2nd Easter, 2020: Touch the divine

Lectionary: Acts 2:14a,22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31



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En el nombre del Dios: creador, redentor, y sactificador. Amen.

Whenever I read that text from our first reading from Acts, where Peter is preaching, I get a knot in my stomach. I’m not sure I’ll ever preach as bravely as Peter did. I mean, he basically said to them: you killed the Messiah of God. He followed that, of course with the Good News that God raised him up and that it was impossible for death to hold Jesus in its power… but my experience as a preacher tells me folks would probably stop listening if I accused them of killing a ministry, much less the Lord!

In his epistle, Peter takes a gentler, pastoral approach, blessing God by whose mercy we are given a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What a beautiful turn of phrase that is: new birth into a living hope.

What’s different about this hope is that it isn’t a memory or even a promise. This hope is a living reality. It is part of us, as alive as the cells of our bodies and the blood in our veins. The living hope we have through the resurrection of Jesus transforms our individual and communal suffering into the outcome of our faith: oneness in God.

This hope acts on us and through us into the world where redemption is in process. You see, we live in the era of the-already-but-not-yet, that is, the time after Jesus inaugurated the reconciliation of the whole world to God by his resurrection, and before it’s completion when he comes again. This already-but-not-yet time is characterized by continuing transformation - of ourselves, our communities, and in fact, of the whole creation.

We see this kind of individual and community transformation in our gospel story today which tells us of the earliest Christian community hiding out together in that upper room in fear. We can only imagine the hopelessness they must have felt having just witnessed the execution of their Messiah. Suddenly, that very Messiah, Jesus, is present among them, despite the locked doors.

The resurrected Jesus breathes his Spirit on the disciples calling to mind God breathing life into Adam in Genesis; but in that case, God breathed life into one. In this case, God in Christ breathes new life into the whole community. As we hear in Eucharistic Prayer D: “And, that we might live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us, he sent the Holy Spirit, his own first gift for those who believe, to complete his work in the world, and to bring to fulfillment the sanctification of all.” (BCP, 375)

The sanctification of all.

Receive the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, infusing them with the power to forgive as he forgave. This is important because Jesus brought about salvation by the forgiveness of sin. Now he was equipping his followers to continue his work.

Jesus taught them about the responsibility that comes with receiving the power of forgiveness: what you do on earth will be done in heaven. If you forgive what separates and divides, it will be reconciled. If you don’t, it won’t.

This isn’t about ecclesial power they could wield in the world, it’s about the disciples’ responsibility to keep the new covenant of reconciliation by serving the way Jesus had done, and this is how Jesus did it: as he was dying on the cross, the embodiment of human-divine love forgave, reconciling even those who killed him into the community of divine love.

We, the present-day followers of Jesus, who have the Spirit of Christ in us, must also practice forgiveness, the radical forgiveness Jesus practiced as he died on his cross, the kind of forgiveness that advances and expands the community of divine love on earth.

Then the Gospel story takes a different turn, informing us that the disciple Thomas, poor Thomas, missed the whole thing. He missed Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit on them. He missed Jesus’ teaching about what that meant; and when the others told him of their experience, it must have sounded like a collaborative fantasy or a shared hallucination. I won’t believe the things you say, Thomas insisted, unless I see it for myself.

That’s the set-up, anyway. I think Jesus intentionally picked that precise moment to appear to his disciples knowing that Thomas wouldn’t be there; and I think he did that for us who would have to come to believe without being able to see.

Like Thomas, so many of us just aren’t there at first. Our friends seem to know and experience something about God we don’t and it leaves us feeling different or alone in the midst of our community.

The Good News in this gospel story, however, is that Jesus will come again, just as he did for Thomas. Jesus will meet us at the place of our doubt and invite us to touch the divine.

We don’t know if Thomas actually touched Jesus or if he was transformed simply by seeing Jesus and hearing Jesus’ invitation to him; but Thomas’ response gives voice to a universal sigh that echoes through the generations each time someone is finally penetrated by a true experience of unity with God in Jesus: My Lord and my God!

Such powerful words.

The Season of Easter reminds us that we have been transformed as individuals and as a community through the resurrection of Jesus. We have been given the gift of living hope and we are called to show forth in our lives what we profess by our faith - that through the resurrection of Jesus, our present suffering can be transformed into the outcome of our faith: oneness in God.

Just think on what that could mean for us today. The whole world is suffering a shared trauma: the coronavirus. This shared suffering has made us a global family in a way nothing ever has before. All national, religious, and class boundaries mean nothing. This virus strikes people in all countries, the good and the bad, the rich and the poor, believers and unbelievers.

The living hope we possess opens up the possibility that our present suffering can be transformed into the outcome of our faith: oneness in God. Global oneness. What a grace! What a hope!

Still, I am hearing of people beginning to wear out as the length of time in isolation continues on with no apparent end in sight. Sadness, loneliness, and depression are beginning to creep in, but that’s to be expected.

If isolation has taught us anything it’s that we need community. We need one another and God is already showing us how to be community even as we isolate.

Using the gifts of technology, we can gather together. If someone doesn’t know how, someone else can teach them. If someone doesn’t have the equipment, there are ways to get it. The church makes charitable purchases all the time. All we need is someone paying attention so the needs of the one can be known and met by the community.

The gospel assures us that whenever we fall into doubt or gloom, Jesus will come to us. It may be that he comes to us in the person of a friend who reaches out, or maybe in a quiet moment of prayer, or in a dream while we sleep.

In whatever way it happens, our living hope assures us that Jesus will meet us where we are, invite us to touch the divine, and restore us to wholeness. He will do this continually for us as individuals and in our communities until the whole world is living as one in God.

Amen.

The Great Vigil of Easter, 2020: Subversive hope

Lectionary: Genesis 1:1-2:4a [The Story of Creation]; Isaiah 55:1-11 [Salvation offered freely to all]; Ezekiel 37:1-14 [The valley of dry bones]; then Romans 6:3-11; Psalm 114; Matthew 28:1-10



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En el nombre del Dios: creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen.

The night before he was murdered in Memphis, TN, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech. It turned out to be a prophetic speech as he was assassinated the next day.

Here is the last paragraph of that speech: “Well, I don't know what will happen now; we've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter to with (sic) me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life – longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I'm happy tonight; I'm not worried about anything; I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” (Source)

Like most prophets, Dr. King was a subversive. He challenged the established system and its practices which held African Americans in the bondage of racism. Dr. King’s message was subversive because it was a message of hope, of inclusion, of God’s unfailing love for all and as theologian Walter Bruggeman says, “Hope is subversive.”

As a prophet, Dr. King gave hope not only to African-Americans but to all Americans. He assured us that despite all appearances and the entrenched practices of the established system, we could live together as one people, in freedom and in unity. He knew this because he had “seen the Promised Land.”

Our current moment is uncertain. We don’t know what will happen and how many of us will die from this virus. So, as we continue this journey together, it is up to us to embody the hope we know in Jesus Christ by going and telling, by continuing our work discovering where the established system is oppressive and working to set those captives free.

If this moment in time offers us anything, it’s this, isn’t it? Who has health care and who doesn’t? Why? Who gets the tests and ventilators, both in short supply? Freedom takes sacrifice; and if it is to be achieved, both the oppressed and the oppressor must work together to break the bonds that deny freedom.

Each age has a Promised Land to reach, a place where the oppressed and the oppressor are reconciled and live together in unity and harmony. In the beginning, Moses led the oppressed people of God out of Egypt into freedom in Canaan. In the 1960s Dr. King led us all toward racial freedom. Today, we embody hope in Christ in the uncertainty and fear caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

It’s a pattern that’s part of our spiritual DNA and one our Savior made eternally true for us. On the day Jesus stood up in the grave, shook loose his burial linens, and left that tomb empty, he made marching to the Promised Land a continual journey for us until his coming again because resurrection isn’t about bodies or breathing. It’s about presence. God is present before, during, and after our understanding of anything.

We proclaim our hope in the eternal, living presence of God - and that hope, as Bruggeman said, is subversive. God, whose mercy endures forever, who is our strength and salvation, is always with us, IN us, redeeming all things sometimes before we even recognize the need for it. In fact, that’s how we often recognize the need for it.

God is sending us on another march to another Promised Land. As we go, it helps to remember that God shows no partiality. God didn’t pick Peter because he was so astute. Right? Yet look at Peter’s legacy. God created Peter, gifted him, and sent him to live out his purpose. And Peter did that – in all his imperfection.

God chooses each of us too. We were created for a purpose and that purpose is simple: to do God’s will. And what is God’s will? According to our catechism, Episcopalians believe that it is the will of God that the whole world be reconciled to God in Jesus Christ by the forgiveness of sins.

Reconciled people live in harmony and unity with one another and with God. The final destination of every march to every Promised Land is always reconciliation.

Sin is what separates us from God and one another. New life in Christ restores us to right relationship with God and one another, and all we have to do is remember - and by remember, I mean “re-member.”

To re-member is to reattach, the way a surgeon reattaches a severed body part. The re-attachment has to be whole – from the inside out or it won’t work. All the tissues, all the nerves, all the blood vessels have to be connected so that the blood of life can flow into that new part.

Our purpose as Christians is to ‘re-member.’ To find the one who is oppressed or exiled or lost, and reattach them to the body of Christ, reminding them and everyone who would exclude them that God shows no partiality, which means, neither can we.

Jesus Christ is the Lord of all – no exceptions. It isn’t, Jesus Christ is Lord of all, except for the atheists… or the gays… or the women, or the unchurched. Jesus is Lord of all. Paul says he died once for all – and that includes you, and it includes me, and it includes everyone we meet. (Ro 6:10)

We re-member when we love God, ourselves, and our neighbors, even our enemies. Dr. King was good at that and gave us a wonderful modern example in modern life of how that looks.

I had a discussion recently with my daughter who told me about an online argument she’d been having with some of her Christian friends who kept bringing up Bible verses to support their position. (It doesn’t even matter what the topic was). Here was my daughter’s response (and I can’t make a better point on Easter Eve than this):

She said, “All those words [in the Bible] are different ways of illustrating one message: lovelovelovelovelove. God is love. Period. You don't have to understand it. You don't have to agree with it. You can try to collect all the rules you want, and I'm sure that's a comfort. It's just not the point. I will say it until I die: God is love.”

We gather at this Great Vigil to re-member the power of the truth that God is love. Love that never dies. Love that dwells in us and calls us to be partners in the continuing work of redemption.

We may have some difficult days ahead, but it doesn't matter because our faith assures us that God is love, Christ is risen, and the Holy Spirit dwells in us.

As Dr. King said, …We, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So we are happy tonight and we are not worried about anything. Amen. Alleluia!

Good Friday, 2020: It's taking too long

Lectionary: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42



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It’s taking too long. The restrictions on our freedom from sheltering-in-place, the lack of personal contact with friends and loved ones, the constant hand-washing and not touching our faces… How long until this is over? It’s taking too long.

Even beyond the Coronavirus, when we look around us, the church seems to be fracturing more not less. The world is no closer now to living in harmony than it has ever been.

It’s all taking too long.

But that’s the nature of life as a believer - being willing to wait on God and trusting that no matter how things look right now, God’s plan for us is perfect and perfectly loving.

As Jesus walked the Via Dolorosa (the Way of Sadness), he was an exemplar of faithful obedience – and we are called to follow his example, for as long as it takes.

Jesus walked carrying a heavy burden that wasn’t even his own - it was ours - yet on he went. He fell from the weight of this burden – not once, but three times. He needed help carrying the burden. He sought the loving face of his mother to sustain him as he walked this terrible path. And he never stopped loving us, even as his flesh was torn and when the nails pierced him, even as he struggled to breathe.

It took too long. The reason the Romans used crucifixion as their chosen corporal punishment is because it was slow and painful. It took very long.

When I was 16 years old, Life Magazine did a story on Mother Theresa of Calcutta that changed my life. It showed pictures of Mother Theresa bending over people covered with oozing sores and skin diseases. She bent close and tended to their wound and whispered comfort to them. The interviewer asked Mother Theresa why she wasn’t worried about catching what these people had. Her response changed my life. Mother Theresa responded: “In the face of each of these I see the face of my Savior, Jesus Christ.”

The risk we face as modern Christians is making this all a movie that plays in our minds and not in our lives. We can share real emotion watching this movie in our minds, but we remain safely distant from the reality of it. Mother Theresa showed us how to make it real – how to find the face of Jesus all around us, not distant from us.

The truth is suffering always takes too long - especially when we’re the ones suffering. When someone cries out to us from their suffering and we respond, we expect to do our good deed and be done with it. If that person continues to need or suffer, we may give one or two more times, but then we get impatient. We begin to blame them – or use the very convenient (and over-used) excuse of not wanting to “enable” them. The truth is, what we really want is freedom from their suffering. It’s beginning to take too long.

In his book “Love Wins,” author Rob Bell says this: "What the gospel does is confront our version of our story with God's version of our story." And in God’s version of our story, redemption comes by the death of the Messiah on a Roman cross. Innocent of any crime, Jesus willingly gave everything - so that the will of God would prosper.

And what is the will of God? Salvation for the whole world – the WHOLE world. That could take a long time.

In the meantime, we are called to gather together to worship God,” not neglecting to meet together, even in our new online formats,” because we can’t do this alone. We need God and each other as we walk the way that has been set before us, remembering that it won’t be quick or easy.

When we find ourselves impatient with problems that just won’t go away or when we hear ourselves saying, “this is taking too long;” we need only look up and see the broken body of Jesus on the cross to remember, God is at work redeeming all things even when we can’t see how. Who could have imagined the resurrection at the moment of the crucifixion?

God is already acting to redeem, everything and everyone. God’s plan for us is perfect and perfectly loving, and it takes time.

Amen.

Lent 4: Wake up and see the blessings

Lectionary:1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41



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En el nombre del Dios: creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen.

My dear friends, we can’t gather in person today but, giving thanks for the technology of our age, we can gather virtually: one blessing among many being revealed to us in this time. As our bishops said in their most recent pastoral letter, “Keep awake.” Yes, we must keep awake so that we notice the graciousness of God who continually blesses us, and when we notice these blessings we can share them as good news, light in the time of darkness for so many.

This is basically the same message Samuel is hearing in today’s Old Testament reading. Wake up, Samuel. Stop looking back at what was. I know you grieve the loss of it, but look! I am sending you a blessing, a leader who will bring you forward into the life I choose for you, a life of peace and abundance.

A life so tenderly described for us in the 23rd Psalm where God calls our attention from the stresses of the world and invites us to come, to lie down and rest on the soft grass beside the still waters God has created for us. Once God has our attention, the calm begins to happen in us. Our breathing slows, our faces relax, the knots in our stomachs and chests release. We breathe deeply in - filling ourselves with the grace of God. Then we breathe out, releasing all our stress.

Now wrapped up in divine peace, we notice a beautiful table has been set for us, but not just for us. Also present are those who trouble us, but the divine peace within us keeps us from judging or questioning or excluding.

We sit together at tables covered in fresh, white linens. The flames of the candles on the tables dance in the soft breeze but never go out, and the tables are decorated with vases of fragrant flowers and herbs.

Sumptuous food is in the center of each table; and there are goblets of water and wine, already full, at every seat. It’s a family meal where no one is lonely, no one is left out of the conversation, and everyone has plenty to eat. Our cups are running over, and joy abounds.

Then, to prove just how much we matter God anoints our heads with oil - something usually reserved for kings and queens but is being offered by God to all. At that moment, when the oil touches our foreheads, we feel the power of God’s love enter us and course through our bodies like light breaking into darkness. The anointing reveals to us that all of us have been chosen by God to lead the world to this gracious place where everyone can be filled with the peace of God, where all are made one in the family of God.

This is what Jesus is demonstrating in today’s gospel from John. The man born blind would have been judged as cursed, punished by God for a sin someone else committed. But Jesus reframes the situation, revealing the blessing the others weren’t seeing, as if he were saying, wake up, and see the blessing.

This man was born blind. You have judged him, questioned his circumstance, and excluded him from your grace; but through him the graciousness of God will be revealed.

The ritual is simple, as were all of Jesus' rituals. He combines mud, the unglamorous substance of the earth with the life-giving water of Christ’s own self. Earth and heaven are made one in this outcast.

Go and wash, Jesus tells the man, and when he does, his sight is restored. By restoring his sight, Jesus also offers the man a whole new future. He has the potential for a job, a family, to be part of a community. His days as a vilified sinner are over - or are they?

The gospel story takes us to his community’s response to his restoration. They judge him, question Jesus’s revelation of God through him, and they exclude him again. The blessing God was giving them is rejected because the people wouldn’t let go of what was in order to receive the new life God was offering them.

We do this too. We’re subject to doing it now in this pandemic moment, which is why I’ve been asking everyone to watch for the blessings. Keep awake! God is always giving us reason to rejoice.

My vestments today are an outward sign of our commitment to that belief. Today is the 4th Sunday in Lent, also known as Laetare or Rose Sunday (hence the pink vestments). “Laetare” is Latin for “rejoice” and we pause our Lenten season to collectively lift up our faces to the light of Christ, rejoicing that he lives in us and we in him.

Throughout our long history, the church has gathered to ritually practice this reality through the sharing of Holy Communion, making present in our time what Jesus did in his: gathering his friends together for a simple meal of bread and wine. But in Jesus’ hands and by his prayers, that simple food became holy food, the food of life.

“Evermore give us this bread that Christ may live in us and we in him.”

Since the way we’ve always done it before has become suddenly unavailable we - the church and all of us who are members of it - have the opportunity to wake up and see the blessings God is offering us in this.

Last week, Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well: “…the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth… God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

This hour is our version of the hour Jesus spoke about - and it is here. It is now. As we prepare to share our Holy Communion virtually, we do it awake, noticing the blessing that even during a time of quarantine God invites us to eat and drink of the holy food of Communion which makes us one body, one Spirit in Christ.

As we prepare for our virtual Holy Communion I offer this prayer, adapted from the prayer of St. Alphonsus de Liguori (1696–1787):

Beloved Jesus, I believe that you are truly present in the sacrament of the altar. I long for you in my soul, to know that I am in you and that you are in me. Though physically isolated from your altar and the sacrament of your Body and Blood, I receive you spiritually into my heart and the depths of my being. United with you, help me know that my life is hid with you, O Christ, in the heart of God. Amen. (Edited by The Rev. Dr. Rob Voyle)

Lent 3A,2020: Our Lord, our love, and our life

Lectionary: Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11;John 4:5-42




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En el nombre del Dios: creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen.

I’m not sure I could have chosen a better Collect to begin our worship today. As we and the whole church seek to respond to coronavirus pandemic, the Spirit has offered us this prayer to remind us that faith is a partner with science for us; both of them being gifts to us from God who is, in the end, the only one who can protect us and make us whole.

When we are rattled by something over which we have little to no control, we believers have the gift of faith to help us wait for redemption. In the meantime, we are called to notice, give thanks for, and respond to the blessings surfacing for us like flowers shooting out from cracks in the sidewalk. For example, I’ve listened to rectors and interims talk for years about the resistance to letting go the practice of intinction, despite credible and consistent information from medical experts about how unhealthy and risky a practice it is. Yet, in this coronavirus moment, the information we’ve had and preached for years about intinction is finally being heard and accepted, and intinction is, hopefully, gone for good.

As a pastor, I’ve noticed that the challenging moments of our lives, whether physical or spiritual, can strengthen our faith even when it weakens it first. I think of our beloved mystic Julian of Norwich who suffered terrible physical ailments, but didn’t judge or fear or disconnect from them. Instead, she faithfully awaited the revelation of the blessing in them, and as a result, experienced Christ in ways that completely transformed her, leading her to her famous description of Christ the Mother of Mercy: “And even though some earthly mother might allow a child of hers to perish, our heavenly mother, Jesus, may never suffer us to be lost, for we are his children. And he is almighty, all wisdom, all love… For now, he wants us to behave just like a child; for when a child is upset or afraid, it runs straight to its mother with all its might.”

What a lovely description of our relationship to God. When we are hurt or afraid, our Creator wants us to run, as a toddler runs, with all its might, into the divine embrace.

In her description of her vision of the hazelnut, Julian speaks to what we prayed in the Collect in which we ask God to keep us in body and soul. She says, “I saw three properties about this tiny object. First, God had made it; second, God loves it; and third, that God keeps it…he is the Maker, the Keeper, the Lover… I understood this revelation to teach our soul to cling fast to the goodness of God…what delights him most, is when we pray simply trusting his goodness, holding on to him, relying upon his grace.”

In his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus demonstrates the way earth and heaven relate for those who believe. Choosing to stop at the well of Jacob to rest the Word Incarnate, engages a Samaritan woman in a redemptive conversation.

Both Jesus and the Samaritan woman would know of the legend that when the water first rose up in Jacob’s well, it bubbled over the top, spilling out as a bold demonstration of the abundance of God. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that he offers water that will gush up to eternal life!.

Then he demonstrates his divine-human nature by asking the woman to go home and return with her husband. She replies that she has no husband, and Jesus affirms that saying, you’ve had five, and the one you’re with now is not your husband. Even by today’s standards, that would turn religious heads, but what’s remarkable here is that Jesus knows this about her - and doesn’t judge her!

I think it’s important to look at a few other things Jesus doesn’t do in this story. Jesus doesn’t exclude the woman according to her categories: Samaritan, woman, married 5 times, living “in sin”… He doesn’t ask her to repent or change the situation of her life; and he doesn’t forbid her from proclaiming the huge news he hasn’t even told his disciples yet – that he is the Messiah of God.

This woman, who has no name, no fame, and no legacy except this story, is the first person to whom the Christ reveals himself. She rushes home, leaving her water jar behind in her haste, and proclaims this good news to her people, and, as our gospel writer tells us, “many Samaritans came to believe in him because of her testimony.” (39)

The Samaritan woman was transformed by her encounter with the grace of God in Christ and through her, her community was too. What she did is what all of us, all churches and members of them, are called to do: to share our story of how our lives have been transformed by our encounter with the grace of God in Jesus Christ. When we share our good news with others, the redemptive love of God gushes forth from us reaching farther and farther beyond us in the overflow.

Despite what we may see and hear to the contrary in the world today, it is not our job to save the world or even to save ourselves. Only God can save and Jesus has already done that. We have been asked to partner with Christ in the continuing work of redemption by telling our good news, by living as if we truly believe our good news, by clinging fast to the goodness of God, and by trusting God to “keep us outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls.”

We’re all aware that few things give Episcopalians the hee-bee gee-bees more than evangelism. Part of that is our sensitivity to how it’s been done wrong, but evangelism is vital to the continuing life of any church. Churches don’t grow because they possess the right doctrine or because they have well-done liturgies or even because of their budgets or programs. Churches grow because one person connects with another person and another person and the divine in each of them unites them into one body, one spirit.

It is in this divine union that we work together as partners with God in redemption.

The world needs the good news we have to share in a big way right now. When we and our churches we cling fast to the goodness of God, when we trust the source of the eternal spring of water that gives us life, it gushes up in us, bonding us in divine union in the eternal, redeeming presence of God, and spills out from us to the thirsty world we are called to serve.

Let us pray:

“Create in each one of us [ O God] a pool of peace, a deep well of healing that can transform [fear to faith,] bitterness to love,… irritation to tolerance, rejection to acceptance, and inadequacy to confidence…” Then empower us to share this good news of ours that your redeeming love may reach to the ends of the earth quenching all those who thirst and nourishing all creation from the spring of eternal life that is you, Jesus Christ our Lord, our love, and our life. Amen.

Lent 2-A, 2020: Seeds of new life

Lectionary: Genesis 12:1-4a, Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17



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En el nombre del Dios: creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen.

I share with you a story about a dog we once had named Ollie. Ollie was a Dachshund - Jack Russell mix. We loved our Ollie, but he must have gotten the DNA bearing the most difficult qualities of each of those breeds, and it made him… challenging.

Ollie was just doxie enough to make training him difficult, and he found himself in trouble a lot. Ollie knew when he’d done a bad thing, so he obeyed when we told him to go to time out, which meant he had to go into his crate for a time

Over time, Ollie would put himself in time out and we’d look around to see what he’d done. Eventually, he’d just walk in and right back out of his crate. He wasn’t really repentant and knew we’d forgive him anyway, so he didn’t bother spending any real time in time out. He just got the procedure over with.

I tell you this story because I’ve found that many people treat Lent the way Ollie treated time out. But Lent isn’t about punishment and it isn’t just going through the motions without really repenting, that is, being willing to be changed.

So what is Lent about? The word “Lent” means spring (are you surprised?) and it’s a time when new life is being formed in us, in the depths of our souls; and the one forming that new life is the same one who forms all life: God, whose glory it is always to have mercy, as our Collect says.

Medieval mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, talks about the “greening” of our souls which is, I think, a good image for Lent. I picture Hildegard’s concept like this: We go about our lives basically unaware that the demands and influences of the world have slowly but steadily dried up the soil of our souls leaving them hardened and with cracks like a dried-up river bed.

During Lent, we enter into a period of self-examination that brings to our awareness just how dry we’ve become – a revelation which brings with it the realization that we are unable to irrigate ourselves. There is almost a desperateness in this moment of revelation, a deep knowledge that without this irrigation, our souls will completely dry up and turn to dust.

But our faith assures us that it is from the dust we were created in the first place. So, we trust… and we wait… 40 days, and 40 nights.

At some point, the hands of our Creator reach into the soil of our souls, breaking through the dry surface. Then wetting our souls with living water from the well-spring of life, Jesus, the Christ, the Almighty ensures that the nutrient-rich, life-giving water reaches all the dry parts.

Into this divinely massaged soul-soil the Creator places the seeds of new life for us, sweeps the surface of the soil smooth, sprinkles on a bit more life-giving water, and asks us to wait while the seeds within us take root and grow.

So, you see, we don’t DO Lent. We let Lent happen in us – and we do that by faith.

This is exactly what our Gospel reading today is describing for us in the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus. What does one have to do to get born from above? Nicodemus is understandably confused, so Jesus assures him that what is born of the Spirit is spirit. In other words, you can’t do it. The Spirit of God does it in you. Just trust and let it happen by faith.

Then Jesus tells Nicodemus, don’t be astonished by that. Be astonished instead by this: God’s love for the world is such that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. That’s pretty astonishing when you think about it.

But wait, there’s more (as Mona Lisa Vito would say)! And it speaks to the character of God whose glory is always to have mercy: God didn’t send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

In the present day, this is such an important reminder. As partners with Christ in the work of reconciliation, we are not here to condemn the world or anyone in it but to “embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of Jesus Christ” and invite everyone we encounter into relationship with him through us.

As St. Paul reminds us, it isn’t our works but our faith in God’s works that enables us to be in right relationship with God, one another, and ourselves, and it depends on faith so that the promise rests on God’s grace and is guaranteed to all. We do not get to cast anyone outside the net of God’s love.

The time we set aside during Lent is our invitation to God to cultivate us and prepare us to live our divine purpose. Lent is not a time to wallow in the misery of our wretchedness as hopeless sinners as some would have us believe. We are not hopeless. We are redeemed!

And we don’t fast in order to suffer, or as punishment for sin. We fast to allow ourselves to experience emptiness. In the deep, dark center of ourselves, we willingly choose to make space for something new, something nourishing and life-giving that God will supply.

The hard work of Lent is emptying ourselves of all that already fills us. But emptiness scares us – the nothingness of it feels kind of like death, so we tend to avoid it. Knowing, however, that by our baptism we have entered into Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have no fear of death, not even the little ones - like the death of a habit, or the death of an idea we hold about God, ourselves, or our neighbors, or in the case of Calvary, the end of an era under the leadership of a beloved rector and the preparation for new life with a new rector.

Is the timing of this not perfect? God is good, all the time!

One final word about this: our Lenten practices aren’t about success or failure. We don’t score points for praying, fasting or giving alms, and we don’t get demerits for not doing those things. Remember, we don’t do Lent. We let it happen in us, choosing to make space for God to cultivate new life in us.

Let us pray.

Creator God, in your mercy and wisdom, you have brought us together in this time and place to love and serve according to your plan of love. Knead the soil of our souls with your life-giving spirit. We promise to welcome the seeds of new life you are planting in us now, even knowing this means change is upon us. Guide us that we may nourish those seeds and bear fruit that gives you glory and serves the welfare of all your people in our corner of your kingdom garden. In the name of our Savior, Jesus, the Christ, we pray this. Amen.

Epiphany 5, 20-A: Freely, bravely, and continually shine. Final Sermon

Lectionary: Isaiah 58:1-9a, [9b-12]; Psalm 112:1-9; 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, [13-16]; Matthew 5:13-20



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En el nombre del Dios: creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen.

I have such mixed feelings as I stand here today offering you a sermon on the Word of God for the last time. I’m grateful, however, that the lectionary for last week and this speak to my core message as a preacher. Last week we reflected on being set apart as holy, consecrated to God. This we reflect on being salt and light.

Salt has form and substance. Light exists beyond finite form. We are both - and that is the gift Jesus, the Incarnate Word, gave us. Today, Jesus encourages us to be what we are: salt and light.

So, what does it mean to be salt in this way? It helps to remember that salt was a valuable commodity in the ancient world. Not only does salt have the unique ability to enhance the flavor of food,it was also used to preserve food, which often meant preserving life.

Jesus said to his followers: You are the salt of the earth. You are a commodity of great value. You are an enhancer and preserver of life.

He also said, "You are the light of the world." Light is a familiar biblical term used throughout the extent of our Scripture. It is the light of God that shines from us to illumine the world - if we choose to be in that kind of relationship with God - and by this light the world comes to know the truth about God. When Jesus said, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works…” his Jewish listeners understood that he was talking about works of mercy and reconciliation, service to others, which glorifies God.

It’s interesting to notice Jesus says we are salt and light - not that we will be or we could be, but that we already are. Then he encourages us to own that and live it saying, “let your light shine before others so that they may see your good words and give glory to God.”

The prophet Isaiah describes exactly how that looks, reminding us that God isn’t as interested in the form and substance of our worship as in the way our worship forms our relationship with God and motivates us to live and serve in the name of God. Isaiah says, when we “loose the bonds of injustice… let the oppressed go free, and… break every yoke… [when we] share [our] bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into [our] house… “ when we cover the naked and make ourselves present to our sisters and brothers who suffer… “ Then [our] light [will] break forth like the dawn; then God will continually guide us, providing us with all we need including the strength to persist as repairers of the breach, restorers of life.

This is such an important reminder for churches today. We have all we need and what we lack God has ready to give us to live and serve in God’s name.

Churches and individuals are bombarded by the temptation to believe that our value is tied to our financial success, or our physical beauty, or the number of people we claim relationship with, such as, the number who attend on Sundays and the number who follow us as on social media.

There is a distressing cultural outcome of this: so many people who feel powerless or insignificant seek to assert that their lives matter by claiming a moment of fame in the mass destruction of other lives. It’s the only impact on the world they can devise. They have rejected - or never knew- that they are beloved of God and meant to be enhancers and preservers of life, not destroyers of it.

Priest and theologian, Henri Nouwen spoke prophetically to this long ago saying, Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved.’ Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”

This is why the church, the beloved community, matters. At some point in our lives, each of us is going to find ourselves tempted to forget our belovedness and descend into self-rejection. In those moments, the church is where we can go in our brokenness, our weakness, our doubt, and someone in the community will be radiating the light of Christ. Just standing near them is enough for their light to dispel our darkness and open our eyes and hearts to the truth of “core truth of our existence” again. The regular offering of worship enables us to be upheld in the prayers of the community when we can’t utter the words ourselves, when we aren’t even sure we believe a single bit of it.

When Jesus spoke this teaching, he was speaking to a community. The “you” was plural: “Y’all are the salt of the earth… Y’all are the light of the world…”

It is in community that we remember and own the truth of ours and everyone else’s belovedness and this sets us free from the bondage of earthly judgment and belief in scarcity. Then, as Nowen says, “Every time we encounter one another we [recognize that we are encountering] the sacred.”

Our church’s mission is to shine the light of the core truth of our existence until everyone believes it… and lives it… and glorifies God for it. Since it is light of God in Christ that shines from us, we don’t need a lot of members or money or programs to live and serve in God’s name. We already have all we need and what we lack is in readiness for us in the abundance of God. Knowing that - believing it - sets us completely free to live bravely and serve continually in God’s name, in whatever path God is guiding us in the present moment.

You are set apart as holy, consecrated to God. You are salt and light. I have seen your light and I can testify to it. I bless you and pray you freely, bravely, and continually let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to God.

Amen.