12 Pentecost, 2024-B: The gift and power of Communion

Lectionary: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34:1-8; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51

En el nombre de Diós: creador, redentor, y santificador... In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.  

 Going to church every Sunday was something my Roman Catholic family did – no questions, no options. We sat in the front row on the left. Always. The one in front of the statue of Mary.

My father, who had a bellowing baritone voice, couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but that never stopped him from singing with gusto, searching for the notes as he sang. I was equally embarrassed and awed by that.

My father was a high-strung, volatile, pre-Vatican II Irishman. He grew up in an Irish gang that ran roughshod over his neighborhood in Washington Heights in NYC.

He was a short man with a powerful presence, who owned every room he walked into, including at church. My father rarely showed emotion – unless it was anger. My sisters and I learned quickly that if Dad’s upper lip disappeared, we’d better get out fast (if we could), because his anger was about to blow.

I’ll never forget this one Sunday when I was 5 years old, I witnessed something incredible. During the consecration of the elements, I saw my dad look up at the altar. An unfamiliar look came over his face and I saw that his face practically glowed with what I can only call a mix of peace and joy. He looked like a different person.

I followed his gaze to see what he was looking at. The priest was elevating the bread, then the wine as he prayed the Eucharistic Prayer. I kept looking back and forth from the altar to my Dad’s face, and I knew deep within me that this thing that was happening up there must be really important because it was having this noticeable effect on my father. I watched this happen regularly – not every Sunday, but many of them.

Communion remains the only time I ever saw my father truly humble himself. It’s the only time I ever saw him willingly surrender the strength of his personality to anything. Not even at his AA anniversaries (which I attended as his AA baby). Not even at the deaths or births of family members. Only at Communion.

I invite you to think about and remember the first time you realized that something powerful was happening at Holy Communion and consider sharing those stories – at coffee hour, or in a Formation event. These stories are inspiring and can be transforming.

Admittedly, some people are put off by the language of the Communion prayers: eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood, so it’s important for us to remember that this is the language of ritual. Jesus was a rabbi, who presided over many ritual meals. Orthodox theologian Joseph Martos says ritual meals, “affirm and intensify the bond of unity among the participants.” (Doors to the Sacred, Joseph Martos, 213) That’s what Jesus was doing then and what we do now in remembrance of him,

The letter to the Ephesians affirms this saying, “we are members of one another.” We can be angry, but we must not let that anger cause us to break our communion with one another or with God. When we speak, we are to say only that which will give grace to those who hear us. When we tear down another member or speak ill of them, or when we cling to bitterness and anger, we do damage to that bond of unity God is forming among us.

Martos says that in ritual meals, like the Jewish Passover and our Holy Eucharist, the events we remember “become real and present to the people who share it.” (Martos, 213) As Episcopalians, communion isn’t just a memorial for us as it is for many Protestants. It’s a present reality. Christ is truly present, and we don’t just remember that, we live it, again and again.

When we hear the words, “do this for the remembrance of me” I hope we hear the voice of our Savior inviting us to come back into unity with him. Re-member… Be at one again…

It’s a full-body, full sensory experience for us. We walk our bodies up to the communion rail and stand by someone we may or may not know, someone we may or may not like. We reach out our hands and take the bread and wine of Holy Communion into our mouths.

We taste the bread of communion as it melts on our tongues and that too becomes a signal to our bodies that we are choosing this holy thing to happen within us. We chew the bread and swallow it and its substance literally becomes part of us, part of the cells of our bodies.

The smell of the wine, whether on the bread or in the cup, greets us as the sharp flavor of it stimulates our glands. signaling our saliva. In a very real way, water and wine are mixing within us, echoing the water and wine that flowed from Jesus’ wound on the cross for our sakes, making manifest the union of our bodies to Christ.

When we eat the bread of life and drink the cup of salvation, we are inviting God to enter us, to become one with us, and make us one with God and each other. It’s such a powerful moment, a moment of pure joy as we remember, even for just this moment, that we are beloved and forgiven. It is a moment of deep peace as we remember that by this spiritual food we are renewed, strengthened, and made whole again. When we choose to take Holy Communion, we are intentionally receiving its power to unite us to God and to one another in love.

Our daily lives can drain us. The world can drain us. Our Christian life should drain us. We should be giving out love and prayer and offering words of hope to someone every day. There are so many who need it and we can give it away continually because we believe, we know there is always more ready to fill us up again.

This journey is too much for us unless we are continually nourished and renewed by our spiritual food: the bread and wine of Holy Communion. This journey is too much for us to travel alone, so we must continually affirm our bond of unity to God and one another. This journey is too much for us unless we stop the world, come into the presence of God, and remember that we are beloved, forgiven, and sanctified, that is, we are made holy, unified to Christ in whom we are all made whole.

Remembering that gives us strength to go out to the world, again and again, as living locations of the love of Christ in the world. That is the gift and the power of Holy Communion. Thanks be to God. Amen.

11 Pentecost, 2024-B: Strengthen our belief

Lectionary: Exodus 16:2-4,9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35 

En el nombre de Dios, creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen. In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen. 

My daughter and I moved to south GA from NJ when she was 3 years old. Having left a traumatic situation, my daughter was insecure about her safety – and rightly so. Our lives were threatened in very real ways for 9 years after I left my abusive first husband, her father.

Since I was working full-time, my daughter went to a wonderful 7th Day Adventist day care, where Miss Martha became her person. If I wasn’t around, my daughter felt safe with Miss Martha, which was vital to her healing.

In our culture today, for lots of reasons, many people are in a near-constant state of fight, flight, fawn, or freeze – typical trauma responses to threat. This is especially true for people of color and undocumented people here in the US, and people suffering war or famine around the world.

People need to feel safe and loved. When we do, we can relax. Unless we are able to relax, a continual state of excitement will wear out our hearts, elevate our blood pressure and sugars, and ruin our digestion. We may experience constant anxiety and even lapse into depression. This is trauma response 101.

As people of God, prayer and presence enable us to relax. Prayer and being regularly in the presence of God enable us to shift from our normal state of awareness of the things of earth to a grace-filled consciousness of the heavenly realm.

In our readings from last week and this week, we learn how to make this shift. Jesus says it simply: believe.

In today’s story from Exodus, Moses and his brother Aaron have led the people into the wilderness. They’re hungry and afraid, so they complain, “Why did you lead us out here… to die of hunger?” This isn’t a short-sighted complaint. It’s a real one.

We often picture the exodus of the Israelites in the wilderness as we see it depicted in art - which is interpretive, not historical. There were actually about 650,000 people following Moses and Aaron. That’s more than twice the current population of St. Louis, which is 277,000.

Imagine two men trying to organize the daily feeding of 650,000 people in the desert. It’s an impossibility. This is similar to the impossibility Philip mentioned to Jesus when Jesus told them to feed the 5,000 men, which meant about 20,000 people, in last week’s gospel story. “Six months wages wouldn’t be enough to buy the food we need,” Philip said.

In both stories, we hear they were being tested. Would the disciples be able to shift from their earthly awareness to a heavenly consciousness? Did they believe?

The answer is kind of... Sound familiar? So, God showed them – again – just as God did in Exodus and in story after story in our Testaments, Old and New, that God would take care of them because they were beloved of God.

These stories teach us that our security is found only in God. We may think we can take care of ourselves and do things that will ensure our safety, but all of our efforts guarantee us nothing and what we end up with is no more life-sustaining than fouled manna full of worms.

Last week we heard that after feeding the people, Jesus walked on the water to the disciples who had left on their boat headed for Capernaum. Jesus wasn’t on the boat with them because he had gone off to a mountain by himself.

When the disciples saw Jesus walking toward them on the water, they were terrified. Jesus assured them of their safety, and “immediately,” their boat reached land, that is, their anxiety was calmed.

Today’s gospel picks up this story the next day. The people whom Jesus had fed were looking for him again. They followed the disciples across the sea to Capernaum and there they found Jesus too.

When did you come here, they asked. They knew he didn’t get on the boat with the disciples, so how did he get here? It’s a reasonable question, from an earthly perspective.

Jesus answers, however, from a heavenly perspective. You came looking for me because you want more of that food you had yesterday which satisfied your belly but somehow left you wanting more. Seek the food that satisfies your soul, food that endures for eternity. That food will be given to you by the Son of Man, on whom rests the seal, which means the security, of God.

Their next question seems strange: “What must we do to perform the works of God?” The Greek says it like this: What do we do to bring to pass the works of God?” In other words, how would this covenant work? What’s our part in it?

Jesus’ answer shifts them from earthly awareness to heavenly consciousness. The work of God is this: that you believe in the one whom God has sent.

They’ll consider it, but they need a sign. Moses gave our ancestors manna in the wilderness, they said. What will you do?

Jesus answers them, Moses didn’t give our ancestors manna, God did.” The true bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

We want that bread, they say. I am that bread, Jesus says.

As Sujanna+ reminded us last week, ‘I am’ is the name God calls themself when Moses asks God, what should I tell the people when they ask who sent me, and God says, Tell them I Am sent you.

In today’s gospel, Jesus claims this name and the life-giving power of God saying, “I am the bread of life.” Jesus is the food that gives life to body and soul and endures for eternity and whoever believes in him will never hunger or thirst again.

Here is the ultimate shift from earthly awareness to heavenly consciousness. Jesus, the Messiah of God, didn’t come as a political Messiah to liberate the Jewish people from Roman occupation. Jesus came to liberate the whole world, all people, in every time and place, from the power of sin and death and to give us eternal life; life in the eternal presence of God.

We, who believe, have this life in us because this life is Jesus who dwells in us. What must we do for the works of God to come to pass in our time? We must believe. Do we believe?

When I ask, do we believe, I’m not asking do we assent to, or even acknowledge this truth. That would be nothing more than an earthly awareness. When I ask do we believe, I am asking, do we know and feel in every cell of our being, beyond our comprehension, that God is in us, working through us because we are beloved of God?

The letter to the Ephesians reminds us that we are called to live as Jesus did, humbly, with gentleness and patience, “bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Living like Jesus is servanthood. The quintessential image of this is Jesus with a towel wrapped around his waist, washing the feet of his disciples saying, “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” (Jn 13:14-15) This is how it would look if we lived as one body, one spirit in Christ.

We have been uniquely gifted by God to accomplish this in our lifetimes. God gathers us together into the part of the body of Christ we call “our church” to equip us to do the work of ministry. It is in community that our individual gifts come together into a powerful whole that none of us has on our own. This is the synergistic reality of being the church.

We walk together, as a church community, into Christian maturity, a maturity where we can love our enemies, not vilify or kill them; a maturity where we don’t shoot children because their blackness scares us; a maturity that has compassion for, not judgment against, those who are hungry or afraid or strangers among us.

The dream of God lives in us because God lives in us, the church, and ourselves as individual members of it. Trusting that God will provide all we need to do the work They call us to do, we learn and practice together, as a church community, how to represent Christ in the world, gently, humbly, with our metaphorical towels wrapped around our waists.

We practice first in here with one another, then we take it out there, into the world, until the mission of the Church, which is that the whole world is restored to unity with God and each other in Christ, is accomplished. (BCP, 855)

We cannot rely on our own strengths or smarts to do this. We may, at times, feel insecure or afraid, attacked or abandoned. That is why it’s so important to nourish ourselves continually with holy food of Communion, the bread of life and cup of salvation, to strengthen us, body and soul, so that God can work with us, through us, and accomplish all God has promised.

Let us pray: O God, our source and our life, in you alone is our safety and security. Strengthen our belief by your continual presence, that we may faithfully serve others guided by your goodness and mercy, all the days of our lives. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

8 Pentecost, 2024-B: Our prophetic message to the world

Proper 10 Lectionary: Amos 7:7-15, Psalm 85:8-13; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29

 

En el nombre de Dios, creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen. 

I love the prophets in our Scripture! To me they are like artists, painting doorways to the truth. As with other forms of art, it often takes some education to fully appreciate their work.

Amos is known as the prophet of social justice. He was a herdsman and farmer who lived when Israel was divided into two kingdoms: the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel. Amos lived in Judah and God sent him Israel, where Jeroboam was king, to prophesy.

The northern kingdom of Israel then was kind of like Galilee was in our Gospel reading. Today, we might see Hollywood or Washington D.C. similarly. These are places of earthly excesses, even decadence, populated by circles of rich, materialistic cosmopolitans, who believe they earned their own fortunes and, therefore, deserve the enjoyment their fortunes afford them. They show little to no mercy for those in need among them. In fact, they hardly notice them.

It was to people like these that Amos prophesied in Chapter 6: “Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the stall; who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, …who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!” (v 4-6)

Amaziah, the priest of the temple, begged Amos to leave Israel and prophesy somewhere else. Stop saying bad things about us, Amaziah said. This is the king’s territory, and we are beloved, favored, and blessed by God. That’s why we have it so good.

Amos responded, yes, you are beloved of God, which is why you, of all people, should know how you are to live in relationship to God and one another. You have gotten lost in the satisfaction that comes from earthly wealth, power, and privilege. You believe that you deserve the blessings you have and that you can kick back and enjoy them. But your power and privilege are an illusion. And when the illusion fails, you’ll realize that you have nothing because you chose to live in the absence of God, which leads only to nothingness.

Amos uses prophetic language to describe this nothingness saying, your wife will be sold into indignity, your kids will have no life in them, you will lose all you hold dear – including your land (which, for the people of Israel, meant their identity). You will even lose the dignity of your life and your death. 

But God, who is steadfast in love and mercy, always responds to human hubris, offering mercy and a way to go. In the vision of the plumb line, God asks Amos, ‘What do you see?’ ‘A plumb line,’ answers Amos. Right, says God. “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” (v 8-9)

In other words, by the mercy of God, all that the people cling to, all that seems desirable to them but leads to their destruction will be removed. All may seem lost because those things – the luxuries, the power and wealth, the success, and the esteem of others– had seemed so important.

But God, who loves us with steadfast love, knows that these things are to us humans like pills are to an addict. They trick us into believing that we are satisfied and happy even as they are destroying us.

We become so focused on ourselves that we lose sight of those suffering around us – the hungry, unhoused, infirm, and alone. Since we also convince ourselves that we are the source of our success, we conclude that they should earn their own and we don’t need to share with them any part of ours. We even tell ourselves that it’s for their own good that we don’t share – they should learn to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps – presuming, of course, that they even have boots.

In our gospel story, we see what this kind of self-focus and the attachment to earthly power can do to us. The story of Herod’s murder of John the Baptizer is a difficult story because it includes the worst of human behavior: incest, debauchery, murderous manipulation, misuse of power, and the death of an innocent. We want to cry out – how can those people let this happen? Why doesn’t anyone stop Herodius or Herod from committing this great wrong?

They don’t because they’re so preoccupied trying to amass or keep their own power and the luxurious lives they’ve become accustomed to, that they don’t care about the horror being played out right in front of them. Speaking truth here isn’t worth the risk of losing what they’ve worked to gain for themselves.

Sound familiar? That’s because people are people - in every era of human history.

We, who are followers of Jesus Christ, must go a different way. We are called to walk the way of love, as Presiding Bishop Michael Curry often says, the way of kindness, graciousness, and community.

But detaching from our hubris and self-sufficiency is a lot like detoxing from an addiction – it’s painful at first. The body and mind fight against it. We cling to the false reality we’ve created for ourselves because it is preferable to the truth that is coming into view – the truth that all of those things we thought mattered, the luxuries, power, wealth, and esteem of others, lead us to nothing… leave us as nothing.

It feels like desolation, and, in fact, it is desolation, blessed desolation, the total destruction of a false reality we had made for ourselves. From that place of desolation, we call out to God who is already there waiting to hear and respond to us in mercy and love and to show us what we ought to do, as our Collect says.

We believe that our salvation is in Jesus Christ, the second person in the Trinity of God, who came to live and minister among us, and gave his life for our salvation. Jesus did it and it has been done – once, for all. There is nothing we can or need to do to save ourselves. No amount of obedience or good works can save us. Indeed, they are the fruits of our salvation, not the means to it.

We need to remember that when we do anything good it’s because the grace of God has been lavished upon us, compelling us to do our part in Christ’s continuing work of the redemption of the world. When we do anything good, it’s because the Spirit of God, the viriditas of God, lives in us and touches the world through our grateful hearts and willing hands. When we do anything good, it’s because we have “heard the word of truth,” which is another way to say Jesus. We have believed in him and surrendered ourselves and our lives to him. 

It is through Jesus that we have wisdom to understand what we ought to do and it is by his grace that we can do it. The rules that guide us have to be reinterpreted in each age to make room for a compassionate response to the changes in the world. Jesus did so much of that during his ministry: healing on the Sabbath, touching a bleeding woman to heal her, calming and restoring a demoniac. Jesus showed us how the law is meant to serve humans, not the reverse, through the grace and mercy of God.

Right now, we are witnessing an increase in the passage of laws that criminalize being unhoused and other laws that forbid people from feeding them; laws that forbid giving water to asylum seekers; laws that forbid doctors from providing life-saving surgeries for pregnant women and best practice medical care for trans children.

These are not in keeping with the way of love and we must speak our truth about it, no matter how many modern-day Amaziahs try to make us stop. We have a message to prophesy, a message of the unfathomable, inclusive, compassionate love of God for all people.

And no matter how many Herods of today manipulate their way around what’s right - or even lawful- destroying lives they neither notice nor care about; we won’t stop calling it out as wrong. As Ida B. Wells once said, “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” 

We have the light of truth in us. It is the very Spirit of Jesus given to us so that we can continue his reconciling work in the world. So, no matter how impossible or desolate the path to peace and love seems to our earthly minds, we’ll continue to pray for and gratefully receive the grace and power to do what God would have us do. Amen.

7 Pentecost, 2024-B: Ready, receptive, transformable

Note: You can watch this being delivered live at Emmanuel Episcopal Church during our Sunday, 10 am service of Holy Eucharist, live-streamed on our YouTube channel. The sermon begins at 27' 25"

 

Lectionary, Track 2: Ezekiel 2:1-5; Psalm 123; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13 

En el nombre de Dios, creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen.

I want to begin today with a discussion of one of my favorite saints: Hildegard of Bingen, who lived in the 12th century (1098-1179), so, the medieval era.

Hildegard was sickly from birth and throughout her life. If anyone knew weakness, it was Hildegard. Beginning from about the age of three, Hildegard began having visions. Though she was hesitant to share her visions, she eventually trusted someone enough and told them. This prompted the formation of a committee of theologians to authenticate her visions – which they did.

One of the things I love about Hildegard was how grounded she was in her faith. I can only imagine that this woman’s visions, and interpretations of those visions, were so quickly authenticated because her articulation of them was congruent with her Christian faith. This can be witnessed in her many writings.

Hildegard was a mystic. Her writings were prophetic, apocalyptic, theological, botanical, and medical. She was also a poet and composed music for her poetry. She was, in other words, a polymath, a female one no less, ahead of the Renaissance.

Hildegard described her visions as reflections/voice of the living light. The visions came as images which she then interpreted in words. She heard the voice of God not with her ears but in her spirit. Hildegard “saw” that within all creation is a Divine life force, the breath of God, ruach, as it is called in Genesis. This, she says, is why everything in creation reflects and glorifies God.

That same life force is in us like sap is in a tree. Without it we would die. By it, we have within us the ruach of the Divine who fills and transforms our bodies and spirits, connecting us to all creation and motivating us to nurture and care for ourselves, one another, and all of creation. As Hildegard said in her prayer: “O Holy Spirit, … you are the mighty way in which every thing that is in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth, is penetrated with connectedness, is penetrated with relatedness.”

By observing nature around her, Hildegard “saw that there was a readiness in plants to receive the sun and to transform its light and warmth into energy and life.” Source. She called this process: viriditas (greening).

I would suggest that this is our faithful posture during this long, green season after Pentecost: to be ready, receptive, and transformable. It is also the theme of our Scripture readings today.

Let’s start with Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. This is Paul speaking about himself in the 3rd person. Was it false humility? It often is with Paul, but this time, I don’t think it was because this portion of his letter is so authentically mystical.

Paul talks about being caught up to the third heaven, a realm beyond human comprehension where God is fully present. What Paul is describing here is a unitive experience: complete connectedness, oneness with the Divine and all that is, where somehow the truth of all things is known.

When the experience ends and our mortal nature returns, we have no words to describe it. Paul said, he “heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” We couldn’t if we tried, but Paul, being Paul, is a Pharisee and so the words he can find to use are very rules-based.

Still, he manages to communicate a very, very important message from his experience. God said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Paul was not accustomed to being weak. He was an elite, wealthy, educated, religious authority with the power to hunt down and kill those he deemed to be heretics. But in this letter, we see that Paul was ready, receptive, and transformable. His acquiescence culminates in his effusive statement: “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”

How profound that is! We need to make room in ourselves for the power of Christ to dwell in us. Our hubris, our sense of self-sufficiency, our willingness to divide heaven and earth and relegate God’s power to the heavenly realm while we maintain power over the earthly realm - has to go!

Like Paul, we too, as a people, are unaccustomed to being weak. Our culture worships strength, even brutality, in sports, politics, and, sadly, religion.

Look around in the world as we have it today. Who is crying out “Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy, for we have had more than enough of contempt, too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, and of the derision of the proud” as our psalmist says. Who are those voices among us now?

It is us. We are not disconnected from the families in Ukraine or the Middle East enduring war or from the families in our own city besieged by gun violence. We are connected to the descendants of slaves who continue to battle discrimination and enslavement through economic and political structures that exclude them and privatized prisons that profit from exiling them. We share a life force with the indigenous people who continue to live in imposed poverty and exile from their homelands. We are also one with those whose pride forbids acquiescence to true weakness, who squeeze God out because they don’t trust in the mercy, love, and power of God to transform.

In Ezekiel, we see how God responds when our hubris squeezes God out of our collective hearts. Ezekiel speaks of a God who cares so much about the people who, in return, care so little for God, themselves, or others. The people have become impudent, stubborn, and rebellious. In response, God reaches out to them through a person, Ezekiel, with a message. Hildegard might describe this as the life force of God reaching out through the prophet to renew the dying world. But be advised, God said, they are a rebellious people who may refuse to hear you.

This is similar to what Jesus tells the disciples when he sends them out. There may be some who won’t welcome you or your message. If that happens, Jesus says, don’t try to fix it or force it. Just leave and, as Taylor Swift would say, shake it off.

At our Bible study this week, one of our studiers suggested that Jesus took his disciples to his hometown on purpose, to show them, before he sent them, that even he wouldn’t always be welcomed, despite the many healings he’d already done. When our Scripture tells us that Jesus could do no deeds of power there, it wasn’t because his power was diminished but because the people were unwilling to receive from him. They were not ready, receptive, or transformable.

Jesus sends us now, with the same authority he gave the disciples, to heal the brokenness in our world. We, too, won’t always be welcomed and sometimes, we have to just shake it off. We aren’t sent with a scorecard to record our successes. We’re sent to bring the viriditas within us, the life force of God within us, to heal the world around us.

We often read these healing stories the way we watch movies like Harry Potter - like it’s a fantasy. Healing is magical and we don’t have magic.

Well, I’m here to tell you, yes we do! We have the power of God’s healing life force, viriditas, within us, and we’re already using it! 

When someone comes to us broken by grief, or insecurity, or fear and we comfort them or remind them of their worth, God has extended viriditas through us to them. When someone is wounded by racism, sexism, or homophobia and we work to transform the systems that oppress them, God has healed the world through us. When we sit with someone who just needs us to be present, without solving anything, God has extended the viriditas that is in us to them.

Some healing is physical, but it is also spiritual, emotional, and personal – and we know how to do it. We just have to wake up to the power of God’s viriditas in us and commit to go wherever and how-ever God sends us to heal the world, remembering what Julian of Norwich said, that “We are not just made by God. We are made of God.”.

I close with a prayer from Hildegard’s feast day, which is September 17. Let us pray. O God, by whose grace your servant Hildegard, kindled with the fire of your love, became a burning and shining light in your Church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and walk before you as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

5 Pentecost, 2024-B: Receive the peace

Note: You can watch this being delivered live at Emmanuel Episcopal Church during our Sunday, 10 am service of Holy Eucharist, live-streamed on our YouTube channel. 

Lectionary - Track 2: Job 38:1-11; Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41

En el nombre de Dios, creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen. 

Whirlwinds and stormy seas. Stillness and peace. The imagery in our readings today is so relatable. We all know what it feels like to have to weather a storm which can be happening to us or within us.

Storms happen. They’re part of life. In every storm, God is present, aware of the storm and its effect on us, and never fails to help. God’s word still calms whatever chaos we find ourselves in today.

In our Old Testament reading, “The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.” Wind, breath, from the Hebrew word ruach has always been a reference to the Spirit or Essence of God. A whirlwind, however, is a turbulent wind, a swirling, often destructive maelstrom. This story illustrates Job’s confusion and fright as God reveals and smacks down Job's hubris.

The whirlwind was part of Job’s journey into right relationship with God. This storm didn’t threaten Job’s life – it saved it. Hubris will destroy us – and others, as the Psalm illustrates so well. But God will stop our proud waves with “a whisper.” In the stillness that results from this breathy, softly spoken word of God, our joy is restored, and we realize that God has saved us from ourselves and brought us to safe harbor: which is God.

Paul affirms this in his letter to the church in Corinth. Quoting Isaiah (49:8), Paul reminds us that God has said, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” This is that day, Paul says. The time is now.

The time is now to open our hearts completely to the grace of God. In order to do that, we’ll have to die to a few things. We have to die to our hubris, as Job did. We have to remember that God is God and we are not and only God can save.

We also have to die to the notion that God is other, out there. Objectifying God has done so much damage to us. God is our creator who breathes life into us. Scripture tells us that God is steadfast, faithful, merciful, and of great kindness. Yet, we have created and weaponized a frighteningly vengeful, punitive, distant God, out of our fears and sense of unworthiness. Objectifying God also leads us to objectify one another, which does its own kind of damage as we can see with homophobia, racism, sexism, all the …isms that divide us and result in the oppression of some by others.

In the story of the stormy sea in today’s gospel, Jesus directly addresses our objectification of God. The traditional approach to this story is that it is a story of Jesus’ divine spirit being made known to the disciples. With a word, Jesus can calm a storm. Even the wind and sea obey him.

That is true, but it is only one side of the story, the outer side. I would like to invite us to go to the “other side” of this story, the side that speaks to the storms that happen within us as we journey into right relationship with God, self, and other, much like Job did.

The context is this: Jesus has just finished teaching the crowds about the kingdom of God, that is, what right relationship with God and one another looks like. He does this through a series of parables, which he explains in private to his disciples.

As I mentioned last week, the disciples come from a tradition that promises a Messiah who will set them free from oppression. Jesus has just begun teaching them that this liberation, this salvation, is so much bigger than they imagine. It is not just liberation of the children of Israel, but liberation of all people.

While they’re trying to wrap their heads around that, Jesus says, “Let us go across to the other side” meaning the other side of the Sea of Galilee – the Gentile side. This was more than a geographic relocation. It was a journey into right relationship with God, others, and even themselves.

Following Jesus meant they had to choose to leave behind what was familiar to them and head toward what seemed a less than desirable destination. They did go, but it wasn’t long before they began to experience a great windstorm within. This storm was so strong they thought they might die.

Does following this teacher mean their death? Yes. It does.

It means the death of their small understanding about God. It means the death of their understanding of their own identity as God’s chosen people and their habit of seeing others as unworthy, unclean, and unwelcome in the kingdom of God. It means the death of their expectations about the Messiah and salvation. And it means the death of their objectification of God.

In the midst of this interior, existential storm the disciples cry out to Jesus: Teacher, don’t you care that we’re perishing? Why did they call out to their teacher instead of their Lord or Messiah? Because they wanted to understand but their minds were in a whirlwind. Jesus replies, “Peace! Be still!” to the disciples – to storm within them. Then he asks, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” 

The disciples have to let this death happen. So do we. It won’t destroy our life; it will save it!

But they still didn’t get it – or at least the gospel writer didn’t. I suggest that the great awe that filled them was that reverential fear mixed with wonder that always happens in the presence and power and overwhelming love of God. It creates a kind of whirlwind in our minds, spinning us off balance until we let go and let God be God for us and in us.

It is the peace of Christ that calms all our storms. When storms happen, and they will happen here and there as long as we live, we can remember and cling to the foundations given to us in our Scripture. In Ezekiel, God says, I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live. (37:14) In Joel, God says, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.” (2:28) Then, of course, there is Jesus, who, in the gospel of John, breathed his own spirit into us saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (20:22)

Journeying into right relationship with God is our choice, and we make this choice knowing that we will have to die to our need to understand so that we can live into being the truth of who we are, the truth that we are vessels of God’s own Spirit, dwelling places of God, embodied Love.

Being this truth is only the first step. Then there’s the doing – as Jesus did - being present to others as they are tossed about by their inner and outer storms and giving voice to the spirit of God in us to speak peace to them.

When I studied in England as part of my doctoral work, I visited Coventry Cathedral where I watched a video of King George VI speaking to the people of England from the bombed-out rubble of that beautiful church destroyed by the Nazis. He called for a response of peace and forgiveness. It was transforming.

A month later, in his Christmas message, King George quoted a portion of the poem, “The Gate of the Year” by Minnie Louise Haskins. Here’s what he shared: 

 “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ 

And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’

So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And [God] led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.”  Source

Whatever our storms, whether in the world around us or within us, let us faithfully put our hands in the hand of God and receive the peace and salvation only God can give. Amen.

4 Pentecost, 2024-B: Our high calling

Note: You can watch this being delivered live at Emmanuel Episcopal Church during our Sunday, 10 am service of Holy Eucharist, live-streamed on our YouTube channel. The sermon is at 29:21.

Proper 6, Track II: Ezekiel 17:22-24; Psalm 92:1-4,11-14; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10,14-17; Mark 4:26-34 

En el nombre de Dios, creator, redentor, y santificador. Amen. 

“Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness and minister your justice with compassion.” This is the high calling of the faithful followers of Jesus, isn’t it? To be faithful and loving, to act boldly and compassionately in the face of injustice.

This has always been a hard task for God’s people to accomplish. Our own understanding is so small and it takes time for us to move beyond them as God continues to expand the boundaries of love around us. We often resist, delay, and even rebel against this expansion of our understanding and our practices. Often, when by the grace of God we see injustice, we hesitate and consider the effect tending to the needs of the one who is suffering the injustice will have on us.

It’s always been this way, and as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, once famously said: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It does eventually, and not because of anything we do, but because it is the plan of God who is always faithful.

That’s what the parables in today’s gospel are all about: God’s faithfulness to the process of expanding the boundaries of Love. Jesus describes this process in terms of seeds and trees, a metaphor people then and now can understand.

These parables reflect back to the reading from Ezekiel in which God takes a tender branch from the giant cedar tree and plants it on a high mountain, Bible-speak for the place where God is encountered. God’s plan for that seedling is that it will become a marvelous cedar with boughs so large and so strong that it will be able to house and comfort winged creatures of every kind, Bible-speak for all the peoples and nations of the world.

That’s the process: God creates the environment where all peoples and nations live in harmony. This is the household of God.

Our part in this process is, as our Collect reminded us, to proclaim God’s truth with boldness, and minister God’s justice with compassion. Our forebears in the faith have never agreed completely on what that means and how we do it, but each generation tries to be faithful to that call. We all succeed and fail to some degree, but the process continues because that is the nature and promise of God.

Today’s gospel offers a shift in Jesus’ ministry and message. Previously, Jesus had spent his time preaching in the synagogues and temples. In this passage from Mark, Jesus takes his message out of the churches and into the communities where people of all descriptions can hear him: women, children, Gentiles, slaves. Everyone who is “other.”

The message Jesus is now proclaiming is about expanding their understanding of the boundaries of God’s love. Salvation isn’t just for the Jewish people but for all peoples, all nations.

The parable of the seed is the introduction to this expansive understanding. Jesus teaches that someone (meaning people, not God) plants a seed. It grows in the darkness under the soil, out of sight from the one who planted it, and they don’t know how it grows. Tending the seed does matter, but God’s love, God’s grace isn’t limited to that, as anyone who has seen a flower emerge from a sidewalk crack knows.

Steve and I have discovered a Rose of Sharon auspiciously planted by some unknown source in our garden. It’s in the perfect spot and grows taller every day. It excites us to see it because we didn’t plant it or tend it. It just happened. When the earth bears fruit it’s because God made it happen.

The second parable, the Parable of the Mustard Seed, is a familiar story about the way God chooses the least to accomplish so much. By the grace of God, the tiny mustard seed grows to become large and strong enough to be a comforting home to the birds, much like the cedar tree in Ezekiel. The references in this story are the same and Jesus’ listeners would have “heard” Jesus’ message that the household of God is for all people, all nations.

This is not what the people awaiting the Messiah were seeking. They were seeking liberation for the Jewish people from occupation by their enemies, but Jesus was teaching them about liberation for all.

Back to our backyard garden… Steve and I are thrilled everyday watching the birds eat from our many feeders and playfully bathe in our bird baths. With that thrill, however, comes constant vigilance for squirrels who are steadfast in their quest to steal the birds’ food. No matter what barriers we put up, eventually the squirrels overcome them. They’re persistent little critters. They’re probably also the source of the Rose of Sharon.

Whether we like it or not, squirrels are created of God, so they too have a place in the environment we occupy. Perhaps instead of only working on barriers against them, we might repent and tend to their needs, embracing them rather than other-ing them. 

Are the dots beginning to connect?

This was at the heart of Jesus' message. Some people ate up Jesus’ message of the expanding boundaries of Love evidenced by the huge crowds who were gathering to hear him. Others resisted his message. For them, inclusion in liberation can’t happen for the “others” – the Gentiles, foreigners, slaves, and women - until it happens first for us.

Sound familiar? It’s a theme that keeps repeating in the generations of our forebears and continues in our generation. This week we mark Racial Equity week in the midst of PRIDE month. These are just two of the “others” of our time who cry out for justice and compassion. We are called to respond by embracing them and tending to their needs.

We also must speak the truth. White supremacy is so baked into our culture that we’ve allowed ourselves to lose sight of its trajectory from the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 which freed only the enslaved persons in Confederate states, to the 13th amendment, ratified in 1865, which outlawed slavery in the US, to the backlash of black codes, Jim Crow laws, and redlining practices of the 19th and 20th centuries, to the School to Prison Pipeline today. This path represents the arc of injustice. We have much still to do toward racial equity.

Remembering that we are in the middle of PRIDE month, we acknowledge that we have much to do on this injustice as well. Come to our PRIDE picnic on June 30 at 5 pm to build relationships and share resources that will help us embrace and tend to the needs of our LGBTQIA2S+ siblings in Christ who are suffering or still healing. Go to the PRIDE page on our website (under the Welcome menu tab) where you will find resources to educate and heal us all.

We definitely have much to do, and it’s OK if we start small, as long as we get started. Dr. King once said: "Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." And as Bishop Deon said at the End Gun Violence rally last Sunday, “The time has come. The time is now.”

If we take the first step God will show us the next step, and the next one…, and by the grace of God we will grow into the fullness of our strength, offering ourselves, our church, as a place of comfort and safety to all peoples, all nations.

This is the path given to us at Baptism: striving for the justice and dignity of every human being. It is the path that bends toward justice. 

So I ask our Equity and Justice pillar of Faith In Action to help us determine what our first step will be. I will support you in that endeavor. And I ask everyone at Emmanuel to commit to take that first step together. 

The time has come. The time is now. Amen.

Pentecost & Baptism, 2024-B: Expanding the boundaries of love

Note: You can watch this being delivered live at Emmanuel Episcopal Church during our Sunday, 10 am Rite II service of Holy Eucharist, live-streamed on our YouTube channel.  The sermon begins at 29:22.

Lectionary: Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

En el nombre de Dios: creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen. In the name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen. 

As I read our Collect for today, I was struck by this phrase: “…in the unity of the Holy Spirit…” This is something we hear so often as we gather together to worship. It ends just about every Collect we say, and it concludes all four of our Eucharistic Prayers.

Even though we pray this often, have we stopped lately to think about what it means? Well, today’s a good day to do that because this phrase is, for me, the essence of Pentecost.

In the story in Acts, God, who is Trinity in Unity, self-divides into tongues as of fire and rests on each person in the gathering. When that happens, each one is filled with God’s spirit. They are now, in their bodies, living in unity with the Holy Spirit. This was God’s choice.

You remember last week, I preached about the power of God being the power of choice, and the power given to us being the power to action. In the Pentecost story, God chose to overtly join God’s self to each person, and the minute that happened, they were empowered to action, immediately sharing the Good News of the love of God in the world.

As they spoke, everyone present could understand them, and this bewildered them. How can this be? It’s the same question Mary asked the angel Gabriel when he told her she would conceive a son by the power of God’s spirit. It’s good to remember Gabriel’s response to Mary as we read this story of the first Pentecost. In fact, it’s a mantra we can all live by: “For nothing shall be impossible with God.”

As our Psalmist says, “O Lord, how manifold are your works…” then he goes on to describe just some of the wonder and diversity of God’s creative love. May we, like the psalmist, sing God’s praise forever.

In our gospel story, Jesus promises to send an Advocate from the Father. I need to pause to mention that each time the word “Father’ is used here, it is plural, and it literally means “father and mother.” The appropriate pronoun, therefore, would be “they” not “he.”

The word Advocate, also faithfully translated as Comforter, Helper, and Counselor (as in a lawyer or an advice-giver) literally translates as one who is summoned… called to one's aid, a pleader who comes forward in favor of and as the representative of another. (Greek translation, Thayer)

Jesus says this Advocate will "testify on MY behalf." This is Jesus’ Advocate - summoned to help him, to testify in favor of his cause as his representative." And when the Advocate comes,” Jesus says, they will show the world to be wrong about sin, righteousness, and judgment. 

Sin, because there are people not persuaded by me, they don’t trust me and so they are without me; the divine-human relationship is disrupted.

Righteousness, because I withdraw from this world (you will see me no longer) and return to the eternal unity of God. Righteousness literally translates here as, “the state of him who is such as he ought to be” (Greek translation, Thayer)

And judgment... God’s judgment, God’s choice is to separate and distinguish Jesus from the powers and powerful of the world who distract us from our right relationship with God, others, and self. These worldly powers throw us off our true path. Jesus says they have been JUDGED (not condemned, as it was translated here), that is, they have been distinguished from Jesus who is our true path: the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Jesus’ Advocate, who is the Spirit of truth, will make all of this known to us. Spirit, btw, comes from the word “pneuma” which is feminine, so the appropriate pronoun would be “she” not “he.” She will guide us into all truth. She will make known the things that are to come. She will glorify Jesus.

And through Her, so will we.

In the story from Acts, Peter says, “Let this be known to you, and listen to (which actually translates as “receive”) what I say. When we open ourselves to receive the power to action given to us by the Spirit of truth, we too will prophesy.

To prophesy is to speak as directed by the Spirit of God. So, prophesy that the Holy Spirit of God now dwells in us, uniting us to God and to one another – actually and intimately, like family. Prophesy that the need to divide our matter from God’s Spirit, to divide worthy people from unworthy people, is a lie – because we live in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Prophesy, then watch as God works through our faithfulness.

The other way to use our power to action is to live it. That first Pentecost was a powerful moment of heavenly inclusion, of building relationships where earthly divisions had been. All nations, all people were being made known to be one body, one family. When we live this truth as a church, the Good News will issue forth from our mouths and our lives like rushing water, satisfying those who hunger and thirst for a Love that includes them too.

As the church, the body of Christ in the world, we are called to communally discover and nurture the gifts given to us by the Holy Spirit and use them so that the truth that we are all the family of God is made known on earth.

Today we are blessed to welcome a new member into this family of God: Emilia Jane Reinhardt, Emmy as we call her. Emmy has unique gifts to be discovered and nurtured. Her parents and Godparents will pledge to help her grow in her Christian faith and life. We will pledge to do all in our power to support Emmy and her parents, praying that God will teach Emmy to love in the power of the Spirit and send her into the world in witness to that love.

By this Baptism, we will expand the boundaries of love. We will renew our own Baptismal vows, remembering that we too are marked as Christ’s own forever and are called, along with Emmy, to have inquiring and discerning hearts and live lives of grace.

How wonderful is it to know that we are never alone on this pilgrimage of life? We have family everywhere we are: God, one another, and self - in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

I now invite Emmy, and her parents, Godparents, family, and friends, to come to the font for the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. I also invite all of the children present today to come forward and help me bless the Baptismal water.