The Interior Healing of the Blind Man (and us)

Our Lenten Journey enters a critical moment. We are at the midpoint of Lent. It’s time to get our bearings, to assess our progress, to reestablish our goals. We engage in this reevaluation on this Sunday as we contemplate the healing of the blind man.

The earliest Christians saw this story as a tale about baptism.

Did you notice how Jesus first sees this man, this unnamed person, who cannot see Jesus?  Jesus spits on the dirt, forms a mud paste which he smears on the blind eyes of this man. Jesus tells him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. He hears Jesus and obeys. When he returns to the opening scene he can see.

But Jesus has disappeared from the scene and the healed man is placed on trial. He is placed on trial as a disciple of Jesus. Notice how his faith grows as he is confronted by those without faith in Jesus. He first speaks of “The man called Jesus.” (Jn. 9: 11) He later professes: “He is a prophet.” (Jn. 9: 17) He acknowledges “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” Finally he comes to that fullness of faith when he sees Jesus as the Son of Man and worships Jesus as the Son of God. 

We all have heard stories of Jesus curing blind people and these are more than historic accounts of healings. Every cure of a blind person marks an interior enlightenment of a believer, a shift from darkness to light, a move from unbelief to faith, a vision of Jesus as the light of the world. This unnamed blind person can be any one of us. This unnamed blind person stands for each of us. Each of us can find ourselves in this blind person. For each of us is blind in some significant ways.

Each of us lives out of a way of being in the world which we learned throughout our lives. Every once in the while, you might have had a moment when you saw yourself in a new light, when you saw the lens through which you were looking at world. If you asked those who live with you about that lens, they see it all the time. But they love you and shield you from seeing it yourself. Perhaps you get a glimpse of it when you do something which is out of character for you. Perhaps you have such deeply ingrained patterns of behavior, such hostile or arrogant ways of being in the world, such unconscious ways of looking at and engaging others, that you do not have a clue that anything about you needs to change. Jesus was talking to each one of us when he said to the Pharisees: “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” (Jn. 9: 39)

So how can we move from darkness to the light? Did you notice how the blind man began? He did not start the process. Jesus began the journey for him. Jesus found him. After Jesus found him, Jesus called out to him. He heard Jesus’ voice, he obeyed Jesus’ voice, and he began the journey of healing.

Our focus has been on seeing and vision and the ironic beginning of this healing starts with another sense, with hearing. How willing are you to hear Jesus call out to you, to invite you to see in a new way, to be cured of the blindness you may be reluctant to acknowledge?

At this midpoint of Lent, as you access how far you have gone, perhaps you can ask Jesus to speak to you in a voice you have not heard before. Perhaps you can hear Jesus inviting you to a healing you know you need but dare not ask him for that cure. Perhaps you can hear Jesus pointing out a place of inner conflict which needs resolution but you dare not move toward reconciliation.

This gospel, while it was long, contains more to it. After Jesus performs this sign, he goes on to explain its meaning in Chapter 10 of this gospel. He assures you that he is the Good Shepherd “who calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”(Jn. 10:3) 

Jesus the Good Shepherd leads you to pastures of healing and nourishment, to interior places of peace and reconciliation, to new patterns of living and loving. Listen to the voice of Jesus calling out to you. Ask Jesus to open the eyes of your heart to see what you resist seeing. You are invited today to this deeper faith in Jesus as your healer, as your shepherd, as your light.

Yes, you are at the midpoint of Lent. You are at that moment when your inner Lenten journey makes more demands on you. Just as the blind man received an unanticipated gift of seeing, pray that Jesus may open your ears to hear him and your eyes to see him, your Good Shepherd, bringing you a gift you would never have imagined.    

Meeting Jesus the Bridegroom At The Well

We all have heard of Eharmony, that online dating platform which helps singles to connect. Can you guess whose Eharmony profile this might be:   Single Jewish male, early 30’s, likes to travel, hangs out with a mismatched crowd of associates, open to meeting anyone but mother wants me to meet a nice Jewish girl. Could that be the profile of Jesus of Nazareth? Most of us would not imagine Jesus involved in dating anyone yet today’s Gospel shows us Jesus at the ancient equivalent of Eharmony.

In the ancient world, dating regularly began at wells. Just remember that a well was the scene where Abraham’s servant found Isaac his wife Rebekah, where Jacob met Rachel and Moses met his wife Zipporah.  In placing Jesus and the unnamed Samaritan woman at a well, people at the time of Jesus would have thought of Eharmony.

The beginning of John’s gospel gives Jesus a strange title:  Bridegroom. Jesus performs his first miracle at a wedding feast, John the Baptist refers to Jesus as a Bridegroom and today the Bridegroom meets his bride at the well. 

It would help us to understand the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman as a symbolic meeting. Let’s remember that Jews thought of God as the Bridegroom of Israel, a Bridegroom whose Bride was not always faithful to her Bridegroom.

Some of us might hear Jesus comments about the Samaritan woman’s five husbands as a reprimand but some history lies behind that comment. In the First Book of Kings, when we hear the story of the beginnings of the Samaritans, the Assyrian King, after exiling the 10 northern tribes of Israel, brought people from five other countries into the land. These people who worshipped their five foreign gods, were instructed by Jewish priests to worship the God of Israel. However these foreign people combined their pagan cults with Jewish worship and so the Samaritans worshipped with a polluted faith. The Jewish prophets compared this blending of religions to infidelity in a marriage. Jesus comes to this Samaritan woman as the Bridegroom who will return her to fidelity to her one Bridegroom. 

Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman, the longest conversation Jesus has in the bible, shows a woman who has gone to Bible study and knows how to hold her own with this Jewish rabbi. Throughout the conversations, Jesus is breaking down the walls which this woman thinks separates Jesus from her. Jesus does not pay attention to the wall which might separate a Jew from a Samaritan and a Rabbi from a woman.  He offers her the water that will spring up to eternal life.

In answer to the question about where to worship God, on the Samaritan location of Mount Gerizim or the Jewish Mount Zion on Jerusalem, Jesus shifts adoration to a new center, to the heart, there to worship God in “spirit and truth.” Jesus says something a bit strange: “The true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.” (Jn. 4: 23)

The woman hears in Jesus the words of a prophet, then the words of the Messiah. Jesus reveals himself to her, reveals himself as the Son of God with the name of God taken from Exodus:  “I AM He.”

Last week, I invited you to identify with the different characters of the Lenten gospels and today you are invited to identify with this Samaritan woman. She does not have a name to help us see ourselves in her. The Samaritan woman is seeking after God, she desires God, something deep in her heart knows an emptiness only God can fill. She represents that deep longing each of us feels, that desire to love and be loved, that yearning which we satisfy in the beloved of our heart.

Jesus as the Bridegroom represents the discovery of that deep longing of your heart, that desire to love and be loved. In this Gospel, that desire is labeled with the word “seek.” At the start of the Gospel and at its conclusion Jesus asks his disciples, “Whom do you seek?” In the heart of today’s reading, we heard that the Father seeks true worshippers.

God plants in each of your hearts this deep longing and desire which only God can satisfy. God seeks and desires you with that same deep yearning. Yes, other loves come from our heart but all these loves are part of that deeper love we have for God and God for us.

During this week of Lent, ask yourself how faithful you are to that deep desire in your heart, how you may let your heart stray, how you may center your heart in that deep desire. Jesus the Bridegroom is searching for you, seeking you, planting in your heart this deep unsatisfied desire. Jesus comes to you this day in a communion of hearts to satisfy that yearning. May you return to Jesus that you too may discover God’s holy love surging in your heart surging as a spring of life giving water. 

Seeing through the Eyes of Nicodemus

Beginning today and throughout the next Sundays in Lent, the Gospels present encounters with Jesus. Jesus encounters Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the man born blind and raises Lazarus from the dead. All these encounters offer YOU an opportunity to encounter Jesus. Jesus comes to you and invites you to come and see HIM.  These Gospels invite you into those stories that you might find yourselves in the stories, that you might identify with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the blind man or Lazarus. Through that identification Jesus comes to you and invites you deeper into his story so that his story becomes your story.

Let’s take a look at Nicodemus and Jesus. Nicodemus comes to Jesus as a reluctant disciple. You heard that he comes to Jesus at night. In this Gospel, light signifies believing and darkness not believing. Since Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, we know that believing comes hard for him.

Nicodemus suggests that he sees God is at work with Jesus. Jesus throws Nicodemus into a crisis when Jesus says no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. In John’s Gospel, Jesus loves to play with words and when he says born from above, the word we translate as above can also mean again or from above. 

If ever there is a phrase that sends shivers down the backs of Episcopalians, we God’s Frozen Chosen, it might be Born Again. You might imagine people speaking in tongues, witnessing to the ways God is at work in their lives, Baptist style worship. Most of us feel very uncomfortable with that style of religion. You might be relieved to know that Jesus would not imagine such events when he talks about being born again.

Did you notice that in speaking with Jesus, Nicodemus restricts his understanding to things that  he can see and feel and touch. He thinks in purely physical terms and asks How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born? But Jesus is using images to convey a spiritual experience. In speaking with Nicodemus, Jesus is challenging us to reimagine what it means to believe, to have faith.  

Believing involves the capacity of looking deeper, deeper than what the eye can see or the ear can hear or the hand can touch.

Believing involves the capacity of seeing not with the body’s eye but with the eye of the heart.

Nicodemus cannot understand Jesus and so he asks Jesus:  “How can this be?”  Many of us find ourselves in the same position as Nicodemus. We move through our days and only see with the eyes of our bodies. Jesus invites you to see with the eyes of your heart. When you see with the eyes of the heart then you are born again.  

Perhaps another way to look at this mystery comes from the most famous line of scripture we heard in today’s gospel:  “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  What if being born again is as simple as experiencing that you are loved by God, that God wants to share God’s life with you, that God invites you to become members of God’s family, to be born again into God’s family?

It does take time to realize how deeply God’s loves us, how unconditional is God’s love for us, how unwavering is that love. Perhaps that is why Nicodemus cannot get what Jesus is saying. Perhaps that is why Nicodemus comes to us at the start of Lent to show us that believing in God’s love is a gradual process. At the end of today’s gospel, we get the feeling that Nicodemus does not get Jesus, he is fascinated by Jesus but he does not have real faith in that unconditional love. But there’s hope for Nicodemus. He shows up two more times in this gospel. In chapter 7, when the Jewish leaders are consolidating their efforts to arrest Jesus, Nicodemus challenges them and stands up for Jesus. Something in Nicodemus is shifting. His resistance to love is giving way. Finally, after Jesus is dead on the cross, Nicodemus joins Joseph of Arimathea and buries the body of Jesus. Nicodemus brings one hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, the store of spices used to bury a King, and lays the body of Jesus in a cave. With the eyes of his body Nicodemus sees dead body of Jesus. With the eyes of his faith, Nicodemus sees the glorified body of a king. By acknowledging that this broken and dead body deserves royal treatment, Nicodemus finally arrives at full faith. He sees beyond the fragile broken Jesus and beholds the victorious and risen Christ. In the darkness of Jesus’ death, he has come into the light. 

Nicodemus takes three steps in his journey of faith and he challenges us to figure out how well we see Jesus. If you find yourself stuck at one level, ask Jesus to illumine the eyes of your heart to see with deeper faith, to journey into the hidden mystery of God. Ask Jesus to open the eyes of your heart to see deeper than doubt.

Doubt intrudes on our hearts in so many ways. When pain and sorrow constrict our hearts, we might question how our God can love us when we don’t feel that love. When oppression and inequality weigh on our hearts, we might wonder where is the God who champions the cause of justice. When sickness and age limit our abilities, we might ask God if God has forgotten where we live.

Those are the moments to go deeper, to have confidence that you are indeed loved, that God walks with you even if you feel as if you are walking alone. The mystery of God’s love grows in us, invites us, as Nicodemus was invited, to enter into the darkness and discover the light. We know that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome the light.

Reimaging the Story of Eve and Adam

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then  the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

If you had to summarize each of today’s readings with a single word what would you choose? The Gospel tells a story of temptation.  The letter to the Romans speaks of sin. But what about the tale from Genesis? What word would summarize that fable? Throughout history many words have been used to summarize that story:  Shame, Original Sin, Satan. All those words miss the point.

Throughout history many people, usually men, have used this story to point that a woman, Eve, is the cause of all human pain and struggle.  All those men miss the point.  Let’s try to rethink the Genesis story and follow the contours of its complex vision of God and humanity.

Whenever you see pictures of this story, Eve and Adam are usually depicted as adults. But what if you picture them as teenagers, young people learning about themselves and how to relate to one another, God and the world. Most of you can remember the challenges you faced as teens. You were trying to make sense of how to balance our desire for independence against the rules laid down by our parents. You were struggling to learn how to navigate in a complex world and take on the role of adults in that world. You were feeling the surge of sexual energy and the attraction of desire and were experimenting with how to manage that energy. What if you place the story of Eve and Adam in the context of teenagers learning their place in the world and left out the shadows of sin and shame and guilt which church people have laid on our original parents?

Let’s start with the serpent. While many of us see the devil in the snake, nowhere does the bible call the reptile anything other than a talking snake, a crafty snake, like you might find in other ancient world tales. The snake functions as a trickster, the one who transforms situations and overturns the status quo. Something needs to change in paradise, the land of innocence, in order for the teenaged Eve and Adam to become adults. The snake begins that transformation, a change any teenager makes in discovering their authority as a moral agent, an authority they assigned to their parents, a transformation which begins by stepping outside the boundaries established by God.

But let’s take a closer look at our first parents. Like most teenagers, this first pair will overstep themselves and mess up some things. Throughout the story, Eve is depicted as the inquisitive one and Adam the one who follows Eve’s lead. Did the serpent sense that Eve was questioning the order God established when it tells Eve:  God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Listen carefully to Eve’s motivation for eating the fruit:  So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. The Tree was to be desired to make her wise. Eve is on a journey to deeper wisdom, to learn the difference between good and evil, and she takes the next step on that journey.

God was correct in saying that if Eve and Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they would die. They die to their childlike innocence and enter into the wisdom of adults.

You would be right to assume that Eve and Adam discover themselves as sexual persons by eating the fruit. They learn the lesson we learn as children, that social conventions require us to wear clothing and that we shed our clothing to express our sexuality with one other.

Perhaps this reinterpretation of the story of the Garden may help you in your feelings about sin and shame and guilt. Some of the sin which we commit comes as a part of our journey into wisdom, our stumbling on the path as we mature into adulthood. Our society layers feelings of shame and guilt especially on women whenever a woman expresses her sexuality or acts on her desire. That shame and guilt can also come to us if we fail to comply with a heterosexual norm for our sexual expression.

Perhaps we can rethink the ways our culture has layered shame and guilt on our hearts and come to a different way of understanding the paths we took on our journey of wisdom. Perhaps we can help the young people in our lives take that journey as they reframe the boundaries of authority, as they discover inner powers of discipline, as they discover themselves as sexual persons, as they take the steps our first parents did in the garden in discovering the path of wisdom on which they should walk. Perhaps we can help the teenager in each of us to resolve the conflicts we encountered on our journey to adulthood and discover the deeper wisdom we all desire.

God offers us during this season of Lent an opportunity to purify our hearts, to restore us to a greater wholeness, to heal what is broken in us. May each of us open our hearts to that creative work of the Holy Spirit and discover that inner restoration we so desire. 

Ash Wednesday – A Call to Repentance

IAsh Wednesday involves us in a strange practice.  We come to church and ashes are traced on our heads as a reminder of our mortality.  In a life which is so fragile, in a life where a disease or an accident can threaten our very existence, the ashes on our foreheads remind us how fragile is that tie that binds us to this life and to one another.

Only last Sunday, we were reminded of that fragile connection we have with this world. As we were gathering in church, as we do every Sunday, less than a mile from our church a family was destroyed when a father killed his wife and daughter, shot his son who later died in the hospital and then killed himself. Those children went to school in the building across the street from our church. We, like our neighbors around us, are overwhelmed by the weight of this tragedy. We are reminded, yet again, of the tenuous hold we have on our lives, on the fragile tie which connects us with those we love.

The ashes on our foreheads remind us that our time is short.

Act quickly to restore what is broken in your life. Act quickly for you know not the day or the hour when this life will be rolled up and cut off.

But there is a far deeper call which comes to you today. A more profound call summons you. A more intimate invitation echoes in your heart. Jesus comes to you today and invites you to draw near to him. Jesus invites you to a renewed relationship with him. Jesus shines, as a light in the darkness, welcoming you to discover anew his love for you. Jesus’ love invites you this day to pray, to fast, to give. Jesus’ love invites you to enter these 40 days of Lent, to enter into the mystery of his love, a love so strong that Jesus sacrificed his very life to enter into the promise of God that new life dawns even in the deepest darkness of the night. 

As the ashes remind you of that deep darkness, look not to the darkness. Look to the light. Look to the light of Jesus’ love shining as a beacon in this dark world.

Jesus tells us today:  Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Discover your treasure in the light of Jesus. Follow that light as you are invited to new relationships with one another. Follow that light as you enter into the depths of Jesus’ battle with the darkness of this world to discover that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Follow that light as Jesus invites you to follow the pattern he shows us:  Surrender your alliances with the forces of evil which surround us in this world. Discover the new life of love which shines from the heart of Jesus in each of your hearts.

The Transfiguration of Jesus – A Zen take on the Mystery

Matthew 17:1-9

17Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. 2And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. 3Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 5While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” 6When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. 7But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” 8And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. 9As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

For those of you who love Star Trek Next Generation, you may recall an episode called Transfiguration. On an isolated planet, the Enterprise discovers a survivor of an accident who is generating healing powers to restore his health. However, the unknown survivor suffers from amnesia so he knows neither his past nor his identity. The crew of the Enterprise call him John Doe.  As John travels to the Enterprise, the healing power which restores his health becomes an energy with which he can heal others. As John’s body begins to heal, his memory begins to return. He recalls that he came from a planet from which he and the others on his ship were escaping but he cannot recall the reason. The Enterprise is intercepted by an unknown ship of Captain Sunad from the planet Zalkon and that he wants John returned to him. He explains that John is a criminal who has been given a death sentence. John transports Sunad to the Enterprise and informs the alien captain that they are a people going through an evolutionary change of their bodies from matter into pure energy. The others on their planet do not understand this transformation and kill people who are being changed.  John shifts into a ball of light and disappears from the Enterprise, supposedly shifting into his newly evolved state.

Perhaps the Transfiguration of Jesus might appear as some otherworldly shape shifting. Nowhere in the bible can we discover a similar event. Strange indeed this story but its meaning makes Jesus something more than some shape shifter from Star Trek. We have to look deeply into the Gospel to discover the meaning of Jesus’ Transfiguration. For the Transfiguration is a story about Jesus’ identity.

In chapter 16, which precedes today’s reading, Peter identifies Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Jesus then tells Peter and the other disciples that he is called to be a suffering Messiah, God’s chosen one who will be crucified and risen. Peter rebukes Jesus for this unheard combination of agony and glory.  Jesus ultimately rebukes Peter for his lack of understanding. Jesus then tells his disciples that his followers will have to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Jesus. Jesus is inviting his disciples to understand that God is calling Jesus as a Suffering Messiah.

The story of the Transfiguration marks a new beginning for the disciples. When the Gospel speaks of the six day interval before the Transfiguration, we are invited to remember the six day beginning of creation and the start of God’s new world. Jesus is starting the world anew in his identity as Suffering Messiah. Today’s gospel takes the story to a new level. The Suffering Messiah will be the Resurrected Messiah.

The mystery revealed to you in the Transfiguration pushes you to the end of the Jesus story, pushes you beyond the cross, pushes you beyond the grave. You are transported to the moment of the resurrection, the ultimate transfiguration of Jesus from death to new life. This moment of transfiguration should baffle your mind and confront your understanding for nothing about it makes sense.    

Nothing about your experience would show suffering as the way of transformation. From your earliest days, you are taught to avoid suffering, to stay away from pain, to flee from anguish. Yet we know that living our human lives involves deep pain, the anguish of separation, the trauma of death. Jesus comes to you as the one who has walked through the mystery of death and discovered life on the other side. Jesus invites you to walk that same journey, to enter into that very mystery and make that same discovery.

The Transfiguration marks a moment which reveals a new identity for Jesus. The Transfiguration also marks a moment which reveals your new identity. Through the mystery of death you discovered life on the other side. Not only in heaven but beginning now.

Our minds cannot make sense of this paradox and we feel as if we are banging our heads against a brick wall. At that moment of frustration, abide in the paradox, don’t run away from the bafflement and allow an unknown light to shine. The Light of the Transfiguration points you beyond the riddle which confuses you to the mystery which invites you.

You enter into that very mystery every time you receive Holy Communion that moment of paradox when the Risen Christ comes to you in a Broken Body and Blood poured out. In Holy Communion, you enter into that very mystery of being one with a Crucified and Risen Messiah.

Jesus assures you with those comforting words as he touches you:  Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid of this mystery. Do not be afraid to enter into this paradox. Do not be afraid but surrender to the process for on the other side of dying you will discover unimagined new life.   

The Micah 6 Plan

Micah 6:1-8

Hear what the Lord says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. 2Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. 3“O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! 4For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 5O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”

6“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” 8He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Just Imagine:  it’s a lazy weekday afternoon, and you are sitting home after all the roads are closed because of a snow storm.  Remember snow storms? None of us here would ever take a day off from work just because we need a day off! You turn on the television and you hear the start of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. You find yourself in the court of everyone’s favorite Judge Judy.

Most of us know the Judge Judy proves herself to be a no-nonsense judge. Just try to pull something over on this shrewd lady and you will find yourself quickly put in your place before you bat an eye. Did any of you think of Judge Judy during that first reading today? With words like plea, and calling on witnesses, we might imagine that the prophet Micah is setting up a court scene for us. We might imagine that God is calling on witnesses and planning to lay the law down.

These words of Micah come to us in another place during the liturgical season. On Good Friday the church has sung these words of Micah placing them on the lips of Jesus:  My people, what have I done to you or in what have I offended you, Answer me.

In Micah, God recounts the many gifts God gives us. On Good Friday, those same gifts are remembered by Jesus and in response we have brought Jesus to the cross. If you dare to emotionally enter into the heart of God as revealed by Micah and as revealed by the hymn of Good Friday, we encounter the deep pathos, the deep anguish of God who comes to us and finds us unresponsive.

God tells us of how God came to us when we were slaves in Egypt, when we endured the cruel lot of oppression, when God struck down the first born of the Egyptians to open the heart of Pharaoh to liberate God’s people, when God opened up the heart of the Red Sea and created a path where no path existed, when God called us to be God’s people at Mt Sinai and gave us the Commandments as our way to God. 

God shows the immensity of God’s love for us. What does God receive from us? Nothing. So the prophet is trying to stir the hearts of God’s people to come back, to return. God is appealing to the hearts of God’s people by showing us God’s own broken heart.

In an ironic turn of phrase, God asks the unimaginable from the people:   Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Yet God gives God’s firstborn for our transgression.

What greater love can we witness? How can we respond to this God of unimagined love, unheard of compassion, unthought of generosity? The prophet asks the question:  What does the Lord require of you? And the answer stuns us in its simplicity:  Do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.

Do Justice. We know that we live in a world where justice is not done. Our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry responded to the horrific murder of Tyre Nichols and said: “Sense cannot be made of the murder of a young man at the hands of five men whose vocation and calling are to protect and serve. This was evil and senseless.” We feel a deep grief and anger that persons responsible to maintain the law so blatantly break the law and that persons of color regularly endure such injustices. In this world of inequality, God gives us a simple directive:  Do justice.

We have witnessed people who abuse others with offensive language, with hurtful comments, with hateful schemes. We have participated in patterns when we have retaliated for injuries real or imagined, even though Jesus requires us to forgive others. We live in a secular culture and in our hearts secular values override the values Jesus asks us to practice. In this world of meanness, God gives us a simple directive:  Love kindness.

More and more people are describing our generation with the word narcissism. We are totally fixated on ourselves. Ours is the generation of people who invented the word “selfie.” Ours is the generation of people who are rushing here and there and everywhere because we just have to do all these things. Ours is the generation of people who are fixated on ourselves.  In this world of narcissism God gives us a simple directive:  Walk humbly with your God.

Did you ever consider these three commands? Do Justice, Love kindness, walk humbly with your God? These are the ways God acts with us. God does justice for us. God loves us kindly. God walks humbly with us. May our hearts hear the broken heart of God crying out to us today. May our hearts respond with love, returning love for love to God.

In the mystery of doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with our God you will find yourself transformed. Changed into the God who does justice, kindness and humility through you. That’s what it means to walk in love.

The Call of Jesus and Purity of Heart

The 3rd Sunday after Epiphany

Matthew 4:12-23

Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

January 15, 1991 brought its usual cold weather to Washington D.C. Inside the White House, President George H. W. Bush received Billy Graham who came to assure the president on a moral issue. Outside the White House, Bishop Edmund Browning, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, of which President Bush was a member, joined other protestors calling on the President not to begin the Gulf War.  Bishop Browning led a moral campaign against American involvement in the Gulf War and he unsettled President Bush’s moral conscience with his appeal for peace.

Some of us remember the televised bombing of Iraq which may have resembled a child’s on line war game than an actual battle.

The forces of government regularly threaten and are threatened by the forces of faith.

We hear hints of that conflict at the start of today’s Gospel passage:  When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. (Mt. 4: 12) Galilee and all of Israel was under the control of Roman occupiers.  Herod Antipas dominated Galilee and was responsible for the death of John the Baptist. Jesus would read the tea leaves and understand early in his career that his call as Messiah would place him in conflict with the political powers. We shall see that on two occasions Jesus will place himself out of the political limelight and plan his future ministry.

Some of us would consider that the call of the apostles Peter and Andrew, James and John, involve these men in a deep religious response to Jesus as their Rabbi. Jesus exerts considerable power in his call of these first followers.

When you hear the stories of the call of these disciples, do you consider Jesus calling you to be a disciple? Do you hear that call of Jesus inviting you to forsake all and follow him? Every year, when you hear the stories of the call of the first disciples, you are invited to consider your call, to deepen your love for Jesus who summons you, to forsake those burdens which hinder you from a deeper following of Jesus. We respond to Jesus’ call within the context, not of 1st century Galilee but of 21st century United States of America.

When Peter and Andrew, James and John left everything to follow Jesus, they opted for more than just a religious following of a rabbi. They had to forsake and leave behind the established social patterns of their day. These two pairs of brothers were fishermen, local entrepreneurs who engaged with the Roman authorities for permissions to fish the Sea of Galilee for upholding the local economy, for supporting with their taxes the Roman Empire. By forsaking their jobs, they were abandoning the hold the dominant Roman culture exerted on them.

In answering your call as a disciple, you too are invited to examine the places in your heart where the dominant culture of our day compromises your Christian call. You all know that we live in a polarized  political world, where the differences in political perspective are not respected but become occasions for hostilities. Do you notice how the climate of conflict in which you live seeps into your heart and lures you into creating not harmony with others but conflict?  God invites us Christians be become agents of reconciliation in our world. Reconciliation and discord represent conflicting energies. To enter into that calling you have to see the seeds of discord which are planted in our hearts by our broader culture.

If you look at the first disciples, you will see that saying no to the culture involves a long process of purification. James and John would struggle with their impulsivity and anger during their training time with Jesus. Peter would learn the cost of following Jesus would demand that he surrender not only his temper but his very life.

You too are challenged to identify the ways our culture erodes, so subtly erodes, your call as a Christian so that you work not for the building up of the dominant culture but of God’s reign. Peter and Andrew, James and John could initially see the obvious ways Jesus called them to renounce their connections with the dominant culture. The longer they stayed with Jesus they saw the subtle transformations of their hearts and minds which Jesus required.

You who have chosen to follow Jesus, are invited to that deeper following of Jesus, that more subtle renunciation of the influences of our culture’s value of division.  The clearer you see the compromises made to our culture, the surer is your abandonment of those values and the closer you can follow the call of Jesus. May the Spirit, who invites you to a deeper sharing in the life of Jesus, open your eyes and strengthen your heart to hear that subtle voice of Jesus and know the strengthen of Jesus’ love.

Dr. King Was Tested By Daphne Roberts, Deacon Intern

Dr. King Was Tested

A Sermon by Deacon Intern Daphne Roberts

On The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday

The Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist

Luke 6: 27-38

 27 Jesus said “ But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. 37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Good morning Church,

Can you picture this, non-violent protesters with signs peacefully walking down a street? Now picture the same protesters being cursed by hating bystanders. Immediately you see the police striking them with clubs, and savagely abusing them with snarling unleashed police dogs. Next you see the protesters and their children being sprayed with high-pressure water hoses or water cannons. Then you see them dragged into police cars and taken away.

Now picture Jesus in our text today saying love your enemies. Harsh words were used to describe what your enemies can do to you. Those words are hate, curse, abuse, strike and take away. An enemy is a person who actively opposes someone or something, it can be a hostile nation or a thing that harms or weakens. Why is it important to love your enemies? It is important because of the second commandment, to paraphrase Matthew 22:39 to love your neighbor as yourself...and that includes your enemies. We know the first commandment is to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. But it’s that second commencement to love your enemies can sometimes put you to the test.

That was the core of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's., philosophy, to love your enemies. But he was certainly put to the test. Luke 6:30 says if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again because those items are no longer yours. To me that sounded like...I am washing my hands of them, as Jesus says in Matthew 10:14, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave. But that is not exactly what the text is saying. It says, go back and face your enemies and show them the power of God and that is what Dr. King did in the 1950s and 1960s.

The intentions of his enemies were to strip him of his dignity so; he let them try. They put him to the test by arresting Dr. King over 20 times. Their intentions were to gang up on him. He let them try. He was put to the test because he was the mutual enemy of President Lyndon Johnson but only after he denounced American involvement in Vietnam; he was the enemy of the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, who had him placed under surveillance as a communist; there were battles against blatantly illegal state and local racial practices with the likes of  Birmingham’s Sheriff Eugene “Bull” Connor; he was the enemy of the white business community by supporting strikes and boycotts, and the enemy of unions with his expansive, aggressive, and unsettling socioeconomic and political agenda.

He also knew that when you pray for our enemies, several things happen. First, we submit our desires to God, so he can determine the best course of action. Second, by sharing our concerns with our loving Father, He comforts us. Third, Dr King said, we turn our focus from injustice toward God and His actions. Then we watch God act by drawing our enemies to repentance or bringing them to justice. He knew by showing the priceless power of God’s love, you can change enemies into friends. But his persecutors did not want to hear that so, with humility and love in his heart Dr. King, like Jesus, faced his enemies.

Dr. King said in order to love your enemies you have to begin by analyzing yourself. This may help determine "the what" of the situation. You may not be liked because of the way you walk, talk, or the job you hold. They may not like you because of what you have and own or because you are liked by other people. It may be your hair, your skin, the way you live your life or any number of items. All those things are jealousy which is part of human nature, but we must look deeper.

            In his speeches, Dr. King found weaknesses and evil in international struggles, with democracy and communism, the U.S. and Russia. As I said he was talking about this in the 1950’s. Where is the U.S. now and what is Russia doing now?

He stated, “The U.S. has taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to classes." He examined how our democracy oppressed its own citizens by the perpetuation of colonialism and imperialism and he continued to say, we must consider all these things as we look at Russia. In verse 41 which is beyond our reading today Jesus says, 41 Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? It is because we are hypocrites. That might be "the what" we must analyze first in ourselves.

In his sermon last week Fr. Peter referenced the Magi and the fact that outsiders knew the importance of what the baby Jesus meant. These men were skilled in astrology, magic, interpreting dreams, and the like. But they were still outsiders that could have traveled from as far as Babylon, Persia, or the Arabian Desert to seek information from Herod about the whereabouts of the newborn king of the Jews and the Prince of Peace. But Herod was frightened and knew this child could rock the boat and destroy everything he had in place with those he ruled and with the Romans that put him in power. He was known as a man willing to kill anyone to protect his own power, look at what he did to the little boys two years old and younger.

It makes me wonder about Dr. King and the Nobel Prize. These outsiders were The Norwegian Nobel Committee. We do not know who the three Wise Men were, but we know the Nobel Committee was a small group of Norwegian scholars with broad expertise in subject areas with a bearing on the Peace Prize. It took these outsiders to search for the peacemaker. 

Dr. King dreamt that all inhabitants of the United States would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The Committee saw the importance of his work and what he meant. Their inquiry as to the whereabouts of the peacemaker frightened and shook up our Herods with concerns of Dr. King continuing to rock the boat and even more, destroying everything they had in place with those they ruled and those who put them in power.

As I said earlier, harsh words were used in our reading and harsh things were done to Dr. King. He was hated, cursed, abused, beaten, things were taken away and he was certainly put to the test. Four years after he received the Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign against racism he was murdered by a white racist.

So, with humility in their hearts and non-violence as their practice Dr. King, like Jesus, died for the sake of love and peace. As we see that second commandment to love your enemies can sometimes put you to the test, they both passed. Will you pass your test? Amen.

Christ Shining in the World -- The Epiphany and Baptism of our Lord

Matthew 2:1-12

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

All of you heard the story from Matthew about the visit of the Magi. Even though you heard the story hundreds of times, how many of us picture the scene as described in that tale. You always imagine Baby Jesus resting in a manger but Matthew clearly places not in a barn but in a house. Every Nativity shows Jesus as a newborn but when Herod orders the execution of the little boys of Bethlehem he demands the victims be two years old and younger. Did the Magi tell him that they saw the star arise 2 years ago and it took them 2 years to get to Jerusalem? You all know how well behaved every two year old can be. Can’t you see Mary and Joseph trying to corral an inquisitive two year old Messiah as they entertain these foreign dignitaries?

You usually imagine three exotic travelers even though the Gospel does not mention the number of visitors. You usually imagine them as male yet if the Magi were truly astrologers from Persia women were counted among those educated star gazers.

If Matthew wants you to form any picture of the Magi, you should imagine them as strangers, foreigners, outsiders. Matthew wants you to know that the outsiders discover Jesus while the insiders, the chief priests and the scribes, do not get the message. The Magi not only discover the Christ, they are filled with overwhelming joy when they set their eyes on him. They fall down and worship the Christ. They turn away from their focus on themselves, on their goals and desires, and recognize God clothed in human flesh.

Matthew will paint another scene of recognizing and worshipping the Christ at the end of this Gospel. When the women go to the tomb and discover it empty, Jesus appears to them and their first response is to worship him. I wonder if Matthew wants us to see the Risen Christ hidden beneath the skin of the two year old child.  Unlike the religious leaders who failed to recognize Jesus as the Christ and so crucified him, the Gentiles saw the Christ proclaimed by the apostles and worshipped him. 

We find ourselves among those Gentiles. We have seen the Christ and worship Jesus.

Today we also celebrate another manifestation of Jesus:  his  Baptism.  As we rejoice in that mystery of God being baptized, we remember our own baptisms. In the mystery of  your baptism, you become a part of the Body of Christ. You are interconnected with the other members of that Holy Body, linked with your sisters and brothers into a mystery who is Christ.  

In the Baptismal Covenant you made, the Covenant you will renew, you promise to seek and serve Christ in others. Before you can seek and serve Christ in others, you must first see Christ in them.

You all know that with some people you can easily see Christ but in others, usually those who are unlike us, who might have an edge, you find it challenging to discern that holy presence. Perhaps in that holy seeing, that sacred visioning, the mystery of the Epiphany is linked with Baptism. The Magi saw more than a star. When they saw the Christ, they beheld a mystery deeper than flesh. By faith, they saw God shining like a star through the flesh of the Body of Christ.

That Body of Christ exists in more than the Infant born of Mary. That Body of Christ exists in more than the Christ risen from death. That Body of Christ exists in each of you, in each person whom you meet, in each encounter you have with others.

Christ is bigger than a newborn Baby in Bethlehem. Christ grows ever more in mystery beyond the limitations of a human body. Christ grows in mystery in you through your Baptism. Christ plants in your soul the ability to see with the eyes of faith the contours of Christ’s Body extended throughout the world. Christ shines in beauty through you and through every person.

As we renew our Baptismal covenant, ask the Spirit to open your eyes to see as did the Magi, to see the light of Christ shining through others, shining especially through those who cannot see that spiritual light in which they live. By your loving them, by your serving them, by your acknowledging in them a holy presence, they may begin to see as you see. Even as Christ transforms your eyes to behold the mystery, so through you Christ continues to transform the world.

The Holy Name of Jesus -- A Name Like None Other

Luke 2:15-21

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Many of us who enjoy Broadway have seen that wonderful musical Cats.  Andrew Lloyd Weber took a collection of poems by T. S. Eliot, and set them to music. Some of us love cats and so we love the musical. Others of us have compromised affections when it comes to felines and could not care less about either the fur balls or the show.

The musical begins with a poem on the naming of Cats: 

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,

It isn't just one of your holiday games;

You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter

When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

He goes on to enumerate the three names:  the cat’s everyday name, its peculiar name and its hidden name. Of the last Eliot writes: 

The name that no human research can discover—

But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,

The reason, I tell you, is always the same:

His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation

Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:

His ineffable effable

Effanineffable

Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Some of you might feel that I am skirting with blasphemy when I begin a sermon on the Holy Name of Jesus by talking of the names of cats. Yet we all know that Eliot was a devout Anglican and he would hide religious sentiments in his most trivial compositions. So let’s tease out that holy gold hidden in this poem for children.

Before his birth, Jesus was given his name by an angel. In his name lies his destiny. In Hebrew the name Jesus means Yahweh saves and Joseph is told to name the child Jesus because he will save his people from their sin. Like many of us who have a name with a family history, we are invited to remember another famous person with the same name. Jesus really means Joshua, the fabled successor of Moses who brought the Jewish people into their promised land. Jesus’ destiny will involve following Moses and leading God’s people to a new place. 

I invite you to carefully read the Gospels and write down all the names by which people call Jesus. These are Jesus’ familiar names. You know many of them:  Messiah, Teacher, Lord, Christ, Friend of Tax collectors and sinners, Sabbath breaker.  There are so many more.

Finally Jesus has a hidden name. In today’s offertory hymn, we shall sing an ancient Christian canticle from the letter to the Philippians, about Jesus’ other name; that name is Lord. Perhaps you notice that when we pray the psalms, the word Lord is occasionally capitalized letting you know that, following ancient Jewish practice, the text really has God’s holy name, Yahweh, which, out of reverence, devout Jews would never say.  God’s holy name, I Am Who Am, is the hidden name given to the Risen Jesus, God’s Son, who shares God’s divine name.

Each of us also has at least three different names. Each of us has a given name, the name our parents gave us at birth and at baptism. Perhaps your name also has a history in your family, perhaps the name of an ancestor, perhaps just a popular name of that generation.

Each of you also has a host of familiar names. I hear some of you calling each other by beloved family names, names that evoke an affection for the other, or names that define who you are like Aunt, Uncle, Mother, Father, Nana, PopPop.

Today, I invite you to discover your hidden name, the special name which only you have. The Book of Revelation tells us that each of us has a hidden name:  “To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.” (Rev. 2: 17) You discover that hidden name when you remember the name by which you are called at Baptism, not your given name but the name by which God calls you because you are a member of Christ. That name is Beloved.

In speaking that name, Beloved, God invites you into a relationship, a unique special connection, a bond of your heart with God’s heart, a bond of love which is your special name. Perhaps after Communion you can focus on the love in which God holds you and call yourself by the name by which God knows you:  Beloved.

In saying that name you will discover the hidden name which God has for you alone, a name which is nothing less than a gathering of feelings. A feeling of being loved and cherished, valued and honored, desired and delightful, accepted and seen, sought out and discovered.

Yes, you too have a hidden name.

Your ineffable effable

Effanineffable

Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Home for Christmas

Luke 2:1-14 [15-20]

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”[ When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.]

Are you going home for Christmas? So many of us hear that phrase repeated time and again. Checking in with family and friends, figuring out who might make it for Christmas dinner, wondering if we can fit everyone around the table now that we have two more with Kelly’s new girlfriend and  Spencer’s new beau.  We know that we can always fit in another chair or two, set up another table and use the everyday plates as well as the special china.

Are you going home for Christmas? Each of us feels a certain nostalgia at this time of the year when we think of home. Where do your thoughts go when you think of home? Is it that house in the city where you played hop scotch on the slate sidewalks or baseball in the park about 5 blocks away? Do you remember your parents coming home from work, your mother preparing supper as you and your sibblings set the table? Do you treasure heart warming feelings about home?

Are you going home for Christmas? Does the thought of home stir up not feelings of joy and security but uncertainty and threat? Do you remember an absent father or mother, verbal or physical abuse from those who should have cared for you, the isolation from friends because you were different, didn’t fit in, marched to you own drummer?

Are you going home for Christmas? In spite of the challenges of the winter storms creating chaos across the country, people always try to get home for Christmas. Home is more that that house in Elizabeth or Linden or Rahway or Roselle. Home brings together feelings of comfort, the security of parents and grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins whom we cherished as children that same deep comfort we create for our children. Home involves some elusive feeling we long for and desire but we also know the sense is as fragile as grandma’s English china or our own broken hearts.

Do you ever notice how all the Christmas stories in the bible never bring together home and Christmas? If anything, the bible assumes that that you will not be home for Christmas. When Jesus was born in a cold cave in Bethlehem, he found himself about 100 miles away from his home town of Nazareth. Shortly after his birth, this homeless baby flees as a refugee into exile in Egypt to evade a threat to his life by a ruthless leader. So many exiles from Ukraine, Venezuela, and across the world know the emptiness of being homeless at Christmas.  

But there is a deeper sense of home which lies at the heart of the Christmas story. Before he took a baby’s flesh in the little village of Bethlehem, the Word of God left his heavenly home and made a home among us. He made a home among us to bring us back to our true home. That deep sense of longing that stirs in our hearts every Christmas, that deep desire for home, that profound yearning for a place points us to a place in the heart, an unfulfilled expectation that can only be filled by a love beyond this world. Christina Rossetti penned a beautiful carol with these words:  “Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely love divine; love was born at Christmas:  Star and angels gave the sign.”

That deep longing we feel at Christmas, that elusive sense of home, that seemingly unfulfilled desire comes from God and should lead us back to God. That longing for a home finds its fulfillment in the Baby born this night, the Baby who left his home in heaven to gather us together and bring us back home with him.

Are you going home for Christmas? Perhaps you may discover that you have already found your way home. For the Baby born in Bethlehem opens your heart to embrace a love to satisfy your deepest yearning.

Are you going home for Christmas? May you discover that you are already there.   

Dreaming God's Dream -- The Dream of St. Joseph

Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

When was the last time you woke from sleep stirred by a dream? Dreams play an important role in our lives. While we sleep, our unconscious opens up possibilities which challenge us in our waking lives. In our dreams, you meet persons who comfort and challenge you, who lead you to places you would not dare to go, who help you see things in a new and refreshing light.

Fred Beechner, a renowned Christian writer, said this about dreams: “Rarest of dreams is one that wakes you with what I can only call its truth.  The path of your dream winds now this way, now that, one scene fades into another, people come and go the way they do in dreams --  then suddenly, deep out of wherever it is that dreams come from, something rises up that shakes you to your foundations. 

The mystery of the dream suddenly lifts like fog, and for an instant it is as if you glimpse a truth truer than any you knew that you knew, if only a truth about yourself.  It is too much truth for the dream to hold anyway, and the dream breaks.”

People in ancient times paid careful attention to their dreams.

Perhaps they understood that when they slept, their regular defenses were also laid to rest and God could communicate with them in ways they and us usually block with our conscious mind. We heard such an encounter with God through a dream in today’s Gospel. 

Joseph found himself facing a crisis in the life he was beginning with his fiancé, Mary. Although engaged, they were not living together.  It becomes obvious to Joseph, as well as the others in that small village of Nazareth, that Mary was pregnant. Joseph knew that he was not the father. He obviously loves Mary since he does not want to expose her to the law requiring that she be stoned to death for infidelity.

Joseph has weighed his options and he decides to break the betrothal and walk away from Mary. Joseph had planned his life; he saw a future with Mary, a future with their children growing up in this small town, a future where they would grow old together. All those plans came crashing down when he discovers what he thinks is Mary’s infidelity.

Then the dreams stirs his soul, the dream that shakes his foundations. A dream interrupts Joseph’s honorable plans with a more holy option, an alternative he never would have imagined. God lets Joseph in on God’s action with Mary, on God’s plans for the world, and Joseph is invited into a world of which he never dreamed.

Perhaps you too find yourself in a situation not unlike Joseph.  Every December brings each of you a bundle of emotional trials which come with the celebration of Christmas. Many of you also find yourself in the position of Joseph. You live in a world which seems oblivious to the emotional chaos you are experiencing.

The older you become the more you deal with challenges of health and isolation.  Death has a way of taking away those you deeply love and at times well before you imagined their leaving you. Covid, the flu and RSV continue to leave you fighting battles against their disruption in your lives and the lives of those you love. The radio and television remind you that it’s the most wonderful time of the year so why do you feel that it’s the worst time of the year?

Many of you feel like Charlie Brown. Linus says of his friend:  Charlie Brown, you’re the only person I know who can take a season like Christmas and turn it into a problem.

Yes, Christmas can be a problem for many of you, even if you don’t dare to admit it. Perhaps Joseph may help you break through this challenge you face. Joseph’s life was turned upside down by God’s plans. When he was laying out his solution, God revealed a deeper resolution, a plan Joseph would never imagine.

You all face problems with no simple answers, with no easy solutions. For those of you caught in that challenge, Advent invites you to wait, to wait on God to open a door, to wait on the Spirit to bring some healing. So many of you yearn for instant gratification but God operates on a different schedule. Like Joseph, God will bring a hope you can never imagine. We don’t know how long Joseph waited for his dream. God dreamt a dream for Joseph and revealed it in God’s time. God dreams a dream for you. Wait on God to reveal it to you. 

The End of the World has Already Started

The End of the World Has Already Started

A Sermon on the First Sunday of Advent

Matthew 24:36-44

Jesus said:  36“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

At the center of England stands the city of Coventry. Many of you know Coventry’s famous citizen, Lady Godiva, since so many of you are fans of the chocolate named after her. During World War II, Coventry was known throughout Europe as the center of England’s armaments, munitions, aircraft and aero-engine plants. On November 14, 1940, the German Air Force devastated Coventry with intense firebombing. Eight hundred people died and thousands were injured or homeless.

The citizens of the city also mourned the destruction of their beloved cathedral. Incendiary devices hit the roof of St. Michael’s Cathedral and the building was consumed by flames.  All that survived were the stone walls and the soaring bell tower. 

For the citizens of Coventry, November 14 marked the end of their world. Out of that terrible loss and destruction, hope emerged for the people. The day after the church was destroyed, the Rev. Richard Howard, Provost of the Cathedral, assured the people that a new cathedral would be built. Not as an act of bitterness, hatred or revenge, but as the beginning of a ministry of reconciliation and peace.

Coventry Cathedral would be transformed by the flames of war. In 1956, Queen Elizabeth II laid the cornerstone of the new Cathedral which was consecrated in 1962. The front of the cathedral was constructed of thick glass and into the glass the artist  John Hutton etched images of saints and angels. Not like the comforting angels we see at the nativity; you know the angels that look as if they are dressed for a prom or as bridesmaids for a wedding.

The Advent angels frighten the hell out of us. Their eyes flash like oversized diamonds, their faces are stern with warning, their gestures are contorted as they blow the trumpets announcing the end of the world. These Advent angels herald the end of all things. They could have hovered over Coventry on the night the Germans rained down fire from the heavens. These Advent angels continue to fly among us, blasting their trumpets, announcing the end of one world and the beginning of a new world.

When we hear Jesus talk of the approaching end of the world, some of us think of that end as the final and great fireworks display that we hear described in the Book of Revelation. Yet how many of us, how many Christians, understand that the end of the world has already begun? How many of us believe that the world has already begun to fall apart, that God is birthing among us a new universe. The old order of things is falling apart. The end of the world begins with the coming of Jesus. 

Angels always accompany the end of things. When the angel visited Mary with news of the birth of the Messiah, the cracks appeared in the structure of the old world. When an angel assured Joseph to take Mary as his wife, the foundations began to sway. When angels announced to shepherds that a child king was born in a stable, the old order knew that its time had come. When those angels returned to an empty tomb on Easter morning, when they told frightened women that the world of death was overturned when God raised up Jesus from the dead, then the old world knew that it was only a matter of time until all the forces of evil would be overturned, all the power of darkness would surrender to the light, all the alliances of evil would crumble.

When Jesus is talking about the reign of God, whenever we hear him speaking of the Kingdom of God, we should not imagine some distant time when we leave this world and enter into heaven. No, we should look and be attentive now, at this very time in our lives, at this very hour, for the new reign of God is breaking into our midst and we must be attentive to its dawn.

Jesus tells us:  Keep awake for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. The Son of Man is coming not in bombast and splendor but, as at his first coming, in hiddenness, in obscurity, in the unexpected. Jesus is coming in the hiddenness of relationships that shape your life, in the give and take of love and friendship and those ever challenging family dynamics. Jesus is coming in the obscurity of a kind word exchanged with a stranger, a smile to a person who seems depressed, a gentle touch to connect with someone lost and displaced. Jesus is coming in the unexpected insight of a person whom we dislike, the colleague at work who irritates us, the pesty Aunt Gertrude who always brings up a new demand.

In the days when the ash of Coventry Cathedral no longer concealed smoldering fire, Father Arthur Wales was poking in the remains of the medieval cathedral and he discovered three nails, hand crafted in the Middle Ages, and used to fasten the wood that burned only days before. Fr. Wales took those three nails and fashioned them into a cross, connecting them with wire at their center and beginning the Community of the Cross of Nails. After the war, the people of Coventry reached out to the people of Germany, the very people whose air force destroyed their city, to discover the Son of Man coming to them in the midst of their efforts for reconciliation and peace. From that initial outreach at the end of World War II to an ever-expanding international fellowship of reconciliation, the Son of Man continues to show up, at unexpected times and places, to discover hope in the ash remnants of the past to create in the present a cross of reconciliation.

Not in power, bombast and extravagance but the Son of Man is coming, again and again, in hiddenness, in obscurity, in the unexpected. The Advent Angels herald that arrival. They continue to chant their song. Listen closely for the herald angels are singing.

Zacchaeus (Or is it Jesus) Turns the Tables

Luke 19:1-10

19Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. 3He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. 4So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. 5When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” 6So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. 7All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” 8Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” 9Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. 10For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

It's the end of October and you may have wondered when will Fr. Peter give that annual sermon on Stewardship? When will we receive our letters on Stewardship? Today’s Gospel on Zacchaeus, the tax collector, provides an entre into this Stewardship Season.

Zacchaeus is a person who wants to see Jesus. The people in the community consider Zacchaeus a prominent leader and since he works not only as a tax collector but as the chief tax collector his Jewish neighbors consider him a collaborator with the Roman overlords. Jesus causes a stir whenever he enters a village and a crowd surrounds Jesus as he passes through the major city of Jericho. Zacchaeus is accustomed to planning and he sees the direction in which Jesus is headed so he finds a sycamore tree and scurries up the tree.

For us to get some perspective on this story, let’s imagine Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, and a short person, climbing up a tree to see a passing evangelist. We would consider it below her dignity to act as a child climbing a tree. But Zacchaeus humbles himself, he pays no attention to his pride, and acts as a child to get a view of Jesus.

The turning point of the story comes not with Zacchaeus climbing the tree but in Jesus seeing him up in the tree. Jesus shows himself as the God who seeks out the lost and his eye catches Zacchaeus and brings him into the fold. Perhaps Jesus oversteps social protocol in inviting himself to Zacchaeus’ home. Perhaps Jesus has something he wants to accomplish not only with Zacchaeus but also with the people.

Zacchaeus makes a strange confession to Jesus. Perhaps you noticed that I did not follow the New Revised Standard Version translation you have in your bulletin but I used the translation from the Revised Standard Version. Zacchaeus does not confess Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much. He affirms that he gives (present tense) half to the poor. While the community considered Zacchaeus a Roman collaborator, they did not see that he followed God’s command and shared with the poor and made restitution to the defrauded. 

Jesus reveals to the crowd Zacchaeus’ true identity:  a Son of Abraham.  The story becomes a revelation of the true identity of a person whom everyone considered the worst of sinners. Zacchaeus found himself among the super rich of ancient Israel. He could easily give half of his money to the poor and continue to live in luxury.

I don’t think any among us count ourselves among the 1% of our country who make $823,763 annually. Or maybe someone does have that vast wealth. Maybe that hidden millionaire and I need to have a conversation. 

All of us find ourselves like Zacchaeus ever looking for Jesus. The good news for all of us comes with the assurance that just as zealously as we are looking for Jesus so Jesus is looking for us. Ours is a God who seeks out the lost and finds us. What do we do in response to this seeking God?

I invite you to consider two concerns. How well do you see Jesus? Do you see Jesus in the worship we share? Do you see Jesus in the fellowship among us? Do you see Jesus in the Word of God we hear? Do you see Jesus in the life you live because of your membership in this church?

The second question you may ask yourself is how do you say thank you to the God who have given you these gifts? We share a responsibility for this church. We share a responsibility for the life we live together. We share a responsibility for our worship from our reading, to our singing, to our fidelity in coming to church. We share a responsibility for our ministry, for our outreach through our thrift store, for our outreach in supporting LINCS Food Pantry, for our outreach in sheltering victims of domestic violence. We share a responsibility to maintain this church, the people we hire to serve this church, the expenses we incur to the diocese as members of the Episcopal Church, the costs of running these buildings. 

Think of your financial contributions. Think of ways you might increase your gift. Think of ways you can better serve this community with your talents. Think of the ways Jesus comes to you when you share with others. Think of all the gifts God constantly gives to you. Think of how you will say to God:  Thank you. 

A Wart Hog from Hell & God's Wild Mercy

Luke 18:9-14

9Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Flannery O’Connor, a southern Roman Catholic writer who died in 1964, wrote 31 short stories. She captures the movement of grace among some of the most grotesque of characters. In her story, Revelation, she presents Mrs. Turpin, a self-righteous, pompous Southern lady, filled with judgements about all the people surrounding her in a doctor’s waiting room. She looks upon the people around her with great condescension thinking of herself as superior to all of them. She masks her arrogance with Southern gentility.

Mary Grace, an overweight college student, can hardly tolerate Mrs. Turpin’s haughtiness. Mrs. Turpin considers Mary Grace to be white trash. Mary Grace’s seething anger continually grows until she explodes like a volcano, throws her book at Mrs. Turpin’s face then rushes over to choak her. The doctor, hearing the commotion, rushes into the waiting room, determines that Mary Grace is mentally disturbed, returns with a needle and sedates Mary Grace. As the sedative quiets Mary Grace, Mrs. Turpin demands of her: “What you got to say to me?” Mary Grace tells her: “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.”

Overwhelmed, Mrs. Turpin returns home with her husband. They both lay down on their bed to recover from the tumult. Later that afternoon, Mrs. Turpin goes to their pig stye, a concrete floored pig parlor, to clean the floor from the pig’s slop. She starts praying to God, demanding why she was called a hog. She is no wart hog from hell. She screams at God: “If you like trash better, go get yourself trash then.” In a final surge of fury she demands of God: Who do you think you are?

Finally a vision dawns for her. She sees a trail leading up to heaven with all the white trash and the blacks dressed in splendid white clothing, and battalions of freaks and lunatics dancing their way up to heaven. Behind them solemnly marched people like her, white, respectable, people like her, marching to the beat. Only their faces displayed that even their virtues were being burned away. She could hear the voices crying out Hallelujah!

Today’s parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector should disturb us as much as that short story by Flannery O’Connor. It’s a short story of Jesus that turns our world upside down. For years we have heard this parable and for years we have thought of ourselves as the tax collector, the humble one who prays for mercy. We would never identify with the Pharisee. We would never imagine that our hearts were filled with the arrogance and contempt of the Pharisee.

Yet as soon as we judge the Pharisee, we fall into the trap of the parable. In judging the Pharisee we reveal our own arrogance and contempt.

Each of us knows that the Gospels paint a picture of the Pharisees which makes them out to be the villains of the Jesus story.

But we should remember that Jesus would count himself as a Pharisee, as a person who tried to open the eyes of people to see a God as close to God’s people as the food they ate, or the clothing they wore, or the way they treated one another. We should beware of the danger of judging the Pharisee. Then we become the Pharisee.

If you only think that this parable is about two people, you have missed the main character. God, our wildly merciful God, dominates the story. Our wildly merciful God receives the prayer of thanksgiving from the Pharisee. Our wildly merciful God accepts the repentance of the tax collector. Our wildly merciful God invites us to live lives of boundless mercy. Only when we see ourselves not as the Pharisee, not as the Tax Collector. We will get this parable only when we see ourselves as this wildly merciful God.

The Embrace of Salvation

Luke 17:11-19

 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."

Brielle and Kyrie Jackson were born in 1995 weighing only 4 pounds. Fearful for their survival, the nurses placed the twins in two incubators. Kyrie was the stronger twin and she began to thrive gaining 2 pounds while Brielle struggled. Brielle’s breathing became shallow and her heart rate dropped. Nothing the doctors did worked for Brielle.

One of the nurses suggested putting the twins together in the same incubator and something miraculous happened. As soon as Kyrie was placed next to her failing sister, she reached out and hugged her. Suddenly, Brielle’s heart rate stabilized and she began to recover. A dying baby was saved by the power of touch.

Touch makes us into persons. Whenever a newborn comes into our families, we want to touch the baby. The baby wants to be touched, needs to be touched. Without touch, a child lacks connection.

At the time of Jesus, lepers lived in segregated communities and were deprived of human touch. Not only were people prohibited from touching lepers, lepers lived apart and whenever they approached a person who was not a leper they had to alert others by crying out, “Unclean! Unclean!” Lepers were required to wear torn clothing and had to dishevel their hair to show to others how contaminated they were. These lepers lived on the margins of society, outside the city, perhaps in the hills and finding a home in the caves that dot the landscape. As lepers they lost their identities.

No longer were they someone’s daughter, someone’s husband, someone’s wife, someone’s friend.

Perhaps they heard people in the towns talking about Jesus and  heard of his reputation as a healer. Perhaps they imagined that when their every hope was lost they had nothing to lose by approaching Jesus. They sought something more than healing for their bodies. They craved the restoration of their identities, the rediscovery of their place in a community, the renewal of their relationships. They knew that they were persons through their relationships.  

Notice how they keep their distance but make themselves known to Jesus by their shouting at him:  “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to a priest which they obediently do. As they going to the local rectory, they are cured.

Did they look down and see their skin return to its smooth texture?

Did they feel the transformation of their bodies as their souls were touched by the Holy Spirit? However they discovered their cure, do they continue their journey to the priest? They needed a priest to give them permission to return to society. They discover they are cured and one returns to Jesus.

We know that Samaritans were looked down upon by other Jews. Samaritans obeyed the Law of Moses, they prayed to the Lord God, they read the same holy books and offered sacrifice. But they worshiped on a different mountain, not in Jerusalem. They were excluded from the same level of social acceptance as the rest of the Jews in Israel.

Did this Samaritan experience the same level of exclusion even among the lepers? The nine restored lepers knew where to go to get from their priest their certificate of restoration. Did this Samaritan leper not know where to go to get his All Pure Decree? Could he only return to Jesus, the source of his healing?

Notice how, before their cure, the lepers kept their distance from Jesus. But after his cure, the Samaritan leper draws close to Jesus, draws close to Jesus and prostrates himself in worship at the feet of Jesus. In so many ways, we are just like those lepers who first approached Jesus. We hear of Jesus, we regularly worship, we might read the bible and we receive his body and blood. But even with this contact with Jesus, do you keep him at a distance.

If you do not draw near to Jesus, what keeps you from him?

What if you were to discover that you are just like those lepers, desperately in need of Jesus’ healing? Jesus comes to you, heals you, restores you. How do you respond? You go to our healing Christ to rediscover for yourselves that identity you receive from the healing of Christ. Christ’s healing touches your heart, the broken places in your life, the disconnected parts of your soul.

In restoring your relationships, Christ brings you not only into relationship with him but also into relationship with one another. Like the outcast Samaritan leper, the leper who discovered not only a healed body but more importantly a healed heart, you too come to Jesus with a grateful heart.

May all of us set as our primary goal a deeper relationship with Jesus, a recognition of our need for healing and our turning to Christ for that inner change. Perhaps you too can return to Christ with a healed heart, a grateful heart, a generous heart. In returning to Christ you will discover Christ turning to you, healing you and drawing you not as a powerful Lord but as a dear friend. A friend extending his hand in healing. A friend touching us with love. A dear friend leading you from brokenness to wholeness.

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The Transformation of Grief

Lamentations 1:1-6 How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lives now among the nations, and finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her gates are desolate, her priests groan; her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter. Her foes have become the masters, her enemies prosper, because the Lord has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe. From daughter Zion has departed all her majesty. Her princes have become like stags that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer.

Lamentations 3: 19-26  19 The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall!  My soul continually thinks of it        and is bowed down within me.  But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,        his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning;        great is your faithfulness. "The Lord is my portion," says my soul,        "therefore I will hope in him."   The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.  It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

For those of you who shop at thrift stores and garage sales, I have a word of warning. I give this word of warning knowing full well that someone in my household is deeply involved with a thrift store. But the truth must be told. Never buy a puzzle from a thrift store. As a child I loved to do puzzles and my mom would supply my addiction with puzzles from thrift stores. Not only did we have the challenge of putting together the puzzle. We did not know the location of the missing pieces.

Today’s first reading comes as a type of puzzle with a missing piece. Last week, we heard the story of Jeremiah buying a piece of land as the city of Jerusalem was surrounded by the Babylonian army. This week, we hear the lament over the captured Jerusalem. In between those two readings came the missing puzzle piece:  The capture of the city, the burning of the first temple, the ravaging of the civilian population, and the deportation of the ruling and artisan classes from Jerusalem to Babylon.

The Babylonians ravaged the Middle East with an aggressive policy of conquering small kingdoms and merging them into the Babylonian empire. Bully nations regularly throw their weight around and vulnerable nations suffer. The reading from Lamentations comes as a rare example of public grieving which we seldom witness in our culture. The state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II marked a moment of public mourning. We as a nation experienced a bit of this national loss on September 11, 2001. Little can we imagine the grief of the Jewish people whose nation was annihilated, whose people were killed, raped and taken into exile, whose religion was obliterated and whose future was erased. 

The words of lamentation we heard today come from the broken heart of the people who endured this profound loss. We as a parish are moving through a similar time of grief and mourning as we experienced the sudden death of Sue Shubeck. Many of you were shocked last Sunday when I announced that Sue was in hospice care.    

Most of you cannot fathom that a woman whom you remember only six months ago as a vibrant and vital person died so quickly from such a devastating disease. 

For many of you, her death reminded you of loved ones whom you lost to cancer or an early death. You may have felt grief for someone you deeply loved. Grief has a way of lingering in our hearts and when you imagine that it has run its course grief gushes forth up like an unknown volcano and tears flow as lava from the deep recesses of your heart.  You know from intimate experience that grief and mourning linger in the heart. Over time its intensity may decrease but loss can cast a shadow on even a bright day even as a sudden rain shower darkens the sky as clouds ring out their moisture.

From today’s reading, God invites you to give voice to your sorrow, to acknowledge your pain, to ask God to bring some relief.

Grief and sorrow may seem to bring a pain you would have avoided.

But if you wait, if you ask God to visit you in your need, you may discover that mourning can expand your heart to a deeper love, a deeper compassion for others, a more profound understanding of the anguish others feel.

During the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, you may have heard her words:  Grief is the price you pay for love. Love is at the heart of our grieving and our healing. Your heart, so pushed by grief beyond its usual borders, can reach out to others in their pain. While you can never understand the unique contours of another person’s suffering, you can open your heart in love and compassion when you see another person in agony. 

Our response to the first reading also came from Lamentations. That same cry of desolation from chapter 1 shifts in chapter 3 to an invitation to wait quietly on the Lord. God works in the depths of heart, in places we know not, to reveal to those who wait, a depth of peace, a depth of compassion, a depth of empathy which God creates. You regularly hear a final blessing invoking on you God’s peace which is beyond our understanding. This peace comes from the Risen Christ who entered into the depths of human anguish to change your experience of sorrow into an occasion for transformation. As you receive the Body of the Risen Christ in communion, ask Christ to enter your heart with that healing grace only God can bring.  Pray for the grace that transforms your grief into peace. Pray to find that missing puzzle piece to transform your sorrow. Wait on the Spirit to give you that gift. 

The Persistence of Hope

The Persistence of Hope

A Sermon by the Rev. Peter De Franco

September 25, 2022

The Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

32The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar. 2At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah, 3where King Zedekiah of Judah had confined him. Zedekiah had said, “Why do you prophesy and say: Thus says the Lord: I am going to give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it; 6Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me: 7Hanamel son of your uncle Shallum is going to come to you and say, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours.” 8Then my cousin Hanamel came to me in the court of the guard, in accordance with the word of the Lord, and said to me, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours; buy it for yourself.” Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord. 9And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. 10I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. 11Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; 12and I gave the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel, in the presence of the witnesses who signed the deed of purchase, and in the presence of all the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard. 13In their presence I charged Baruch, saying, 14Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. 15For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.

Over this past week, reports of atrocities committed by the Russians against Ukrainian citizens left most of us deeply disturbed. 

War impacts a nation in unspeakable ways and traumatizes not only soldiers but equally the civilian population. It has been over 100 years since our nation witnessed the horrors of war on our soil. Sherman’s march to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah left a trail of destruction of over $1.6 billion and incalculable human cost.

I am talking about war as an introduction to this morning’s first reading from the prophet Jeremiah.  The heartbreak of people witnessing the burning of their homes, churches and civil buildings resemble the feeling of the people of Jerusalem from today’s first reading. Jerusalem in 587 BCE, like most ancient capitals, was a walled city. When the people walked along the ways on the walls of Jerusalem, they could see the Babylonian army surrounding the city.

While the false prophets predicted that God would overturn the Babylonian army, Jeremiah told the people they should surrender to the Babylonians.

The Jewish leaders convinced the king that he should not surrender. Everybody knew that some great calamity was about to destroy the country. Everybody knew that they were about to lose everything. Everyone was on the verge of losing hope.

At that very moment, when everything seems lost, Jeremiah’s cousin, Hanamel, makes his way from their hometown of Anathoth, a town already under the control of the Babylonians, with a property deal for Jeremiah. It does not take a genius to understand that all the land in a country about to be destroyed is not worth a pile of beans. Keep that detail of real estate in mind when you remember that Jeremiah paid top dollar for his cousin’s property in war ravaged Anathoth. Only a fool would buy that property at that price. And God told Jeremiah to play the fool. Why?

God told Jeremiah to look beyond the immediate destruction: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land. (Jer 32: 15) It takes a special type of vision to see promise when destruction surrounds us. It takes the persistence of hope to see the light when all we experience is darkness. That hope comes to us only from God. For an addict who is struggling with sobriety, for the person caught in a job without any personal satisfaction, for the family who have lost the fun in their dysfunctionality, for the person who so desires that loved one who never seems to come on the scene, hope seems like an elusive bird.

So many of us know that poem by Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

The prophet Jeremiah paid a terrible price for the prophetic gift which he was given. God gave him the painful task of reprimanding a nation intent on taking a path away from God, a path which lead to their own destruction. God secretly told Jeremiah that 70 years would pass from the time Jerusalem would fall until the time the people would return from their captivity in Babylon.

If we put ourselves in Jeremiah’s shoes, we would feel the challenge of buying a piece of land which we would never see revived in our life time. For that reason, Jeremiah took the deed for the property, put it into a jar and buried it so that a future generation would discover it and come into a land which would again become valuable. God asks us to take that leap of faith, to journey into the darkness and anticipate restoration. For those of us suffering from wounds, physical, emotional or spiritual, wounds which seem to defy healing, God invites us to step into the darkness with that persistent hope that light will shine for us. For those of us caught in a pattern of living so that we feel as if we are on a merry go round, perhaps God invites us to get off the carousel and discover a different way.

All too often, we get caught in patterns in which we have lived for years, we lose hope of ever moving beyond that pattern, and then something alights in our soul and shows us a light we had never before seen. Pray today for that persistent hope to dawn in your heart. Wait, be willing to wait, even as Jeremiah waited, and look for a light to dawn, a light you never imagined. We have a God who has transformed the crucified body of Jesus into the living Body of the mystical Christ. Allow your heart to know the Spirit’s gift of a persistent hope.

Free For Service

Free For Service

A Sermon by the Rev. Peter De Franco

August 21, 2022

Luke 13:10-17

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

Imagine, just imagine, if you lived most of your life with your head facing the ground. Unlike most of us who look people in the face, you would face their feet. Imagine, just imagine, if your back was so bent that you lived in this state where the only way to see somebody was if that somebody bent down to look you in the eye. That bent over woman holds center place in today’s Gospel.

The people in her village gathered on the Sabbath and she did everything possible to be there since she heard that Jesus, the renowned healer and teacher, was visiting that town. We know nothing of her desire, nothing of her longing for healing. But we do know that for eighteen years she lived with this bent back and we can imagine that her heart headed toward healing.

She arrives late for the service since Jesus is already teaching in the synagogue. As soon as she enters Jesus sees her. Jesus sees her pain and invites her to come forward. Listen to the words he speaks to her:  “Woman, you are set free.”  While our reading of the story says she stood up straight, thus making her the one who moves from a bent over position, the original Greek says that “she was straightened up.” God is lifting her face from staring at the ground to looking at others eye to eye.

Imagine, just imagine Jesus bending down to her, looking her in the eye, as he touched her and brought her healing. God comes to this woman, as God comes to all healed by Jesus. Jesus is the one who liberates her from the control of forces which held her captive.

Such liberation shows the reign of God, a time of healing and liberation, dawning in the person of Jesus.

From Luke’s Gospel, we learn that Jesus sets people free that they might serve others. Jesus models for us this life of service. He teaches those who hunger for God’s Word. He feeds those whose stomachs cry for bread. He heals those whose body ache for wholeness. The healing of this bent over women Jesus describes as a liberation, setting her free. Her freedom opens her for service.

Freedom for service of others.

Jesus comes to us with that same offer of freedom. Each of carries something heavy which weighs us down. Each of us can move to a deeper intimacy with Jesus, looking him in the eye as he gazes into your eyes.  That freedom which Jesus brings us opens our lives to service.

Perhaps a sermon on service during August will not find a ready ear to hear or a willing heart to respond. During the summer months, most of us are focused on rest and relaxation rather than service. Yet the call to service still echoes from requests to help in our Thrift Store, to liturgical ministries for our worship and emails looking for volunteers to respond to possible threats to our church. 

Over the years, our church has served as a center of worship and fellowship for our members.  We served as a center to find rest and inspiration to go out during the week in faithful service in our work and families. Our church community has changed. We are becoming a center from which we can serve others. Our Thrift store provides a service in the community where people can find clothing and household items at reduced prices.  We need people to work the cash register and assist customers looking for materials.  Out Thrift Store also provides people with an opportunity to meet the members of our church and perhaps to find a place to worship with us.

However the same core of people regularly come out to manage the Thrift Store. In all these people who regularly manage the Thrift Store, I notice something that unites them:  They have made this ministry their ministry. They have committed themselves to make this ministry succeed. Each of them has entered into the freedom which the bent woman experienced. Their eyes are lifted and they see clearly and they serve.

Each of us needs to find some place where we can serve, where we can invest ourselves and where we can commit ourselves to make our church succeed.  God has called each of you to this place. God has a plan for each of you in this place. God invites you to see that you are called. For Jesus speaks to each one of you:  “You are set free.” You are set free to serve.