the doorway to a new life – resurrection life in Jesus.

Do we trust that?

Our task right now is to learn and practice humility together. In order to do that, we need to consider how we understand humility. Humility comes from the Latin word humus which means grounded… from the earth. When we are humble, we are grounded in our faith and self-aware.

Humility is not self-deprecating - quite the opposite. Humility is an appreciation of our gifts and talents in relationship to God by whose grace we have them. In humility, we remember that we are from the earth, created and sent by God with a divine purpose to complete during our time on earth.

And what is that purpose? To be devoted to God with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection, bearing one another’s burdens with gentleness, and tirelessly co-creating a world where all of God’s beloveds know they are valued and will be cared for. A world where everyone’s sackcloth is turned into joy.

Then we, the ones God is sending in our time, will praise God without ceasing, giving thanks forever for God’s grace, mercy, love, and faith in us to serve. Amen.

Pentecost, 2025-C: Continuing prophetic witness

Lectionary: Acts 2:1-21, Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17

 

Last week, the clergy of our convocation gathered at Emmanuel for a Clericus (which simply means a gathering of clergy), led by our bishop. Among the many concerns we discussed were the issues of serving victims of the tornado in the long haul given FEMA aid remains unattained and among reports that folks in some zip codes are being refused insurance referrals for construction help, inaugurating a modern form of redlining.

We also discussed serving vulnerable populations like people of color, LGBTQIA2S+ folks, and immigrants. Our bishop is, as you know, an immigrant himself. He is also a black, married gay man, making him a member of several vulnerable populations currently under fire in this cultural moment. He is married to a hispanic immigrant, and their family has already suffered from the arbitrary interpretation and enforcement of immigration law.

This led us to a discussion about the need for churches to be prophetic. Those of us who can must speak out on behalf of those who can’t, those who are being silenced, disappeared, ambushed, and dismissed to the margins.

Bp. Deon wisely reminded us that being prophetic doesn’t always require doing something flashy, but consistently doing the small things that demonstrate the truth we hold as Episcopalians.

And what is that truth? We can find it in our Baptismal vows on page 304 in the BCP: to gather and break bread together, prayerfully nourishing the bonds of our community of faith so that we can proclaim by our words and our lives the Good News we know; to persevere in resisting evil and repent, that is, return to God, whenever we sin; and to seek and serve Christ in ALL persons, respecting their dignity as we strive for God’s justice and peace. No small task.

There are two things we need to accomplish this: God and each other. Every Sunday we celebrate the love of God that binds us as a community of faith. We nurture ourselves with the spiritual food of Scripture and Holy Communion. Today, on the Feast of Pentecost, we celebrate the truth that we have God in us – individually and communally.

The story of the first Pentecost found in the Book of Acts is a familiar one, as are the images associated with it – the small tongues of fire emanating from the dove-like Holy Spirit, hovering over the heads of the gathered faithful. We imagine those same tongues of fire hovering over our own heads. To embody that, we wave a dove over us during our opening procession.

Fire, as you have often heard me say, is Bible-talk for the presence of God. The tongues of fire are small bits of the Almighty Themself, being given to imperfect, unfinished humans, who are motivated and equipped to serve by that very presence of God that rests on them.

Our remembrance of this event each liturgical year is an opportunity for us to reopen our awareness to the truth that God is co-existing with us and what that means. These tiny pieces in each of us, when taken together, become a powerful force for love, a prophetic, revelatory vision of the living God. We become more together than any of us can be alone. This is church.

Whatever gifts we have, individually and as a community, are evidence of the presence of God within us. One of our responsibilities as a church community is to be the place where each person's gifts are discovered and nurtured. We then discern what our collective gifts are so that we can use them to serve the world according to God’s purpose and plan for us.

Our churches also work together in community, which for us, is the Diocese of Missouri. All of us serving God synergistically - better and more faithfully than any one of us can serve alone – and we have plenty to do.

In Scripture, we learn that it didn’t take long for some of those disciples upon whom the spirit of God descended to be edged out to the margins of the community once again. As the fledgling church began to form its institutional identity the new wine of this Pentecost reality was shoved back into the old skins of the Jewish temple system, edging women, slaves, the poor, and others right back to the “outer courts” of the community. The doors that Jesus had flung open began to close, and that initial institutional system evolved into the one we have today, a system that continues to reflect an ancient ethnic and patriarchal advantage.

In the novel, “The Healing” by Jonathan O’Dell, set on a cotton plantation in pre-Civil War Mississippi, a young slave girl named Granada is apprenticed to a mixed-race, midwife and healer named Mother Polly. Mother Polly was purchased by the master to intervene in the cholera epidemic, which was wiping out his “stock” of slaves. Knowing abolition was on the horizon, the master wanted to treat his slaves well enough so that when freedom became an option, they’d have no need of it – a condition Mother Polly called being “freedom stupid.”

When Granada complained to Mother Polly that she didn’t want to leave the plantation to go to freedom-land, she asked, “Where was it, anyway?” It isn’t a place, Mother Polly told her, it’s a way of being.

This story is such a great metaphor for the church. Church isn’t a place. It’s a way of being. We don’t go to church. We are the church, the body of Christ in the world.

In the reading from Acts, Peter quotes the prophet Joel who declares God’s intention to pour out Their divine Spirit onto ALL flesh: sons and daughters, men and women, old and young, slave and free. This is that time, Peter proclaims. Emmanuel family, I proclaim to you now, this is still that time because God is still redeeming. God is always redeeming.

Like young Granada, however, so many in the church, unable to comprehend the magnitude of the freedom of God’s spirit and trust its power to transform us, our community, and even the world, choose to be “salvation stupid,” turning away and choosing to fall back into a spirit of fear as St. Paul said.

We look back at the pre-Civil War era and wonder how Christians could ever have believed that kidnapping and enslaving humans, snatching babies from their mother’s breasts, and children from their innocence; working people to near exhaustion, and killing them as if they weren’t humans, was in any way in keeping with Jesus’ commandments to love. Looking at our current news reports leads me to wonder the same thing about us today.

Thankfully, God is still redeeming. God is always redeeming until “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” God continually sends forth God’s own Spirit to create and re-create the world; and God has chosen us as partners in this work, making manifest on earth the eternal truth that God is love, and we ALL are God’s beloveds.

This is a tremendous gift, one that often overwhelms us, but when we gather together, the bits of God’s Spirit in each of us unites with the bits of God’s spirit in all of us, and the fullness of God is made manifest through us on the earth.

Even with all our imperfections, we can, by the grace and Spirit of God, be prophetic and revelatory of the loving God we serve in small and big ways. One small way we are doing this is the display of PRIDE flags on our church property. We used to have one flag on a pole next to a metal sign out front. That flag was stolen, and our pole was destroyed. In response, we screwed PRIDE flags onto the two metal signs on our property that are awaiting refurbishment. Those signs will soon have permanent PRIDE flags as a continuing, prophetic witness to our love for our LGBTQIA2S+ siblings in Christ.

Happy birthday to the church in our continual becoming... and Happy PRIDE Month. Amen.

Fst of the Ascension & Wear Orange Sunday, 2025: The unitive community of God

Lectionary: Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53

 

En el nombre de Dios, nuestra vida, nuestra protección, y nuestra paz… In the name of God, our life, our protection, and our peace. Amen. 

The confluence of the Feast of the Ascension and Wear Orange Sunday may seem odd at first. It did to me - until I listened for the Spirit and realized that the need for Wear Orange Sunday is a consequence of the spiritual issue raised in the Feast of the Ascension. I’ll explain…

We often approach this story of the ascension like a movie. In this movie, we see the disciples hanging out with post-resurrection Jesus on the beach (which is from John, btw, not Luke). Jesus is demonstrating that he is real by eating with them. Everyone knows that ghosts can’t eat fish.

As they dine, Jesus reminds them that John the Baptist told them that Jesus would baptize them with the Spirit and fire, and Jesus says this would happen for them in just a few days. Then he commissions them as witnesses of all these things, instructing them to stay together until the Holy Spirit of God acts again, empowering them.

Then he blesses them and is carried up by a cloud into heaven. Two men in white (presumably angels) appear and ask the disciples why they are staring up toward heaven. They tell the disciples that Jesus, who “has been separated from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."

Ever since, we’ve been waiting for Jesus to float back down from heaven on a cloud and fix (or end) the world once and for all.

End of movie. Sound about right?

The thing is, the Scripture tells a very different story - a story that is harder to tell, so we simplified it, combining bits of Scripture with explanations that made sense. Then we began to believe that this simplified version was the real story.

The real story in Scripture is about how Almighty God, who is Trinity in Unity, guided the disciples in their journey of faith; a journey that led them from fear to great joy; from the darkness of their limited human understanding to enlightened hearts.

It’s the same journey we’re on now, so this matters. Let’s retell this story with a little more context from Luke, without simplifying it.

Jesus has died, and the last everyone knew, he was in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Then the women come and announce that the tomb is empty, but the disciples didn’t believe the women, calling their proclamation an idle tale.

Then two of the disciples head out on the road to Emmaus, where they encounter the risen Christ. They don’t know it’s him until he breaks bread with them. Afterwards, they remembered how their hearts were on fire as he opened their minds to understand Scripture.

Next, these two find the eleven and as they’re telling them of their experience with the risen Christ, Jesus appears to them all and invites them to touch him, “for a ghost does not have flesh and bones.” The disciples were at once disbelieving and still wondering, so meeting them where they are, Jesus says to them, "Have you anything… to eat?" This is where today’s gospel picks up the story.

Jesus reminds the disciples of his earlier teaching that everything in the law of Moses must be fulfilled. Jesus opens their minds to understand how he is the fulfillment, and commissions them to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sin in his name, starting in Jerusalem and going out to the whole world.

He tells them to stay together during this liminal time, until they are “clothed with power from on high.” I love the definition from the Greek of the word “power” as it is used here. It is “the ability to effect all the purposes of rectitude and wisdom.” How’s that?!

This promised power that God will place within us, around and over us, will be evident to others - like clothing that identifies the work of its wearer. This power will be the ability to bring about God’s intent through righteousness (that is, right relationship with God and others); with experience, knowledge, and judgment that proceeds from our unitive relationship with God, a relationship of common purpose and action.

Then Jesus blesses them and is carried up into heaven, but he did not float out of their sight. The original Greek says that while he was blessing them, he was offered up, the way a sacrifice is lifted up and placed on an altar, bearing their sins by imputation.

“Heaven” in Greek means sky, but it also means “the dwelling place of God,” and it includes the entire cosmos, heaven, earth, and all that there is. It isn’t a location being described, it’s an expanded understanding: God who is all in all.

And they worshipped him - a startling statement, because only God is worshipped. This means that the new understanding given to them by God is that Jesus isn’t just a really great rabbi and teacher. He’s a divine reality, God Incarnate, who brings salvation by the forgiveness of sin and reconciliation to God. This new understanding filled them with so much joy, they couldn’t stop praising God together in their community of faith.

This is the end of the gospel version, but Luke tells the story again in the first chapter of Acts to the non-specified “Theophilus,” which means “friend of God,” filling in some details. For example, in the Acts story, Luke says Jesus reminded them of his teaching that they would be baptized with fire, which would happen just a few days from then. Fire, of course, is Bible-talk for the presence of God, and this points to Pentecost.

The disciples ask Jesus, When are you going to fix this and restore the kingdom of Israel? Knowing that they still are unable to perceive the bigger picture that salvation is for the whole world for all time, and not just for them in this moment in their history, Jesus responds by telling them they can’t know the seasons of the movement of the plan of God. That is beyond human ability.

But they will be given power when the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Trinity, comes upon them, literally breathes on them, empowering them to be Jesus’ witnesses, proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sin in his name, starting in Jerusalem and going out to the whole world.

As Jesus said this, he was lifted up and this time, a cloud took him from their sight. A cloud symbolizes divine action that is beyond human understanding. Luke is saying that the disciples’ current understanding of Jesus, was taken from them by divine action, and a new, deeper, broader understanding was about to be given them.

So, the Scriptural story of the Ascension is about the disciples on whom God acted, bringing them to a deeper, divinely inspired understanding of Jesus, our Scripture, and their common purpose with God. We are now, as they were then, endued with this same power by the Holy Spirit.

How does all this tie into Wear Orange Sunday? Our current society seems to be in a continual state of fear and anxiety. Guns represent, to some, the ability to control one’s life and protect oneself, and we want unfettered access to these. I will survive, even if I have to kill you.

But when we are in the unitive relationship with God in Christ established by Jesus at his Ascension, our minds are opened and our hearts are enlightened, so we know we have a common purpose with God. We know that we are not alone and are protected by God.

We hear Jesus’ continual reminder: “Do not be afraid. Do not let your hearts be troubled.” We live as part of the unitive community of God, a community of all nations and peoples, so we don’t need to protect ourselves at the expense of another member of the community of God.

Every single experience we have on this earth enables us to continue to invite God to open our minds and enlighten our hearts even more, further empowering us to trust and participate in the bigger picture of God’s loving plan of reconciliation for the whole world. We can, therefore, stop worrying about ourselves, our survival, and our present moment in history.

Instead, we can get on with our work: witnessing the love of Christ by our words and our lives; living in a community that is expanded to include all whom God has made, just as God made them; praising God continually together, and knowing by faith, not by human understanding, that God’s judgment is forgiveness and reconciliation through Jesus Christ.

When we share that good news in the world, we make space for others to accept God’s forgiveness, healing, change the course of their lives, and live as one with us in the unitive community of God. Amen.

6 Easter, 2025-C: The promises of God in Christ

Lectionary: Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29

 

En el nombre de Dios, quien promete vida, paz, protección y provisión. In the name of God, who promises life, peace, protection, and provision. Amen. 

Fronn the season of Epiphany until now, we’ve been reading about the spiritual development and maturation of the disciples and connecting what we learn from them to us, for example, how each journey is unique to the journeyer, how God is steadfastly present with us, meeting us where we are and leading us to where we need to be; how our spiritual maturation is a process that is enriched and developed over time - God’s time; how we hit walls on this journey and how God leads us through them to new freedom, new understanding, and new depths of our faith.

In last week’s gospel, we saw how Peter finally got it… through a dream. Hesitant, at first, to violate a long-held habit and understanding of necessary separation, Peter responded to God’s prompting and opened himself to connect with persons previously forbidden to him. Thus began his powerful, productive life of faith and evangelism. 

In today’s gospel, Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, undergoes a similar growth experience also from a dream. Paul is clear about his divine purpose. He knows he is being sent by God in Christ to carry the Good News to the Gentiles and to expand the boundaries of the family of God to include them. But as this story shows us, even knowing our divine purpose doesn’t prevent us from hitting walls. Paul went to the Roman colony mentioned in his dream. He anticipated meeting a man, but instead, he met Lydia of Thyatira, a woman - a rich, astute business woman. 

If you know Paul, you know the nature of this wall he hit. With God’s help, however, Paul responded toLydia’s eager listening of his proclamation by baptizing her entire household, making them the first European converts to Christianity. But when Lydia invited Paul to stay at her home, he hit another wall: a Jewish religious leader staying at the home of a Gentile woman…? The writer tells us Lydia prevailed upon Paul, having to persuade Paul to accept her offer of hospitality. 

In this moment, however, we understand what the writer of Revelation meant when he said, “On either side of the river [of the water of life] - the Jewish side and the Gentile side - is the tree of life,” which in the original Greek means, “collective.” The two sides are mafe one.

That’s the work of God among us, then and now. It is our work too - the work God calls us to do until the whole world is reconciled to God. We have much to do, and we do it as the church, the body of Christ in the world. 

Church is a collective enterprise. We gather not to reassure ourselves that we’re on the path to heaven after we die, but rather, to learn and grow together so that we can go into the world and BE the presence of the path to heaven, which is God in Christ. What do I mean by that? Several things: 

1 - I mean that heaven isn’t a prize we earn after we die. Heaven is the reality of the eternal God in the present moment, living in us.  Jesus said, “my Father (Note: this word is plural, meaning Father and Mother, nourisher, protector, upholder) will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. “With them”here literally means “proceeding from them.” God is in us, acting through us. That is the primary promise of this gospel story.

The one whom God promises will proceed from us is the Holy Spirit of God. Spirit means breath, in Hebrew, ruach. This same ruach that breathed life into all creation, including the first humans, continues to breathe life into us now, and through us, into the world. 

2 - I mean that our church community is meant to be a safe place for us to learn and practice how to be people through whom God acts in the world. We listen together in the circumstances we confront, for the guidance of the Holy Spirit on how we can respond, bringing God’s peace, harmony, and well-being into the world where there is fear, hatred, and distress. 

3 - I mean that as we grow in spiritual maturity in our relationship with God in Christ, we remember that the love Jesus is talking about in this gospel is agape love: a deeply committed, sacrificial love, just like he had for us. A love that led him to the cross, the tomb, and the resurrection for our sake, so that we could believe and become witnesses for him, as Peter and Paul did.

God in Christ, who has agape love for us, abides in us right now, and acts through us to bring this love to all the broken people and places in the world just as he did. Knowing how this feels from his own human experience, Jesus promises us one more thing: his peace. 

When this gospel was written, there was peace. It was known as the Pax Romana… a peace established by the strength of the Roman military, funded by oppressive taxation, and maintained through threat of punishment and the ever-presence of soldiers. This is the peace the world gives. 

Jesus is offering a totally different kind of peace. Jesus’ peace proceeds from our harmony with the eternal God who abides in us.

This peace provides a foundation of well-being, tranquility, and hope, that isn’t disturbed by any circumstances. In fact, this peace transcends all external circumstances as it lifts us continually into the loving presence of God who protects us, provides for us, and holds us close to comfort us, while the powerful love of God works to redeem those external circumstances.

When sin and conflict happen, and they will continue to happen, Jesus says, ‘Remember that I am with you, my peace is with you. So, fear not. Don’t let your hearts be troubled. I am eternally present with you. Love as I love, go where I send you, listen when I speak in your dreams or give you visions, open your eyes to see the truth around you, then work with me to transform the systems of the world that harm my beloved ones and my creation.’ 

All of this may take longer than we’d like, or look different than we’d expected, but our faith assures us that God, who always acts out of love and mercy for us and for the world, will redeem all things. That is the promise. 

So... presence, peace, patience, guidance, provision, comfort, protection, redemption, mercy, and love… these are the promises of God, and they truly do exceed all that we can ask, imagine, or desire. 

I close with a familiar prayer by American theologian and monk, Thomas Mertom. Let's pray.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. 

Amen.