4 Lent, 2022-C: God is always present

Lectionary: Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 

En el nombre del Dios que es Trinidad en unidad. Amen. 

Today is Laetare Sunday as I mentioned at the start of our worship. In the English tradition, today is also known as "Mothering Sunday” when people return to worship at the church where they were baptized as a kind of check-in on their spiritual journey which began at baptism. The goal today is to remember that as our Lenten journey changes us, the disciplines we practice are meant to lead us to joy, to rejoice, which is what “laetare” means. 

As the joke goes: If you want to make God laugh, tell Her your plans. If the last two years have shown us anything, it’s that life can change on a dime and we have to continually rethink, redirect, and repent, that is, turn around and go another way. The good news is that God is always present showing us how to go just as God did for the Israelites in their exile.

As a people traditionally tied to the land, this wandering people had no laws to govern them, no traditions to sustain them. They had to figure it out as they went along – kind of like we are now.

The generation who began the journey into exile was now dead and gone and a new generation was arriving at their God-given destination. Honoring their forebears, the Israelites began re-instituting the traditions that proclaimed their identity and belief; but they did this as a new generation in a new place, with a new understanding. Again, this sounds like us right now.

Their time in the desert had revealed only part of the big picture of the will of God for them. The rest of the story (as Paul Harvey used to say) is found in the words of Jesus in today’s gospel from Luke.

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, Rabbi Jesus tells a wild story, filled with things that would make his listeners cringe. For example, a son asking his father for his share of the inheritance would be akin to a death wish; the image of a Jewish man, even a desperate one, wishing he could eat the slop of swine would be horror upon horror for a kosher people; and no self-respecting, elder Jewish man would ever run to greet his son. (Source)

I think there are a few reactions Jesus counted on from his listeners (then and now). For example, it was the son’s own choice that led him to his desperate situation. He was selfish, disrespectful, and disobedient. He made his bed… as some would say. He has only himself to blame.

And what about the older brother? He’s been good and faithful all along and hasn’t asked for any reward. But now his father kills the fatted calf for his low-life brother, and he’s understandably upset.

Looking at this parable from a “human point of view” these reactions make sense, which is why the parable works. We who are followers of Christ, however, must no longer look at things that way. We are a new generation, in a new place, with a new understanding.

Like the father in this parable, God does not count our trespasses against us. We’re good with that, of course, when it’s our own sin that needs forgiving, but we’re often less happy about it when it’s someone else’s sin. Then we, like the older brother in the parable, feel justified in our resentment. Some even feel justified in being violent toward “sinners” they particularly hate.

I once heard Brother Curtis Almquist from the Society of St. John the Evangelist, say: “If you don’t have mercy for someone, you don’t know enough about them.” God does know and God never fails to seek the lost and bring them home for a joyous welcome.

That’s why, as we consider this parable of the Prodigal Son, it helps to remember that we don’t know what led the lost brother to ask for his inheritance. We don’t know how he came to disrespect himself so much that he would live a life of such self-destruction. We don’t know how he came to believe that he wasn’t worthy.

Everyone has a story that plays out within the silence of their hearts. God knows our stories, our interior battles; and has mercy on us.

The invitation during Lent is to return and claim God’s love and mercy, just as the Prodigal son did when he ‘came to himself’ and returned home where he once knew love. Upon seeing his father, the Prodigal son utters the words of repentance: “…I made a mistake…” and in response there is rejoicing! Laetare.

Once we realize the unfathomable love of God for us, then we truly are a new creation, as St. Paul says. We begin to see with the eyes of God and we notice that everyone else is beloved too. We respond with the heart of God, which breaks over anyone’s suffering - no matter how it came about – and rejoices whenever someone returns to themselves… and returns to love.

A final word about the older brother in the parable, who represents us: the church. Like him, we try to live faithfully, and we’re tempted to be judgmental and resentful about those who seem to ‘get away with’ breaking our laws and traditions, but did you hear the father’s response to the older brother? Hearing this as the voice of God, the reply was: “Beloved one, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

What if we, the church, truly believed that? What if we lived in the abundance this represents? What if we honored the truth that everything – everything – is a gift from God who says, “all that is mine is yours.”

God gives freely to us and asks us to do the same. A cycle of abundant life is generated by this relationship. The opposite of this is found in our world where hoarding, or “damming up the river “as I call it, stifles life and leads to a sense of scarcity.

Growing up I knew a man who rose quickly through the ranks of corporate business and every year he and his family had more money, more things, more, more, more. The son of poor immigrants, he was living the American Dream, but it was never enough because the goalpost kept moving for him. Someone was always richer, more powerful, more influential. There was always something else he wanted that he couldn’t have – and he began to hoard. One tiny example: when he retired, this man had hundreds of neckties. Hundreds! Why neckties? They symbolize rank, status, and power (among other things) in the corporate world.

Rather than being grateful for the many gifts he’d been given, including his success in business, this man was fixated on what he didn’t have, what he couldn’t have, and it ate away at his soul and ruined many of his relationships. I’ve lost touch with him over the years, but from what I hear, he remains lost in his universe of scarcity.

I wish I’d known and could have shared with him the wisdom of our Indigenous sisters and brothers, so I’ll share it with you instead. In their book, “A Native Way of Giving,” Forrest S. Cush and Michael Carney tell us that for many native people “the only purpose for wealth is to give it away… A life-giving cycle is created [they say] as gratitude leads to generosity, promoting a sense of abundance that generates more gratitude, making it self-perpetuating.” (p. 10)

Giving wealth away… the needs of the community taking priority over the wants of the individual. It’s as counter-cultural today as it was in Jesus’ time. The good news in the parable of the Prodigal Son is: 1) it’s never too late to return to right relationship with God and one another, and 2) God’s gifts to us are always more than enough but God’s greatest gift is God’s own self always with us.

I close with a poem from our bishop, +Deon Johnson, about this. It’s called, “A note of God’s presence” 

I was there when you were called less than, 

Whispering you are enough. 

I was there when you watered your face with tears,

Warming your heart with strength.

I was there when you heard the impossible news,

Holding you close for the path ahead.

I was there when your heart broke,

Healing the wounds and holding the scars.

I was there when grief almost overwhelmed you,

Igniting the light of hope.

I was there when the unbelievably good news came,

Shielding you from the ugliness and fear.

I am the One in whom you live, and move, and have your being.

I was there. I am here. I will be there. Always. 

(Poem and photo by The Rt. Rev. Deon K. Johnson, March 21, 2022) 

Now that is a reason to rejoice. Laetare!

2 Lent, Awakening from a world-induced sleep

Lectionary: Genesis 15:1-12,17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35 

I begin with a story about one of my sweet dogs, Ollie, now departed. Ollie was a mixed breed dog, and it wasn’t a good mix. We loved loving Ollie, but he had quirks which sometimes made loving him a bit…

challenging at times. Ollie got in trouble a lot because he often was not a good dog. When he got in trouble, he was put in time out which meant he had to go to his crate for a period of time and wait to be let out.

Over time, when Ollie did a bad thing, he just went ahead and put himself in time out. We’d come home, watch Ollie walk himself into his crate, then look around to see what he’d done. As time went on, Ollie would put himself in time out and walk right out again. He knew we’d forgive him, so he didn’t bother spending any real time in the crate. He just went through the motions.

I tell you this story because that’s how so many of us treat Lent, but we aren’t meant to go through the motions of a penitential time-out, emerge knowing we’re forgiven, then go about our lives as usual. When we practice Lent, we are responding to God’s invitation to us with an invitation of our own. We are inviting God to change us.

The word “Lent” means spring and the season of Lent is a short, finite bit of time we set aside to allow new life to be formed in us. Our traditional Lenten practices of prayer, abstinence, and almsgiving represent our invitation to God to not only plant the seeds of new life in us but also to change the very nature of the soil, that is ourselves – our souls and bodies, which will receive the seeds of this new life.

Medieval mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, talks about the “greening” of our souls which is, I think, a good image for our discussion of what Lent is and isn’t. I picture Hildegard’s concept like this: we go about our lives basically unaware that the demands and influences of the world cause the soil of our souls to slowly but steadily become hard and cracked like a dried-up river bed in a drought. At our invitation, the hands of the Creator reach into the soil of our souls, breaking through the hardened dryness.

The Almighty kneads our soul-soil, crushing the hardened bits of anger, judgment, hatred of self or other, that have formed in us. Then those great hands of Love trickle in water from the well-spring of life, Jesus the Christ, kneading and kneading until that life-giving water has softened every hard, dry spot in us.

This nourishing divine massage transforms our dryness into rich soil. Into this 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. 

This is Lent.

In our reading from Genesis, the dryness of our souls is depicted as a famine that forces Abram to leave his homeland, his identity, his security – and go to a new place to which God will lead him. The Scripture says he is afraid.

So, God comes to Abram in a vision and says those famous words of divine comfort, “do not be afraid.” Then God promises to protect Abram and lead him and his descendants to a new, abundant life. The key to this story is how Abram responded: leaving behind his identity, his land, and his life, and walking into the unknown trusting completely in God and God’s promise to him.

When we practice Lent, we enter a period of self-examination that brings to our awareness how and where we’ve become dry and hardened. This is the terrifying darkness Abram experienced - the realizations that we have such darkness within, and that we can’t save ourselves; because only God can save.

We always have the option to refuse God’s grace. This is what Jesus is lamenting in the gospel reading from Luke when he cries: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

When we choose to refuse God’s grace, however, we own the consequences. As Jesus warns the Pharisees, “…your house is left to you” or, in other words, ‘Have it your way. Walk on in the darkness. It leads only to death.’

When we offer our invitation to God, the traditional Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving offer deeply meaningful as well as tried and true ways for us to practice a holy Lent. Taking extra time to pray during Lent, we become aware of the voice of our Creator who gently calls us to awaken from our world-induced sleep. In prayer, we see the face of Love looking back at us, inviting us to leave behind our old identity, our old life, and walk into an unknown future trusting completely in God’s love, guidance, and promise of abundant life.

When we fast during Lent, we are actually and symbolically emptying ourselves of all that already fills us, including the need to be full and satisfied. When our stomach is empty, it cries out to us to fill it. 

Most of us here have the privilege of knowing that we can eat, and so we can choose not to eat (if that is medically safe for us) so that we can experience an embodied emptiness in solidarity with those who truly hunger. When we remember how real and compelling hunger is, we are moved by compassion to do something to relieve it – even if that requires a bit of a sacrifice on our part.

When we give alms during Lent, we are consenting to enter into a new relationship with the poor. Within each of us is the capacity to judge, blame, and avoid those who are needy or suffering. This protects our own comfort and relieves us of the responsibility to answer their cry for help. During Lent, we make time and find real ways to draw near to those in need and welcome their story into our awareness and them into our lives. I think of the refugees we are welcoming into a new life here in Webster Groves, and the people of Ukraine whose need is presently so great.

So let’s not approach Lent like my dog, Ollie, going through the motions of a Lenten time-out. Let’s go deeply, faithfully, fully into the darkness of our inner hardness of heart and invite God to work the miracle of greening our souls so that we can run toward the new, abundant life God is preparing for us. Amen.

1 Lent, 2022-C: Loving Lent

Lectionary: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

En el nombre del Dios, que es Trinidad en unidad. Amen.

I’ve mentioned a few times that Lent is my favorite season, to which some of you have responded with surprise and confusion. I promised I’d clarify why Lent is my favorite season. Here’s a start...

If I could reduce the purpose and practice of Lent into a single idea, I would use this quote from a poem
by St. Theresa of Avila:“ [God] desired me, so I came close.” Here’s the fullness of that poem: 

A thousand souls hear [God’s] call every second, 
but most every one then looks into their life’s mirror and 

says, “I am not worthy to leave this sadness. 

When I first heard his courting song, I too 

looked at all I had done in my life 

and said, 

 “How can I gaze into his omnipresent eyes?” 

I spoke those words with all my heart, 

 but then He sang again, a song even sweeter, 

and when I tried to shame myself once more from His presence 

God showed me His compassion and spoke a divine truth, 

“I made you, dear, and all I made is perfect. 

Please come close, for I 

desire

you.”

It’s very sad to me that the pervasive notion about Lent is that it is a dark and difficult season, to be approached with dread, guilt, and sometimes even self-loathing; that we have to work to “tame” our desires by giving something up, then use all the self-control we can muster to keep our Lenten promises.

The irony is that exerting our self-will is exactly what we are called NOT to do during Lent. Lent isn’t meant to be a time of practicing self-control. It’s meant to be a time of relinquishing it.

During Lent, we practice discipline and repentance. It’s a mistake to confuse discipline with self-control and penitence with wallowing. In fact, it’s sin: the sin of hubris – the very thing that got Adam and Eve in trouble in the garden.

Our discipline and repentance are the means by which we re-enter the womb of God where we can rest, be restored, renewed, and prepared. In his book, “Praying Shapes Believing,” theologian Lee Mitchell reminds us that: “Joy, love, and renewal are as much Lenten themes as are penitence, fasting, and self-denial.” (29)

Temptation is anything that leads us into sin – and sin is that which causes us to forget who we are, whose we are, and why we’re here.

The gospel writer tells us that Jesus, the Incarnate One, the manifest reality of the unity of humanity and divinity, was tempted to forget his true identity and separate himself into a dichotomy of body and spirit. In the first temptation, Jesus was famished and he was tempted to focus only on his suffering earthly body.

Next, though he knew his divine purpose, Jesus was tempted to walk away from God’s plan for his life and live out a different plan – one in which he would get glory and avoid pain and humiliation.

Finally, Jesus was tempted to forget his relationship as the 2nd person in the Trinity and throw his earthly life away, daring God to prove to Jesus that he mattered by using divine intervention to save him; also daring Jesus to use his divinity to save himself.

We share with Jesus these temptations of identity, purpose, and relationship.

The first temptation, forgetting the divinity that dwells in us, goes to our very identity. We are embodied spirit. The actual coexistence of humanity and divinity was made manifest first in Jesus. Now each of us is a living testimony to that co-existence.

The second temptation, conceiving a plan for ourselves and putting that ahead of God’s plan for us, goes to how, or even whether, we will live into God’s purpose for us. If Jesus’ life is any indication (and it is), living into our divine purpose won’t be all blessing and honor, but it will be redemptive – for us and for the world.

When we’re honest, it seems ridiculous that we think we can devise a plan for happiness and fulfillment by chasing after the perfect life partner, the perfect body, the perfect job, car, home, or salary. That’s how the world tempts us away from our divine purpose, and about the only thing being fulfilled is the corporate bottom line.

The third temptation, testing God to prove we matter, goes to our core understanding of our relationship to God, one another, and ourselves. We are beloved of God. It’s true that many people don’t feel very beloved. Their earthly experiences have taught them to believe otherwise. But our faith assures us that God loves all God created. We will always have moments when we doubt that, or when it seems like God isn’t there so we have to rely on ourselves.

Learning to notice those moments of temptation, discovering what they look like for us and for our church, and repenting of them, that is, responding differently, is one of our goals during Lent.

For example, some of us eat, smoke, or drink to comfort ourselves. Repentance might involve attention to the stewardship of our physical bodies - noticing the physical signal that starts the process of filling an emptiness within us, then acknowledging the justifications as they speak in our thoughts (I can have this one cookie, or I deserve this drink) and responding differently - which is to say repenting - saying “no” to the temptation; saying “no” to the self, and living into the emptiness until it is redeemed by God.

Institutionally, this can look like trying to run a church as a successful business rather than as the mystical body of Christ in the world. Jesus was famished. The church will be too at times.

Others among us work too much in order to win approval or to feel like we matter. Institutionally, this can look like expecting too much work from church employees, misidentifying productivity with faithfulness or value. Repentance here might involve attention to the stewardship of our time and relationships - committing to and encouraging a schedule that balances time devoted to work, family, leisure, and includes time devoted to corporate and private worship of God. Lent is a good time to commit to regular attendance at Sunday worship or our Christian formation offerings through FaithQuest, remembering that we live out our purpose in community as the body of Christ in the world.

Some of us habitually deny ourselves anything good out of a sense of unworthiness or, at the other end of the spectrum, deny ourselves nothing from a sense of privilege. Repentance here might involve the stewardship of our spiritual lives - fasting from criticism of self or others, or keeping a prayer journal in which we acknowledge the daily gifts and blessings God is giving. Institutionally, this might look like trusting that God loves, sustains, and guides our church working through the servant-leaders God has called to serve here, from bishop, to clergy, to vestry, to the greatest and least among us.

The Lenten disciplines we practice are meant to help us enter humbly into the presence of God, where we surrender ourselves to God’s unfathomable love and unfailing care for us. The emptiness within us that continually seeks satisfaction comes from a deep sense of separation from that love. Lent is when we go to that scary place of emptiness, but we go there knowing that God desires communion with us and that Jesus came to make that happen – once for all.

Remembering that helps quiet those voices of temptation that play like a tape-recording in our heads, saying: you are not worthy or beautiful or gifted… you don’t matter to God or to the world… you are not loved. We are worthy, beautiful, and gifted, and we do matter. 

We’re also unfinished… continually growing and maturing in body and in spirit. Our brokenness is not something to be ashamed of or to avoid. It is as much a gift as any talent we possess because it is the place in us where God dwells most assuredly, most compassionately.

Our brokenness is the cross we bear; the place where we witness the redeeming love of God still at work in the world. When others see spiritual growth and maturation happening in our brokenness, they are empowered to stop being ashamed of their brokenness, pick up their own cross, and walk into redemption.

God desires us to come close and we hunger for that too. Bound together in the eternal love of God in Christ we discover love that protects, satisfies, and delivers us.

This is our Lenten journey, and this is just the beginning of why Lent is my favorite season. It’s a time of deep transformation for us in the womb of our living, real, and present God. God bless us as we begin it. Amen.

7 Epiphany, 2022-C: Fastening our souls to God

Lectionary:Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50; Luke 6:27-38 

En el nombre del Dios: que es trinidad en unidad. Amen. 

In our Collect today, we prayed that the Holy Spirit would come to us and pour into our hearts her greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and the source of our life because outside of God’s love, there is no life, only death. 

As Episcopalians, we believe that God is love and that all life is created, sustained, and maintained by the

love of God. St. Julian of Norwich illustrates this beautifully using the image of a hazelnut saying, “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.” She goes on to say that this revelation was meant to “teach our soul to cling fast to the goodness of God…[that] what delights [God] most, is when we pray simply trusting his goodness, holding on to him, relying upon his grace.” (John Skinner, ed., Revelation of Love, Julian of Norwich, 10-11)

Love requires relationship, and it begins with God. The Trinity of God is a dynamic relationship – an active, expressive, complementary way of being. Love reconciles, restoring harmony and wholeness, to whatever or whoever is separated or divided. Wherever God sees division, God acts to redeem, filling the gaps with God’s own self.

What is so important for us to remember as followers of Christ who embody his spirit, is that we are the current vehicles of this redeeming, reconciling love on earth. God looks through our eyes, responds in our hearts, and acts through our hands.

The word for love used in our gospel reading is Agape – a familiar word, I think, for most of us. Agape love is full of goodwill. It is deliberate – a choice to pay attention to someone else, have regard for them, and respect them. Agape love is reflected in our Baptismal vow to respect the dignity of every human being.

Agape love is also self-denying and compassionate. It places the other ahead of self. It joins us to another in their suffering because to have compassion is to suffer with someone. (Com = with, passio = suffer) Agape love means being willing to share someone else’s nightmare and bear light into their darkness – even when drawing near to them puts our comfort or our safety at risk.

Part of the problem is that we have only one word for the many faces of love. Agape love is not attraction – romantic or physical. That’s eros. It isn’t about liking someone. That’s philia. And it isn’t about being bonded by empathy. That’s storage.

In this teaching, Jesus is calling us to a particular kind of love: agape love. Theologian and author Allen Myers defines agape love as: “the divine, selfless love which will go to any length to attain the well-being of its object.” Myers, Allen C., The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 26. And we don’t have this kind of love unless God gives it, hence our prayer in our Collect today: pour into our hearts your greatest gift, God, which is love.

In this continuation of his beatitudes sermon, Jesus is teaching a new way for us to bear love into the world – one that goes against our natural inclination. Did you know that biologically, humans have a part of the brain specifically designed for making judgments? The role of this part of the brain is to divide input into binary categories that enable us to differentiate between what or who is safe and what or who isn’t.

It’s a built-in survival mechanism designed by a loving God by whom we are marvelously made. When fear and self-centeredness take over, however, this kind of bifurcation extends into our cultural consciousness and we find ourselves constantly challenged by our propensity to create categories of “us” and “them.”

Over time, prejudices develop around those categories. Soon the “other” becomes the enemy – which literally translated means, ‘not friend.’ This is the kind of judgment Jesus warns us against when he says, “Do not judge…”

It’s important to remember that in our gospel story Jesus is speaking to a people who are currently oppressed and know what it feels like to be hated, dismissed, ignored, and disrespected. They are the “them” in their culture and they’ve already had a long history of being the targets of oppression and genocide. They know who their enemy is.

To survive, they separated themselves, marking their separation with circumcision and ritual practice. Jesus is calling them (and us) to reconciliation rather than separation – even when that separation is meant to ensure our survival.

Jesus’ way of love calls us to trust God for all we need, including our survival. This is the kind of love that was demonstrated by Joseph in our reading from Genesis and it’s what the Psalmist is calling us to – a love that isn’t distracted by those who don’t love, tempting us to abandon our way of love.

Truly, none of us can do this easily or successfully all the time, but we know when we aren’t there, don’t we? We know when disdain or indifference or hate infect our hearts. We know when we allow unjust systems that benefit us to go unchallenged.

So what do we do? Well, we’re Episcopalians, so we pray together. In all our diversity, what unites us is our worship. So, we pray in community, drawing ourselves closer to God and nourishing ourselves with Word and Sacrament. Our common prayer opens a pathway for God to act in us and through us in the world.

As Julian says, “Prayer fastens the soul to God,” uniting our will to God’s will by “the deep inward working of the Holy Spirit.” In her vision, God spoke this to Julian: “Pray inwardly, even though you feel no joy in it. For it does good, though you feel nothing, see nothing, yes, even though you think you cannot pray. For when you are dry and empty, sick and weak, your prayers please me, though there be little enough to please you. All believing prayer is precious in my sight.'”

Prayer is how we cooperate with God in the continuing work of reconciliation. There are so many examples of this, but I’ll offer just this one: when we pray God’s lavish blessings over those we’d rather not love, that prayer changes us, enabling us to receive God’s greatest gift into our hearts. It allows us to draw nearer to them and establish relationship with them. Once that happens and we begin to know the person, we are set from the prejudices that held us bound and we are free to love.

When we separate ourselves from anyone or any group of people, it’s easy to depersonalize them and dismiss the fact that God’s spirit dwells in them. It’s easy to make them “other” and oppress them.

A glaring example of this is found in our own history: Article one, section two of the Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1788, declared that any person who was not free would be counted as three-fifths of a free individual for the purposes of determining congressional representation. The "Three-Fifths Clause" as it was known, thus increased the political power of slaveholding states furthering and justifying the oppression of African American people. There is currently legislation being considered that targets the rights of transgender people. It’s like we never learn…

We who follow Jesus know by our faith that we are loved, and from that eternal well of love there is endless refreshment. That’s why we can be the bearers of God’s redeeming, reconciling love into the world.

In Jesus' time as in our own time, the world doesn’t always welcome agape love. The systems of the world are designed to provide an elite few with power, privilege, and wealth. They don’t want to share opportunities or resources and they don’t want equality. Those benefitting from the unjust systems of the world will often kill the bearer of agape love knowing they pose a threat to the status quo, and they are prepared to work together to stop anyone who tries to take their prize from them.

Dr. King knew that. He talked about it in his last speech in Memphis. Like him, all bearers of agape love must trust God completely. We do not fear, because as Julian of Norwich says, “In [God’s] love [God] clothes us, enfolds us and embraces us; that tender love completely surrounds us, never to leave us.” (Feast of Anglican Spirituality, 137)

I close with a prayer from the Rev. Shaneequa Brokenleg, Racial Reconciliation Officer in the Diocese of South Dakota. Let us pray…

“Oh God of all comfort and giver of every good thing, we pray that you fill us with the desire to be your hands and feet in the world, so that the hungry are filled with good things and all may experience your reconciling love. Amen.” (The United Thank Offering Book of Prayers, 51)

5 Epiphany, 22-C: Call and response

Lectionary: Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13], Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11 

En el nombre del Dios que es trinidad en unidad. Amen.

We talk a lot in the church about being called, and most of the time we share a similar understanding of what that means. Through our prayer, through one another, through contemplative insight, through dreams, through repeated patterns in our experience – we feel God tapping us on our shoulder or nudging us from within to act as the ambassadors of Christ we are through our Baptism.

The choice is always ours whether or not to acknowledge that tap on the shoulder then consent or refuse to act on it. God never forces us, but God does keep on tapping - mostly gently, though sometimes we hear folks joke about needing to be clobbered by a spiritual 2’ x 4’ in order to pay attention.

That’s the key – learning to pay attention to the voice of God in the many ways God speaks to us. Our discernment, as I’ve mentioned before, is individual and corporate because, as theologian Terry Holmes said, Episcopal spirituality lives in the “tension between collective truth and individual insight.” and we continually discern the voice of God in both ways.

If we listen to today’s Scriptures only as stories about being called, or being obedient, or as a miracle story about fish, then we’ll miss the revelation they offer us about the nature of God who chooses to act in the world by calling imperfect, sinful people into intimate relationship for a purpose. We’ll miss the revelation about the character of God who provides for that called purpose with such abundance it’s almost ludicrous.

In Luke’s gospel today, we see both – the importance of trusting the voice of God when God speaks, especially when we’re tired and the request doesn’t make any sense to us. It also demonstrates God’s response to our faithfulness – a lavish, loving response.

Did the fish miracle actually happen? We could ask the same about most of the stories in our Scriptures. As Episcopalians, we rely on tradition as the context in which we interpret Scripture. Terry Holmes defines tradition as the passing “down from generation to generation within the community the church’s… understanding of God’s ways with humanity… [it] is the product of the ongoing reflection by the church of her experience of God, and consequently it is a living, changing body of thought.”

So, while Episcopalians reject Biblical literalism, we do take the Scriptures very seriously, including the miracles. People often try to explain the miracles in order to understand them, or they dismiss them completely. When we do that, however, we are attempting to shrink the ineffable into something comprehensible, forgetting what God said through the prophet Isaiah: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (55:8-9)

The catch of fish miracle, whether you interpret it as actual or symbolic, is about the nature and character of God, who is present in the person of Jesus, the Christ. It is also about our call to be in intimate relationship with God, to be made human bearers of the power of divine love on earth, partners in the continuing work of the reconciliation of the whole world to God.

The setting is the north part of the Sea of Galilee, which is actually a huge lake, near the region of Genessaret. Jesus is teaching on the lake’s shore and the crowd starts pressing in on him.

Noticing that there are two boats nearby, Jesus approaches the fishermen, who were cleaning their nets, and asks Simon Peter to take him out into the water. I’m told that preaching from the water in that part of the lake amplified the sound, making it easier for the gathered crowd to hear.

It would be understandable if Peter had resisted Jesus’ request. They were all tired, frustrated by their lack of catch, and ready to go home, but Peter responds in faith and does as Jesus asks.

Once they are a little bit away from the shore, the rabbi sits to continue his teaching. Now Peter is up close, watching Jesus preach and engage the crowds. He’s listening to Jesus as the word of God issues forth from this man who is already having such a strange effect on him. Something is happening in Peter, but what it is isn’t clear yet, so he watches, and listens, and waits.

When Jesus finishes his teaching, he asks Peter to head out to deep water and let down his nets again… the nets they’d just finished cleaning and stowing. Peter, who is an experienced fisherman, reminds Jesus, who is a carpenter, that they been out all night; and there were no fish to catch out there.

Yet, Peter obeys again. I want to point out that the word translated as “obey” literally means to hear and respond. Peter hears the call from Jesus and chooses to respond. The outcome was amazing: their nets captured so many fish that the other boat had to be called out to help them haul it all in.

Peter’s response to all of this was to fall to his knees aware of and confessing his sinfulness. When we are in the presence of the power, significance, and wholeness of God, we become keenly aware of how weak, insignificant, and broken we are by comparison.

Peter recognized this about himself and it drove him to his knees in humble surrender, crying out "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!"

Jesus comforts Peter saying those words that always come from heaven right before a call is issued: “Do not be afraid.” Then Jesus issues Peter his divine purpose: “from now on,” he says, “you will be catching people.”

Notice that a call from God is a proclamation of a divine truth. Jesus didn’t say, “Hey, Peter, want to catch people with me?” He said this is who you are now – a catcher of people. Then through the course of his relationship with Jesus, Peter was formed, empowered, and equipped to answer this call, to live into his divine purpose, which he did, and it was amazing.

Scripture teaches us that there is a process that happens when God calls us, and it goes like this: God taps us on the shoulder or nudges us from within and we discern the call. We respectfully decline, believing we are not worthy or able to answer it. God comforts us, empowers us, and sends us. We obey and are amazed.

Discerning a call from God takes practice, like any other spiritual discipline. For a few of us, like Moses or Isaiah or Mary, God speaks the call plainly. For most of us, however, it will be a still, small voice, a nudging, a tap on the shoulder.

The noise of the world tends to drown out that still small voice, so it’s important to acknowledge the earthly judgment about hearing God’s voice. For some, it is a diagnosable event requiring psychiatric intervention, but for most of us, it’s a traditional means of conversation between the Creator and the created. We aren’t crazy when we hear the voice of God. We’re faithful.

That’s why our Episcopal approach to discernment in the tension between collective truth and individual insight matters. It is our continual calling as individuals and as a church community to listen for God’s proclamation of truth for us - who we are and what our divine purpose is in this place and time.

If we choose to pay attention to God’s call to us and obey it, God will form us, empower us, equip us through the church, and send us out - and it will be amazing. Amen.

4 Epiphany and Annual Meeting, 2022-C: Forward in faith and ministry

Lectionary:Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30 

En el nombre del Dios que es trinidad en unidad. Amen. 

Mother Theresa of Calcutta once said, “Love has no meaning if it isn’t shared. Love has to be put into action.”* That’s exactly what we see happening in today’s Gospel reading from Luke, which picks up the story right where we left off last week.

Having read from the scroll of Isaiah, Jesus begins his sermon saying, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (4:21) At first, the congregation is very pleased. The people love reveling in the success of their hometown hero.

Jesus’ reputation in Capernaum has earned him great respect throughout the region. He’s a celebrity of sorts, and his hometown peeps are filled with pride. Luke says, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” (4:22)

God’s promises of mercy and salvation are about to come true - finally! - and their own son will see to it that they get the reward promised throughout the ages. They have an inside connection and they’re ready to reap the benefits. **

Sensing this, Jesus says, you probably want me to do here the things I did in Capernaum, but the truth is: God’s promised mercy and salvation will reach beyond the Jewish people to all people. Then he illustrates this truth using two stories from their tradition: the story of the prophet Elijah healing the widow at Zarapheth and the story of the prophet Elisha healing Namaan, the Syrian. Both the widow and Naaman were outsiders, Gentiles who received God’s mercy and healing, while faithful Jews suffered and died all around them.

Well, this was not what Jesus’ homeys wanted to hear and certainly not from him. Jesus acknowledged that he would have no honor in his hometown where they remember the scandal of his birth. When they asked, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” they were subtly (and uncharitably) reminding everyone of the shameful reality that Jesus’ mother was pregnant before she was married, and that Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ real dad.

Why? Because Jesus smacked down their expectation that if God’s promises were to be fulfilled, they would be fulfilled for them – the Jewish people. They are God’s chosen, and they along with their ancestors have been faithful for generations. The prize belongs to them, and they aren’t about to let it be given to the unclean unbelievers who had done nothing to earn it.

If we pause here for a moment, we can see what their unbelief looks like. Salvation isn’t earned, it’s a free gift from a loving God, but the congregation in this synagogue in Nazareth overlook that inconvenient point because it doesn’t fit their expectations. Yet, the truth Jesus is speaking is in the very scroll he read from: the scroll of Isaiah, where God said: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)

That inconvenient truth didn’t sit well with some of Jesus’ listeners, and they reacted with a turbulent commotion (here translated as “enraged”). Some even tried to hurl Jesus off a cliff.

Isn’t it interesting that when Jesus is faced with this turbulent and potentially violent commotion, he simply passes through the midst of it and goes on his way? That gives us hope for our time. Despite the attempts by some people today to hurl the truth off the cliff, God simply continues undaunted on the path to redemption.

St. Paul makes clear that followers of the Way of Jesus don’t throw the truth or truth tellers off the proverbial cliff. If only. Just last week we celebrated a national holiday honoring another prophet, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who we threw off that proverbial cliff.

Jerusalem has a reputation for killing its prophets. Sadly, so do we.

So then, how do we tell the difference between a true and a false prophet, between the divine Truth of God and a “truth” of our own devising? We do as Jesus did. We go to our Scriptures and we remember to look at the whole story, the big picture of God’s message of redeeming, reconciling love.

As Episcopalians, we also go to our faith community knowing that God speaks through the community as well as the individual. Community discernment keeps us from getting lost or led astray by a “truth” of our own or someone else's devising.

St. Paul’s epistle reminds us that no amount of prophetic power or faith or knowledge is worth anything in the absence of love, which he so beautifully defines as kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love, he says, does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. (13:4-5)

Clearly, Paul didn’t spend any time on social media! We live in a time when we’ve normalized or at least become tolerant of saying just about anything, no matter how arrogant or rude, harsh, or even cruel. On social media and in person, yes – even in churches, tempers flare with amazing rapidity with little to no accountability for the harm done.

This is important because as followers of Christ we are all prophets, and the truth we proclaim is him. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. (Jn 14:6)

If we know the truth of our salvation in Jesus Christ then we must also be compelled to speak it, not in a Bible-thumping, brimstone kind of way. Episcopalians don’t go for that. Neither did Jesus.

Jesus spoke prophetically but he never forced or threatened anyone into believing. He also accepted the consequences of his prophetic ministry knowing that speaking the truth meant some people weren’t going to like him.

Most of us have a hard time letting people dislike or hate us without trying to fix it - but we aren’t called to fix it, and we aren’t called to be liked. We’re called to be prophets of the truth of God in Christ, and we’re called to do that in love, trusting God to be with us, to guide us, and to speak through us.

If God is going to speak through us, however, we’re going to have to let go and give the Holy Spirit total freedom to transform us. We also need to participate in church, because it is the church’s role to equip us to be sent into the world to share the good news we know. We need to be willing to accept the consequences of our prophetic ministry knowing that the gospel of mercy, forgiveness, and inclusion isn’t good news to everyone, especially the earthly powers that be.

Thankfully, we don’t do any of this alone. We do it together as a community: a parish, which is part of a diocese, which is part of a worldwide communion. We do it in the company of the saints who went before us and proclaimed the same truth in their time.

Today, at our Annual Meeting, we will celebrate our parish community and the imperfect but beloved institution that carries us ever forward in faith and ministry. I want to share a story about how that looks right now at Emmanuel.

Last Sunday, Bishop Deon wore this chasuble when he celebrated Holy Eucharist with us. The chasuble was designed by one of our members to honor another member who had died of AIDS. The family of this man wrote to me and said, “32 years after his death from AIDS, a joyful and openly gay man was leading worship at Emmanuel's altar…. My, how the world has changed! Thanks be to God.”

Thanks be to God indeed. As Bishop Deon said last week, it isn’t that long ago that he couldn’t have been ordained a priest, much less a bishop. The same is true for me as a woman. But God, who is love, carries the Church forward in faith and ministry, passing through the midst of all the turbulent commotion it faces on any and every issue.

As a parish community, therefore, we can trust that God is always with us, guiding and leading us onto the path of redemption, where we find healing and life, enabling us to put God’s love into action in the world. Amen.

* Lucinda Vardey, editor, Mother Theresa Meditations from A Simple Path (Ballentine Books, NY, 1996), 57.