Sermons from St. Martin-in-the-Fields
Sep 18, 2022 |
Reckless Creativity
|
Reckless Creativity
The Rev. Laura Palmer
September 18, 2022
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to thee O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.
Staying on the high road, let’s just say this is a text clergy find “challenging” or “demanding.” At issue is that the Jesus we encounter here is difficult to reconcile with the Jesus most of us think we know and worship. Can he really be lifting up the snake of a manger we meet in this parable?
One of the books clergy rely on for sermon preparation, Feasting on the Word, comes with these warnings:
behavior of the main character.
And one more:
You understand then why it’s easy to race ahead to the bumper sticker endings: “You can’t serve both God and wealth” Tuck that away for Stewardship Sunday which is coming up soon. “No slave can serve two masters.” Bet you’ve heard a dozen sermons on that. Check.
Some suggest that even Luke struggled with this text and added moralistic endings as exit ramps for perplexed preachers.
“I can’t believe that this story came from the lips of our Lord,” Saint Augustine said some 1600 centuries ago.
We talk about Jesus being God incarnate in human form, and then when he acts like one of us, seemingly inconsistent, out of character, maddeningly obtuse, we’re aghast.
Myself included which led me to fantasize: What if deadline pressure forced Luke to turn in a rough draft? Or maybe he forgot the part of the papyrus which made all of this hang together?
But here’s what helped shed light on the mystery of this text: What if Jesus in talking about “dishonesty” was actually doing so tongue-in-cheek? Stay with me here for a moment, because this makes the “dishonest manager” less like a snake and more like Robin Hood.
In the Roman Empire, there were two classes: the very rich and the very, very, poor. The master’s wealth depended on the exploitation of the illiterate peasants.
About to be fired for his ineptitude, the suddenly desperate manager does an about-face. No longer “strong enough to dig” and “too proud to beg” the manager decides to cancel a percentage of the debts the tenants owe to his boss. “I have decided what to do, he says, “so that when I am dismissed as manager people may welcome me into their homes.”
Some scholars suggest all the manager did was cancel the commission he would have earned on the monies due—an act of generosity since like his boss, his wealth was based on exploitation. But regardless of his motivations—his actions had a huge impact on the very poor who may have never before experienced boundless generosity which no doubt felt like grace.
In a stunning reversal of what we were expecting the master praises his manager’s shrewd behavior. He may not know the extent of what his manager did, but he cannot fail to realize that suddenly everyone he exploits to sustain his fortunes-- now holds him in higher regard.
Cancelling his commission is one of the theories about the manager’s behavior. But his motivation may have been pure selfishness. The manager decided he needed more goodwill than the master needed more wealth and did the right thing for the “wrong” reason. But no one liberated from debt or oppression cares much about who turns the key.
As Martin Luther once said, “Our God is the God who can ride the lame horse and carve the rotten wood.”
When a system is rotten to the core—as the Roman Empire was especially when compared to the Kingdom of God-- does it really matter if a lame horse is the one who rides into town?
We don’t know what happened to the manager in the rush of good will he felt from his new friends. Did his perspective shift when he began to stay in their houses or tents and look at life from the bottom up? Did he begin to experience the pure generosity of friendship and love that often flow from those who have the least to give? We have no idea.
We want parables to be teachable moments; “A grassroots lesson connecting the ordinariness of life with the extraordinary nature of God,” writes Helen Montgomery Devoise.
It’s worth nothing that in this gospel, Jesus is dealing with the world as it is. Corrupt, broken, messy. Continues Devoise:
Why would Jesus make an example for godly living so
unsavory? The parable presents as the model for our
faith someone whose life is the complete opposite of
everything Christ ever taught.
We all expect and hope that the sleazy manager will get his due, and it’s just the opposite. There is a reckless creativity, though to his approach and he acts.
Jesus says that “The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the children of light.”
Debie Thomas in Journey with Jesus, poses this question:
Where and how might we be more shrewd, more clever, more creative, and more single-minded in our vocations as children of light? If the manager in Jesus’s story can hustle so hard for his own survival, how much more might we contend on behalf of a world God loves?
Today Jesus might look at the way the courts were stacked slowly and steadily over the years with politically minded judges more likely to make politics their priority over the Constitution and note that their shrewd manipulation paid off.
Imagine if those shrewd tactics were pursed be what Jesus called “the children of light?” who understood that the Judiciary is not meant to be an arm of the Executive Branch.
Jesus tells this parable to the Pharisees, the prominent religious leaders who were strict adherent to Jewish law and put that above all else. The Pharisees are no fans of Jesus expansive attitude towards divine judgment. Writes Rev. Dr. Alison Boden, whose husband was your last rector:
Jesus has been cooking the books of diving judgment, and the
folks who’ve staked their lives on following the law to the letter
do not appreciate having the rulebook revised. Christ is God’s
steward and he’s busy forgiving debts—canceling indebtedness.
His message to the religious leaders is that God is the eternal
creditor, not themselves. Jesus is canceling debts owed not to
them but to God, and God commends him for it.
Despite Luke’s best efforts to tack on some take home messages, this parable is finished not in the gospel, but in us. We have to decide what would happen in us if we gave this gospel a time share in our hearts? We have start somewhere and this messy parable is, in the end, is a fine place to start. As Debie Thomas points out:
Where there is unburdening, where there is liberation, where there is crazy, radical generosity — there is God. And where God is? Well, that's where we should seek to be as well. Amen
September 18, 2022
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to thee O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.
Staying on the high road, let’s just say this is a text clergy find “challenging” or “demanding.” At issue is that the Jesus we encounter here is difficult to reconcile with the Jesus most of us think we know and worship. Can he really be lifting up the snake of a manger we meet in this parable?
One of the books clergy rely on for sermon preparation, Feasting on the Word, comes with these warnings:
- None of the parables of Jesus has baffled interpreters quite like the story
- The parable of the dishonest steward poses significant theology challenges,
behavior of the main character.
And one more:
- It is no exaggeration to say that the parable’s meaning has stumped even the best and most creative interpreters of Scripture.
You understand then why it’s easy to race ahead to the bumper sticker endings: “You can’t serve both God and wealth” Tuck that away for Stewardship Sunday which is coming up soon. “No slave can serve two masters.” Bet you’ve heard a dozen sermons on that. Check.
Some suggest that even Luke struggled with this text and added moralistic endings as exit ramps for perplexed preachers.
“I can’t believe that this story came from the lips of our Lord,” Saint Augustine said some 1600 centuries ago.
We talk about Jesus being God incarnate in human form, and then when he acts like one of us, seemingly inconsistent, out of character, maddeningly obtuse, we’re aghast.
Myself included which led me to fantasize: What if deadline pressure forced Luke to turn in a rough draft? Or maybe he forgot the part of the papyrus which made all of this hang together?
But here’s what helped shed light on the mystery of this text: What if Jesus in talking about “dishonesty” was actually doing so tongue-in-cheek? Stay with me here for a moment, because this makes the “dishonest manager” less like a snake and more like Robin Hood.
In the Roman Empire, there were two classes: the very rich and the very, very, poor. The master’s wealth depended on the exploitation of the illiterate peasants.
About to be fired for his ineptitude, the suddenly desperate manager does an about-face. No longer “strong enough to dig” and “too proud to beg” the manager decides to cancel a percentage of the debts the tenants owe to his boss. “I have decided what to do, he says, “so that when I am dismissed as manager people may welcome me into their homes.”
Some scholars suggest all the manager did was cancel the commission he would have earned on the monies due—an act of generosity since like his boss, his wealth was based on exploitation. But regardless of his motivations—his actions had a huge impact on the very poor who may have never before experienced boundless generosity which no doubt felt like grace.
In a stunning reversal of what we were expecting the master praises his manager’s shrewd behavior. He may not know the extent of what his manager did, but he cannot fail to realize that suddenly everyone he exploits to sustain his fortunes-- now holds him in higher regard.
Cancelling his commission is one of the theories about the manager’s behavior. But his motivation may have been pure selfishness. The manager decided he needed more goodwill than the master needed more wealth and did the right thing for the “wrong” reason. But no one liberated from debt or oppression cares much about who turns the key.
As Martin Luther once said, “Our God is the God who can ride the lame horse and carve the rotten wood.”
When a system is rotten to the core—as the Roman Empire was especially when compared to the Kingdom of God-- does it really matter if a lame horse is the one who rides into town?
We don’t know what happened to the manager in the rush of good will he felt from his new friends. Did his perspective shift when he began to stay in their houses or tents and look at life from the bottom up? Did he begin to experience the pure generosity of friendship and love that often flow from those who have the least to give? We have no idea.
We want parables to be teachable moments; “A grassroots lesson connecting the ordinariness of life with the extraordinary nature of God,” writes Helen Montgomery Devoise.
It’s worth nothing that in this gospel, Jesus is dealing with the world as it is. Corrupt, broken, messy. Continues Devoise:
Why would Jesus make an example for godly living so
unsavory? The parable presents as the model for our
faith someone whose life is the complete opposite of
everything Christ ever taught.
We all expect and hope that the sleazy manager will get his due, and it’s just the opposite. There is a reckless creativity, though to his approach and he acts.
Jesus says that “The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the children of light.”
Debie Thomas in Journey with Jesus, poses this question:
Where and how might we be more shrewd, more clever, more creative, and more single-minded in our vocations as children of light? If the manager in Jesus’s story can hustle so hard for his own survival, how much more might we contend on behalf of a world God loves?
Today Jesus might look at the way the courts were stacked slowly and steadily over the years with politically minded judges more likely to make politics their priority over the Constitution and note that their shrewd manipulation paid off.
Imagine if those shrewd tactics were pursed be what Jesus called “the children of light?” who understood that the Judiciary is not meant to be an arm of the Executive Branch.
Jesus tells this parable to the Pharisees, the prominent religious leaders who were strict adherent to Jewish law and put that above all else. The Pharisees are no fans of Jesus expansive attitude towards divine judgment. Writes Rev. Dr. Alison Boden, whose husband was your last rector:
Jesus has been cooking the books of diving judgment, and the
folks who’ve staked their lives on following the law to the letter
do not appreciate having the rulebook revised. Christ is God’s
steward and he’s busy forgiving debts—canceling indebtedness.
His message to the religious leaders is that God is the eternal
creditor, not themselves. Jesus is canceling debts owed not to
them but to God, and God commends him for it.
Despite Luke’s best efforts to tack on some take home messages, this parable is finished not in the gospel, but in us. We have to decide what would happen in us if we gave this gospel a time share in our hearts? We have start somewhere and this messy parable is, in the end, is a fine place to start. As Debie Thomas points out:
Where there is unburdening, where there is liberation, where there is crazy, radical generosity — there is God. And where God is? Well, that's where we should seek to be as well. Amen
Aug 14, 2022 |
The Refiner's Fire
| The Rev. Laura Palmer
The Refiner's Fire
Read the Rev. Laura Palmer's sermon for the Tenth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 15.
Jeremiah 23:23-29
Psalm 82
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to thee, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.
Now, the laugh’s on me because years ago, a priest friend would send me his sermon on Saturday when he was stuck and uninspired. Once my snarky self said, “Sometimes bad texts happen to good preachers.”
The better word would surely have been “challenging” but there are moments when I click on the text for the following Sunday and think, “Where are Mary and Martha when I need them!” Or last Sunday’s Jesus, the one who said “Do not worry, little flock…do not be afraid.”
We skip over the Jesus who talks about bringing fire and swords. The Jesus who talks about hate and division. And thank you very much, but when it comes to hate and division, we excel in doing that all by ourselves as any news cycle will prove.
So my challenge this week is clear. Is it possible to square this Jesus with the one we not only love and worship, but serve?
Let’s jump right into the fire: the one Jesus said he came to earth to bring and wished were already kindled. What happened to the babe in the manager? The Prince of Peace? Who shall reign forever and ever?
But imagine if Jesus were talking about a refining fire? Reverend Shanon Kershner from Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church poses this question (1):
What if this fire of which Jesus speaks is not a fire of destruction,
a fire signaling retribution and punishment?...What if it’s a fire of
purification, a fire of refinement?... As any metalsmith will tell you,
a refining fire burns with such intense heat that once the metal
is plunged into its core, any impurities come to the surface so they
can be scraped away.
Kershner also helped me understand why Jesus wished the fire had already started when she wrote:
I believe the fire Jesus wished had already been kindled was
a refining fire—one that would scrape away everything in us that
keeps God’s very presence from being reflected in our faces,
reflected in our lives.
This, she writes, challenges us to ask:
What obscures God’s presence from being seen in your face; what obscured God’s presence from being seen in the way you live your life? (2)
Questions worth asking every day of our lives. And think about it: had those flames been kindling, Jesus’ three years of ministry might have gone differently. The crowd that cheered him on Palm Sunday as he road into Jerusalem, expecting a triumphant king, might not have jeered him a week later shouting, “Crucify him,” “Crucify him!”
The kingdom of God Jesus offered was, and still is, a disruptive, radical vision of the world and we fool ourselves when we pretend it isn’t, concocting a cozy and comfy Christianity that divides us from ourselves by saying who’s in and who’s out, who’s worthy of God’s love and who isn’t.
A few years ago – before the pandemic—I remember a married gay couple here who’ve now since moved out of state. One of the women told me she and her wife felt welcome felt at St. Martin’s right from the beginning.
“You know, we can’t just walk into any church.” Hear those words again. “We can’t just walk into any church.” And these women were privileged, professional, and white, a point I make only to emphasize how hard it is still for our LGBTQ siblings to find a place of belonging in the world. This was heightened for me this week by a survey from the Trevor Project that said 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, more than half of whom were transgender and non-binary.
2,000 years later, maybe kindling is no longer enough; maybe we need to be spreading lighter fluid over the flames of not only our faith, but our culture.
And many of you I am sure would agree with author and priest Barbara Brown Taylor, who said she wished Jesus disturbing words about creating division in families had never been written down or edited out of Luke’s gospel altogether. (3)
Think for a moment about the cost of discipleship which Jesus surely did because the future of God’s kingdom would depend on those who would carry it forward after his death. By the time Luke was written—several decades after the crucifixion—Christians – and their families-- were being persecuted by the Roman Empire:
As Barbara Brown Taylor points out:
If they found one believer in a household they would arrest
everyone, so it really was true that turning toward Jesus meant
turning away from your family, whether you wanted to or not.
once you made following your Jesus your first priority,
everything else fell by the wayside—not because God took it
away from you but because that is how the world works. As
long as the world opposes those who are set to transform,
transformers will pay a high price. (4)
This brings us to Easter Sunday, 1962, and Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a “transformer” who became a saint in the Episcopal Church in 1991.
Daniels, a Harvard undergraduate from New Hampshire grew up as an Episcopalian but had a crisis of faith when his dad—a physician-- died at an early age and his sister was suffering from a chronic illness at the same time.
But in Boston’s Church of the Advent, that Easter Sunday, something was kindled in Daniels; he heard a call to serve God and after graduation, entered the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge.
Passionate about civil rights, Daniels went to Alabama in 1965 for the March on Selma. He’d planned to return to seminary, but Alabama changed him and he got permission to spend the rest of the semester there.
Daniels explained: “I had been blinded by what I saw in Alabama (and elsewhere), and the road to Damascus led, for me, back here.” (5) One of his projects was to help integrate a local Episcopal Church.
In the summer of August, 1965, after a series of demonstrations, Daniels and three other civil rights workers, went to a rural store which local residents hated because it served non-whites.
When Ruby Sales—one of Daniels colleagues-- walked toward the store to buy a cold drink, a man with a shotgun took aim. Jonathan Daniels leaped in front of her and the bullet aimed at the 17 year-old black teenager exploded in Daniels’ chest.
Upon learning of Daniels’ murder, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, said that “One of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry was performed by Jonathan Daniels.” (6)
The murderer was subsequently acquitted in Alabama by an all-white jury.
Ruby Sales went to college and then graduated from the same Episcopal seminary Daniels attended. The ordination of women was still years away. Ruby Sales became a leading civil rights activist and a public theologian. Today she runs a non-profit in Georgia.
“You have to understand the significance of Jonathan’s witness,” Ruby Sales told the Washington Post on the 50th anniversary of his murder in 2015, “He walked away from the king’s table. He could have had any benefit he wanted because he was young, white, brilliant and male.” (7) Sales said she feared the racist hatred that killed Daniels was still alive and virulent, and that was seven years ago.
Jonathan Daniels chose, and accepted, the cost of discipleship. He dreamed of becoming a priest and was martyred instead, becoming one with “that great cloud of witnesses,” and a saint in our Church.
The word “martyr” is from the Greek word for “witness.”
Jonathan Daniels became a martyr, witnessing to his faith in Jesus with his life and death. The refiner’s fire kindled in him that Easter Sunday was transformative.
What would happen if we fanned those flames in ourselves? Burning through all that keeps us from seeing Jesus reflecting back when we hold a mirror up to our lives?
Let the life of Jonathan Daniels hand you a match and see what you can kindle anew in your life and witness to Christ.
Today is a very good place to start. This Sunday, August 14th, is the Feast Day of Jonathan Daniels. AMEN
1. Kershner, Shannon, “Conflict Avoidant,” Sermon preached at Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, August 18th, 2019
2. Ibid.
6. Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Virginia Military Institute, (VMI Class of 1961), Civil Rights Hero,VMI, Retrieved February 1, 2015
7. Ruane, Michael E., “Black Civil Rights Activist Recalls White Ally Who Took A Shotgun Blast for Her,” ˆWashington Post, August 16, 2015
Jeremiah 23:23-29
Psalm 82
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to thee, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.
Now, the laugh’s on me because years ago, a priest friend would send me his sermon on Saturday when he was stuck and uninspired. Once my snarky self said, “Sometimes bad texts happen to good preachers.”
The better word would surely have been “challenging” but there are moments when I click on the text for the following Sunday and think, “Where are Mary and Martha when I need them!” Or last Sunday’s Jesus, the one who said “Do not worry, little flock…do not be afraid.”
We skip over the Jesus who talks about bringing fire and swords. The Jesus who talks about hate and division. And thank you very much, but when it comes to hate and division, we excel in doing that all by ourselves as any news cycle will prove.
So my challenge this week is clear. Is it possible to square this Jesus with the one we not only love and worship, but serve?
Let’s jump right into the fire: the one Jesus said he came to earth to bring and wished were already kindled. What happened to the babe in the manager? The Prince of Peace? Who shall reign forever and ever?
But imagine if Jesus were talking about a refining fire? Reverend Shanon Kershner from Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church poses this question (1):
What if this fire of which Jesus speaks is not a fire of destruction,
a fire signaling retribution and punishment?...What if it’s a fire of
purification, a fire of refinement?... As any metalsmith will tell you,
a refining fire burns with such intense heat that once the metal
is plunged into its core, any impurities come to the surface so they
can be scraped away.
Kershner also helped me understand why Jesus wished the fire had already started when she wrote:
I believe the fire Jesus wished had already been kindled was
a refining fire—one that would scrape away everything in us that
keeps God’s very presence from being reflected in our faces,
reflected in our lives.
This, she writes, challenges us to ask:
What obscures God’s presence from being seen in your face; what obscured God’s presence from being seen in the way you live your life? (2)
Questions worth asking every day of our lives. And think about it: had those flames been kindling, Jesus’ three years of ministry might have gone differently. The crowd that cheered him on Palm Sunday as he road into Jerusalem, expecting a triumphant king, might not have jeered him a week later shouting, “Crucify him,” “Crucify him!”
The kingdom of God Jesus offered was, and still is, a disruptive, radical vision of the world and we fool ourselves when we pretend it isn’t, concocting a cozy and comfy Christianity that divides us from ourselves by saying who’s in and who’s out, who’s worthy of God’s love and who isn’t.
A few years ago – before the pandemic—I remember a married gay couple here who’ve now since moved out of state. One of the women told me she and her wife felt welcome felt at St. Martin’s right from the beginning.
“You know, we can’t just walk into any church.” Hear those words again. “We can’t just walk into any church.” And these women were privileged, professional, and white, a point I make only to emphasize how hard it is still for our LGBTQ siblings to find a place of belonging in the world. This was heightened for me this week by a survey from the Trevor Project that said 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, more than half of whom were transgender and non-binary.
2,000 years later, maybe kindling is no longer enough; maybe we need to be spreading lighter fluid over the flames of not only our faith, but our culture.
And many of you I am sure would agree with author and priest Barbara Brown Taylor, who said she wished Jesus disturbing words about creating division in families had never been written down or edited out of Luke’s gospel altogether. (3)
Think for a moment about the cost of discipleship which Jesus surely did because the future of God’s kingdom would depend on those who would carry it forward after his death. By the time Luke was written—several decades after the crucifixion—Christians – and their families-- were being persecuted by the Roman Empire:
As Barbara Brown Taylor points out:
If they found one believer in a household they would arrest
everyone, so it really was true that turning toward Jesus meant
turning away from your family, whether you wanted to or not.
once you made following your Jesus your first priority,
everything else fell by the wayside—not because God took it
away from you but because that is how the world works. As
long as the world opposes those who are set to transform,
transformers will pay a high price. (4)
This brings us to Easter Sunday, 1962, and Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a “transformer” who became a saint in the Episcopal Church in 1991.
Daniels, a Harvard undergraduate from New Hampshire grew up as an Episcopalian but had a crisis of faith when his dad—a physician-- died at an early age and his sister was suffering from a chronic illness at the same time.
But in Boston’s Church of the Advent, that Easter Sunday, something was kindled in Daniels; he heard a call to serve God and after graduation, entered the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge.
Passionate about civil rights, Daniels went to Alabama in 1965 for the March on Selma. He’d planned to return to seminary, but Alabama changed him and he got permission to spend the rest of the semester there.
Daniels explained: “I had been blinded by what I saw in Alabama (and elsewhere), and the road to Damascus led, for me, back here.” (5) One of his projects was to help integrate a local Episcopal Church.
In the summer of August, 1965, after a series of demonstrations, Daniels and three other civil rights workers, went to a rural store which local residents hated because it served non-whites.
When Ruby Sales—one of Daniels colleagues-- walked toward the store to buy a cold drink, a man with a shotgun took aim. Jonathan Daniels leaped in front of her and the bullet aimed at the 17 year-old black teenager exploded in Daniels’ chest.
Upon learning of Daniels’ murder, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, said that “One of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry was performed by Jonathan Daniels.” (6)
The murderer was subsequently acquitted in Alabama by an all-white jury.
Ruby Sales went to college and then graduated from the same Episcopal seminary Daniels attended. The ordination of women was still years away. Ruby Sales became a leading civil rights activist and a public theologian. Today she runs a non-profit in Georgia.
“You have to understand the significance of Jonathan’s witness,” Ruby Sales told the Washington Post on the 50th anniversary of his murder in 2015, “He walked away from the king’s table. He could have had any benefit he wanted because he was young, white, brilliant and male.” (7) Sales said she feared the racist hatred that killed Daniels was still alive and virulent, and that was seven years ago.
Jonathan Daniels chose, and accepted, the cost of discipleship. He dreamed of becoming a priest and was martyred instead, becoming one with “that great cloud of witnesses,” and a saint in our Church.
The word “martyr” is from the Greek word for “witness.”
Jonathan Daniels became a martyr, witnessing to his faith in Jesus with his life and death. The refiner’s fire kindled in him that Easter Sunday was transformative.
What would happen if we fanned those flames in ourselves? Burning through all that keeps us from seeing Jesus reflecting back when we hold a mirror up to our lives?
Let the life of Jonathan Daniels hand you a match and see what you can kindle anew in your life and witness to Christ.
Today is a very good place to start. This Sunday, August 14th, is the Feast Day of Jonathan Daniels. AMEN
1. Kershner, Shannon, “Conflict Avoidant,” Sermon preached at Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, August 18th, 2019
2. Ibid.
3. Taylor, Barbara Brown, “Family Values, Gospel Medicine, pp. 14-15
4. Taylor, Barbara Brown, “High-Priced Discipleship,” Bread of Angels, pp. 48-49
5. Schjonberg, Joan, Episcopal News Service, “Remembering Jonathan Daniels 50 Years After His Martyrdom,” August 13th, 20156. Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Virginia Military Institute, (VMI Class of 1961), Civil Rights Hero,VMI, Retrieved February 1, 2015
7. Ruane, Michael E., “Black Civil Rights Activist Recalls White Ally Who Took A Shotgun Blast for Her,” ˆWashington Post, August 16, 2015
Aug 07, 2022 |
A Place Beyond Imagining
| The Rev. Laura Palmer
A Place Beyond Imagining
Read the Rev. Laura Palmer's sermon for the Ninth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 14.
Today's readings are:
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. AMEN.
It’s a very short distance from the third pew over there on the right-- where I always sit-- to this pulpit but I traveled a very, very, long way to arrive at this moment. It’s astonishing to be here. My heart is filled with gratitude and a quiet joy
When gratitude and joy are combined, it’s both powerful and yet also humbling. For me it’s what can happen in embracing an unexpected life. Faith was involved, to be sure, although I wasn’t calling it that per se. I was calling it “trust’ and when I wanted to change my life I began praying my dangerous prayer: “Let thy will be my will,” Sunday after Sunday at the Eucharist.
I trusted in God to lead me which is at the heart of faith when I was reminded of again when I read the exquisite words from Hebrews: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
People mistakenly assume that I’m courageous but I’m not. I’m very curious though and good at walking through doors when they open. And somehow, the next right thing appears on the wings of the Holy Spirit.
I do try to plan—I was going to go to law school and get Black Panthers out of jail—but I went to Vietnam instead with a pediatrician I met hitchhiking illegally on an interstate -- which led to a long career as an author and journalist in television news.
But there came a time when I knew there were no more jobs in TV that appealed to me anymore. I wanted the remaining years of my professional career to be in service to God out of the profound gratitude I had for the life I’d lived. Not that it had been easy. There were crucifixions along the way but somehow, I kept making it to Easter. I had no idea what to hope for, but did, and do, have faith in things unseen.
So I began praying my dangerous prayer at the communion rail – all six words of it with no idea of what was coming next. “Let thy will be my will.”
If someone had asked me -- and no one really did—I’d probably have said I might end up doing non-profit work in New York City where I lived.
The thought of going to graduate school with money I didn’t have for a degree that led nowhere and that I’d end up working in Philadelphia, a city I often flew through on Amtrak en route to DC, was beyond my power of imagining.
I should also add that by the time I graduated from Union Theological Seminary with an M.Div. in Psychiatry and Religion, I was sure I would never be ordained. Full stop. Never. I’d hear other students say things like “I’ve known I’ve had a call on my head since I was four,” and I’d wince. That wasn’t me. Another time someone said “I had a dream in which the Holy Spirit who showed me I’d be leading people to Jesus.” Good for you, I thought. But that’s not me.
And yet God led me to a place beyond imagining, one where the moment I arrived, I knew I belonged. And you, the loving people of St. Martin’s, and your rector, Jarrett Kerbel, and a parish committee, listened and supported me as I quietly began to respond to what I realize now was a persistent whisper from God. It was long, difficult, and took years. The waiting was at times, endless. Start to finish – what began in New York end nine years later here at St. Martin’s when I was ordained on Dec. 13th, 2019. And even when I was ordained, I never imagined preaching here. I was the oncology chaplain at CHOP, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. So once again this morning, I find myself in a place beyond imagining, where gratitude and joy collide.
God’s will for my life was far greater than my own. A way was made out of no way that I could see. It’s like the passage from Genesis this morning when God told Abraham to look at the heavens and imagine his descendants being as infinite as the panoply of stars flung across the navy night sky. Abraham must have been incredulous. He was too old and for starters, his wife, was barren, yet God let him to a place beyond imagining.
And, as author and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor points out,
"For Protestants in particular, his story is key. Abraham did not lift a finger to be saved. All he did was believe God’s promise and that was enough. He was saved by faith alone." (1)
Faith. Trust. The conviction of things not seen. We stare through the glass of our lives so darkly and often for so long it is hard to imagine that there might be anything more.
It can be easy to forget so that faith should be vibrant and alive. It’s not to be confused with theology, as the noted pastor Frederick Buechner points out:
"Faith is different from theology because theology is reasoned, systematic, and orderly, whereas faith is disorderly intermittent and full of surprises…Faith is homesickness, faith is a lump in the throat faith is less a position on than a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch. Faith is waiting, waiting." (2)
And we are not patient people. Waiting makes us anxious and often doubt our faith. It can be frustrating and frightening whether we are choosing to change our lives, as I was, or being forced to change the lives we thought we going to live because of life’s traumas that come to us all. Waiting can be a geyser of what Martin Buber aptly describes as “Holy Insecurity.”
"This is the kingdom of God, the kingdom of danger and of risk, of eternal beginning and eternal becoming, of opened spirit and of deep realization, the kingdom of holy insecurity." (3)
St. Martin’s knows something about holy insecurity as you work and pray through the process of “eternal becoming” it certainly can feel risky at the very best, if not dangerous, at times. But this, too, Buber reminds us, is the kingdom of God.
As if aware of how we struggle with “Holy Insecurity.” Jesus, in the sweet tenderness of these words from Luke says this: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
And yet, that means work, struggle, danger and risk. It surely did in my life as God led me to a place beyond imagining. We must prepare. Keep our lamps lit. Even if at times it only feels like a pilot light of faith, of trust, of love. We must remain ready. And that’s a process, not a switch that can be flicked on.
We will get there together, with faith, and with the deep and strong bonds that have been forged from the past to the present in this parish community for over a century. You are not alone, we are not alone, even if it might often feel that way. As the Psalmist today reminds us, “Our soul waits for the Lord, He is our help and our shield” because St. Martin’s does not belong to your priest. It belongs to you, beloved children of God, and above all, to the one in whose name we live, pray, and serve. God is calling us all to a place beyond imagining and one we’ll recognize the moment we arrive. AMEN.
1. Taylor, Barbara Brown, “The Sacramental Sky,” Duke University Chapel, Durham, N.C. February 18th, 2010
2. Buechner, Frederick, “Faith and Fiction,” sermon preached at Montreat Conference Center, North Carolina, 1986
3. Martin Buber, as quoted in Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, Barbara Brown Taylor, Harper Collins, 2019, pg, 81
Today's readings are:
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. AMEN.
It’s a very short distance from the third pew over there on the right-- where I always sit-- to this pulpit but I traveled a very, very, long way to arrive at this moment. It’s astonishing to be here. My heart is filled with gratitude and a quiet joy
When gratitude and joy are combined, it’s both powerful and yet also humbling. For me it’s what can happen in embracing an unexpected life. Faith was involved, to be sure, although I wasn’t calling it that per se. I was calling it “trust’ and when I wanted to change my life I began praying my dangerous prayer: “Let thy will be my will,” Sunday after Sunday at the Eucharist.
I trusted in God to lead me which is at the heart of faith when I was reminded of again when I read the exquisite words from Hebrews: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
People mistakenly assume that I’m courageous but I’m not. I’m very curious though and good at walking through doors when they open. And somehow, the next right thing appears on the wings of the Holy Spirit.
I do try to plan—I was going to go to law school and get Black Panthers out of jail—but I went to Vietnam instead with a pediatrician I met hitchhiking illegally on an interstate -- which led to a long career as an author and journalist in television news.
But there came a time when I knew there were no more jobs in TV that appealed to me anymore. I wanted the remaining years of my professional career to be in service to God out of the profound gratitude I had for the life I’d lived. Not that it had been easy. There were crucifixions along the way but somehow, I kept making it to Easter. I had no idea what to hope for, but did, and do, have faith in things unseen.
So I began praying my dangerous prayer at the communion rail – all six words of it with no idea of what was coming next. “Let thy will be my will.”
If someone had asked me -- and no one really did—I’d probably have said I might end up doing non-profit work in New York City where I lived.
The thought of going to graduate school with money I didn’t have for a degree that led nowhere and that I’d end up working in Philadelphia, a city I often flew through on Amtrak en route to DC, was beyond my power of imagining.
I should also add that by the time I graduated from Union Theological Seminary with an M.Div. in Psychiatry and Religion, I was sure I would never be ordained. Full stop. Never. I’d hear other students say things like “I’ve known I’ve had a call on my head since I was four,” and I’d wince. That wasn’t me. Another time someone said “I had a dream in which the Holy Spirit who showed me I’d be leading people to Jesus.” Good for you, I thought. But that’s not me.
And yet God led me to a place beyond imagining, one where the moment I arrived, I knew I belonged. And you, the loving people of St. Martin’s, and your rector, Jarrett Kerbel, and a parish committee, listened and supported me as I quietly began to respond to what I realize now was a persistent whisper from God. It was long, difficult, and took years. The waiting was at times, endless. Start to finish – what began in New York end nine years later here at St. Martin’s when I was ordained on Dec. 13th, 2019. And even when I was ordained, I never imagined preaching here. I was the oncology chaplain at CHOP, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. So once again this morning, I find myself in a place beyond imagining, where gratitude and joy collide.
God’s will for my life was far greater than my own. A way was made out of no way that I could see. It’s like the passage from Genesis this morning when God told Abraham to look at the heavens and imagine his descendants being as infinite as the panoply of stars flung across the navy night sky. Abraham must have been incredulous. He was too old and for starters, his wife, was barren, yet God let him to a place beyond imagining.
And, as author and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor points out,
"For Protestants in particular, his story is key. Abraham did not lift a finger to be saved. All he did was believe God’s promise and that was enough. He was saved by faith alone." (1)
Faith. Trust. The conviction of things not seen. We stare through the glass of our lives so darkly and often for so long it is hard to imagine that there might be anything more.
It can be easy to forget so that faith should be vibrant and alive. It’s not to be confused with theology, as the noted pastor Frederick Buechner points out:
"Faith is different from theology because theology is reasoned, systematic, and orderly, whereas faith is disorderly intermittent and full of surprises…Faith is homesickness, faith is a lump in the throat faith is less a position on than a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch. Faith is waiting, waiting." (2)
And we are not patient people. Waiting makes us anxious and often doubt our faith. It can be frustrating and frightening whether we are choosing to change our lives, as I was, or being forced to change the lives we thought we going to live because of life’s traumas that come to us all. Waiting can be a geyser of what Martin Buber aptly describes as “Holy Insecurity.”
"This is the kingdom of God, the kingdom of danger and of risk, of eternal beginning and eternal becoming, of opened spirit and of deep realization, the kingdom of holy insecurity." (3)
St. Martin’s knows something about holy insecurity as you work and pray through the process of “eternal becoming” it certainly can feel risky at the very best, if not dangerous, at times. But this, too, Buber reminds us, is the kingdom of God.
As if aware of how we struggle with “Holy Insecurity.” Jesus, in the sweet tenderness of these words from Luke says this: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
And yet, that means work, struggle, danger and risk. It surely did in my life as God led me to a place beyond imagining. We must prepare. Keep our lamps lit. Even if at times it only feels like a pilot light of faith, of trust, of love. We must remain ready. And that’s a process, not a switch that can be flicked on.
We will get there together, with faith, and with the deep and strong bonds that have been forged from the past to the present in this parish community for over a century. You are not alone, we are not alone, even if it might often feel that way. As the Psalmist today reminds us, “Our soul waits for the Lord, He is our help and our shield” because St. Martin’s does not belong to your priest. It belongs to you, beloved children of God, and above all, to the one in whose name we live, pray, and serve. God is calling us all to a place beyond imagining and one we’ll recognize the moment we arrive. AMEN.
1. Taylor, Barbara Brown, “The Sacramental Sky,” Duke University Chapel, Durham, N.C. February 18th, 2010
2. Buechner, Frederick, “Faith and Fiction,” sermon preached at Montreat Conference Center, North Carolina, 1986
3. Martin Buber, as quoted in Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, Barbara Brown Taylor, Harper Collins, 2019, pg, 81
Jul 24, 2022 |
Asking Prayers and Thanking Prayers
| Eugenie Dieck
Asking Prayers and Thanking Prayers
Read Guest Preacher Eugenie Dieck's sermon for the Seventh Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 12.
Today's readings are:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts,
be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.
Amen.
So, I say to you, ask and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
For decades, the little children at St Martin’s have been taught to pray through the construct of asking prayers and thanking prayers.
What they “ask for” and “thank for” are wonderfully simple statements.
I remember two awesome prayers…
“Help me to not hit my brother…who bothers me...a lot.”
“Thank you for African elephants because they are big.”
Today’s Gospel speaks to St Martin’s during this interim time. We are heavy with asking. Our asking prayers may seem obvious – to hold together as a parish, to discern who we are, who we could become, and who we might call to lead us. These are prayers of anxiety and risk. And so, at times, we may not be our best selves.
When we are not our best selves, because we are tired and concerned, the experience leads us to more asking prayers. To be brave, to be patient, to be forgiving, to assume the beneficial intent of words and actions.
The challenge with our current experience is its conditional quality.
We do not know what is going on, because we do not know.
We are searching for certainty in an uncertain time.
In a transitionary period, the essential asking prayer is…
“Dear God, help us to be brave and follow where you are leading us.”
We also have thanking prayers.
We thank God for what we had and now miss.
We thank God for our companions along the way.
We thank God for the persistence and resilience of the church,
both our parish, and the greater church.
I love the thanking prayers of children because they are filled with wonder and gratefulness for the magic of the world.
We have wonder and magic happening here at St Martin’s.
We are showing up and showing up together. And showing up in the full vibrancy of life’s joys and sorrows. There have been happy celebrations and sad experiences, many moments of pastoral care, and hard discussions about simple and complex topics.
I thank all of you for showing up, for your willingness to be this parish, for holding St Martin’s in your prayers and in your work.
The example I gave of the children’s asking and thanking prayers showed a disconnect. Asking to not clobber your brother and thanking for elephants, were not associated in this little boy’s experience.
There is a gap between when we ask God and when we thank God.
We ask and then we must wait. That is what we are doing now.
We are waiting.
Right now, at St Martin’s, the waiting -- for an interim and then a new rector -- is uncomfortable.
Yet in that discomfort is a time to be with Jesus, for he did a lot of waiting. Jesus waited to start his ministry…he waited for the apostles to understand…he waited for 40 days in the desert...
We will all have to wait with Jesus a while longer. We will be uncomfortable and the responses we get from God may not be what we asked for. We may be heard in a different way than we intended, we may ask and get an answer that surprises us, we may knock, and an unexpected door is opened.
One aspect of waiting is we do not feel settled. We are neither here nor there, we don’t know what’s happening, we are not sure who is in charge. Let me address those worries — we are in God’s hands, God is in charge, and waiting is what’s happening.
What we can do while we are waiting is to pray. I ask each of us to offer asking prayers and thanking prayers for St. Martin’s –
it is important to do both.
Asking prayers acknowledge wanting and yearning.
Thanking prayers acknowledge gratefulness and rightness.
I will close by reminding us how safe we are in Jesus’s love and the gift of salvation. As weary as we are at this moment, as concerned as we might be, we are secure and protected. Please pray by asking and thanking, knowing Jesus loves us and cares for us as we wait.
Amen.
Today's readings are:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts,
be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.
Amen.
So, I say to you, ask and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
For decades, the little children at St Martin’s have been taught to pray through the construct of asking prayers and thanking prayers.
What they “ask for” and “thank for” are wonderfully simple statements.
I remember two awesome prayers…
“Help me to not hit my brother…who bothers me...a lot.”
“Thank you for African elephants because they are big.”
Today’s Gospel speaks to St Martin’s during this interim time. We are heavy with asking. Our asking prayers may seem obvious – to hold together as a parish, to discern who we are, who we could become, and who we might call to lead us. These are prayers of anxiety and risk. And so, at times, we may not be our best selves.
When we are not our best selves, because we are tired and concerned, the experience leads us to more asking prayers. To be brave, to be patient, to be forgiving, to assume the beneficial intent of words and actions.
The challenge with our current experience is its conditional quality.
We do not know what is going on, because we do not know.
We are searching for certainty in an uncertain time.
In a transitionary period, the essential asking prayer is…
“Dear God, help us to be brave and follow where you are leading us.”
We also have thanking prayers.
We thank God for what we had and now miss.
We thank God for our companions along the way.
We thank God for the persistence and resilience of the church,
both our parish, and the greater church.
I love the thanking prayers of children because they are filled with wonder and gratefulness for the magic of the world.
We have wonder and magic happening here at St Martin’s.
We are showing up and showing up together. And showing up in the full vibrancy of life’s joys and sorrows. There have been happy celebrations and sad experiences, many moments of pastoral care, and hard discussions about simple and complex topics.
I thank all of you for showing up, for your willingness to be this parish, for holding St Martin’s in your prayers and in your work.
The example I gave of the children’s asking and thanking prayers showed a disconnect. Asking to not clobber your brother and thanking for elephants, were not associated in this little boy’s experience.
There is a gap between when we ask God and when we thank God.
We ask and then we must wait. That is what we are doing now.
We are waiting.
Right now, at St Martin’s, the waiting -- for an interim and then a new rector -- is uncomfortable.
Yet in that discomfort is a time to be with Jesus, for he did a lot of waiting. Jesus waited to start his ministry…he waited for the apostles to understand…he waited for 40 days in the desert...
We will all have to wait with Jesus a while longer. We will be uncomfortable and the responses we get from God may not be what we asked for. We may be heard in a different way than we intended, we may ask and get an answer that surprises us, we may knock, and an unexpected door is opened.
One aspect of waiting is we do not feel settled. We are neither here nor there, we don’t know what’s happening, we are not sure who is in charge. Let me address those worries — we are in God’s hands, God is in charge, and waiting is what’s happening.
What we can do while we are waiting is to pray. I ask each of us to offer asking prayers and thanking prayers for St. Martin’s –
it is important to do both.
Asking prayers acknowledge wanting and yearning.
Thanking prayers acknowledge gratefulness and rightness.
I will close by reminding us how safe we are in Jesus’s love and the gift of salvation. As weary as we are at this moment, as concerned as we might be, we are secure and protected. Please pray by asking and thanking, knowing Jesus loves us and cares for us as we wait.
Amen.
Jul 17, 2022 |
Sarah, Mary, and Martha: Getting It Done!
| The Rev. James H. Littrell
Sarah, Mary, and Martha: Getting It Done!
Read the Rev. James H. Littrell's sermon for the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 11.
Today's readings are:
The oldish, slightly bumbling, very gay priest arrived at his newest place of ministry--and a lovely spot it was, and is, ticks and all--one bright May day, curious, glad of human company after a pretty long dry spell, uncertain whether his professional chops had held together across the whole endless stretch of pandemic isolation that had pretty much driven him crazy toward the end of it, and, being not sure, a little trepidatious, maybe a tiny bit anxious.
His anxiety, he thought, was rooted in that part of him that people sometimes called “introvert” But he was suspicious, still is suspicious to this day, of diagnostic personality labels. He kind of felt that people had always been more complicated than any diagnostic manual could ever parse. Once he had taken a test called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and after it was all over, the test interpreter had called him in and told him he needed to be careful because he was neither one thing nor another. He was, in that way, he was told, like Jesus, and, the interpreter said to him, “you know what happened to Jesus.” In every respect, he as told, he had tested right down the middle of this binary type indicator system: he was both extrovert and introvert; he was a “sensing” person and also an intuitive one; he both thought and felt; and, thank goodness, he was skilled in both judgment and perception. Just like Jesus.
He thought that was all hocus pocus, not too far from the world of astrology to which some of his other otherwise brilliant friends ascribed as a way of framing human experience.
He actually thought his ability to live in and operate across a wide range of human experience was precisely the product of a man who, because he had been gay pretty much since birth, had had to negotiate his way through and live and even to find ways to thrive in a world in which for half his life what he was was literally unspeakable, and when spoken, the names for what he knew he was were so cruel and vicious and accursed that he--and everyone else of his kind who could--became very good at shape shifting and code switching and most of all, fitting in. When you do that for forty years, you learn serious survival and navigational skills, and if you’re paying attention, you learn to deploy those skills in the service of self-preservation and literal survival. And he had.
And so maybe, in that tiny way, perhaps he was a little like Jesus. He often thought that the pre-public-ministry Jesus, knowing what he must have known, suspecting about himself what he must, across those first thirty years of life, have begun to suspect, that that boy growing into maturity must have found himself a great and often mystifying puzzle.
One thing seemed pretty sure: that Jesus didn’t come out--didn’t unleash the full potency of his mature self into the world--until he did. And when he did, he did it massively. And all that he had learned in those hidden, perhaps hiding, years when (as the old priest remembered from his own Sunday School days) he had been growing “in wisdom and stature and favor with G-D and man,”--all that he then deployed into his world and into his particular human community with energy and focus, purpose and kindness, sensitivity and intuition, great feeling and great intelligence, profound judgment and deep perception. Into that community he strode quickly, powerfully, and “extrovert” if ever there was one. Now and then, though, he would turn away, take a boat across a river or into a lake, climb high into a hidden garden, visit trusted friends, and there he would turn inward, meditating, examining himself and his work, praying to his ever changing, often perplexing G-D.
Or so the oldish gay priest thought. Perhaps in that way, the test interpreter had been right: when you grow up an alien, hidden in full view, in your own country, completely different from what you can ever reveal to the world you live in, you do learn serious navigational skills. And you learn trepidation, and anxiety, and not a little fear.
So yes, when you enter a stranger’s house, as the Lord does Abraham and Sarah’s house in today’s story, in whatever guise--today G-D manifests as “three men”--you never know what you’re going to find, how you are going to be received, whether, even, if you will come out of the encounter in one piece.
And, too, when like Jesus, you come into a house of refuge and nourishment, a house you have known for a long time as perhaps a haven of peace and and a place where friends really care for one another, when you come into the house of Mary and Martha, or perhaps of Martha and Mary, you hope to be received with love and have at least a little of what you bring with you paid some attention to--when you do that, you hope for love and joy and companions on your way. But you never quite know until you are fully there, among these fellow humans, fully engaged with them individually and corporately as you can be within the limits of time and energy that are yours--you never really can know what you will find.
But what I (I, he says, emerging from the third person at last!), what I found on the first day and have found ever since is a community that received me with unfeigned joy, unfeignedly thankful as Bill said last week, for my ministry and for whatever gifts I have brought, and with complete open-hearted acceptance of me, as I now am--no judgment, no stigmatizing, nothing of that sort--just with love, and willingness to move together for this little time into wherever we might be called by G-D, to dwell together in sorrow and in joy, and tragedy even, and in hope. And most of all, I have found a determination to wait on G-D’s time, to wait in G-D’s time, to dwell in the shadow of the Almighty for as long as may be needed.
I have found the best kind of hospitality--and that in spite of a set of challenges and setbacks and surprises that might have knocked a lesser community into complete disfunction. And yet you have persevered, in faith and with passion, and most of all, in action.
So now a closing word about the women of the stories we heard today. Because they are stories both rooted in and descriptive of cultures that are unimaginably patriarchal, even by the measure of the religious patriarchy that our nation’s highest court’s majority seems intent on bending its citizens back to--because these stories emerge from and describe a world where patriarchy is the explicit unquestioned norm, the Hebrew and Gospel stories today really do massive injustice to the women in the room.
Sarah has made the home, and she creates the hospitality in which the three men are ensconced. Listen to the words. “Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said: Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it (as though she had no clue how to make bread), and make cakes.” And there is, handily, a servant, Abraham’s version perhaps of St. Martin's giant of a sexton, James Kent, another servant who is frequently, without much thought, directed hither and yon. Then, when the women and the servants have done the work, Abraham sets out the meal and it is he who keeps the men company while they eat. They, full of calf and curds and milk and bread, and also after all being G-D, perhaps recognize a bit more than Abraham, who has done the work to make all this hospitality possible. “Where,” they ask, “is your wife?” “Oh, she’s in the tent,” Abraham says (the reference to being in the tent is not accidental here either: Sarah is covered and hidden). And then G-D, in the guise of one of the men, promises Abraham his reward. Sarah is to get pregnant. She is to bear a son. And as we know, that son will spawn us all. Thank you, Sarah!
Then there are Mary and Martha. Here Jesus, the patriarch, also gets the women wrong. And here, please pay attention. Absent a Martha or three or ten in every household or community or community of G-D’s people--absent Martha, there will be, can be, no functioning household or community. There just cannot be. Never has been. Never will be. Now this is not solely about function, this story, though it certainly is that. It’s also about how easily the women who do the work can be left to it, often unsupported. Sometimes even their sisters turn away for more worthy endeavors--for listening, or massaging feet, or some such. Yet the work goes on.
So I pray you all, do not in these next days and weeks go all Jesus on your
Immeasurably devoted and skilled and effective Martha(s). Understand, too, that your Martha’s are Mary’s too. Martha’s they are though, now, here. They, and in particular your inestimable Rector’s Warden, is keeping this household running. Do not for even one second let her do that work alone. Do not wait to be asked. Do not, when asked for help, say, “Call me when you need me.” You must, absolutely, must be with Barbara Thomson in the great work before you that is mapping and living into St. Martin’s future while keeping all the wheels turning, and the house functioning, and phones answered and the bills paid and the pastoring done, and all the rest. And just as this is not a one priest church, neither is it a one Martha church. I implore you, each as you are able, to step in and step up.
You do that, this old gay priest may leave as he found himself almost as soon as he arrived: full of hope and joy, in the certainty that he and all of us are held as precious children of God in the capacious hands of God’s love.
I have in my life moved into a whole bunch of wonderful ministries. And, necessarily, I have left those same communities, at some point, and moved into the next place. Though sometimes I have been unsure of what or how that next place or thing may be, I am always sure I am--and in this place this morning--we are always holding hands with G-D. Since the very beginning of my ministry, at every juncture, this has been my prayer:
Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me one, let me stand.
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light,
Take my hand, Precious Lord, lead me on.
Farewell, children of G-D! Amen.
Today's readings are:
- Genesis 18:1-10a
Psalm 15
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42
The oldish, slightly bumbling, very gay priest arrived at his newest place of ministry--and a lovely spot it was, and is, ticks and all--one bright May day, curious, glad of human company after a pretty long dry spell, uncertain whether his professional chops had held together across the whole endless stretch of pandemic isolation that had pretty much driven him crazy toward the end of it, and, being not sure, a little trepidatious, maybe a tiny bit anxious.
His anxiety, he thought, was rooted in that part of him that people sometimes called “introvert” But he was suspicious, still is suspicious to this day, of diagnostic personality labels. He kind of felt that people had always been more complicated than any diagnostic manual could ever parse. Once he had taken a test called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and after it was all over, the test interpreter had called him in and told him he needed to be careful because he was neither one thing nor another. He was, in that way, he was told, like Jesus, and, the interpreter said to him, “you know what happened to Jesus.” In every respect, he as told, he had tested right down the middle of this binary type indicator system: he was both extrovert and introvert; he was a “sensing” person and also an intuitive one; he both thought and felt; and, thank goodness, he was skilled in both judgment and perception. Just like Jesus.
He thought that was all hocus pocus, not too far from the world of astrology to which some of his other otherwise brilliant friends ascribed as a way of framing human experience.
He actually thought his ability to live in and operate across a wide range of human experience was precisely the product of a man who, because he had been gay pretty much since birth, had had to negotiate his way through and live and even to find ways to thrive in a world in which for half his life what he was was literally unspeakable, and when spoken, the names for what he knew he was were so cruel and vicious and accursed that he--and everyone else of his kind who could--became very good at shape shifting and code switching and most of all, fitting in. When you do that for forty years, you learn serious survival and navigational skills, and if you’re paying attention, you learn to deploy those skills in the service of self-preservation and literal survival. And he had.
And so maybe, in that tiny way, perhaps he was a little like Jesus. He often thought that the pre-public-ministry Jesus, knowing what he must have known, suspecting about himself what he must, across those first thirty years of life, have begun to suspect, that that boy growing into maturity must have found himself a great and often mystifying puzzle.
One thing seemed pretty sure: that Jesus didn’t come out--didn’t unleash the full potency of his mature self into the world--until he did. And when he did, he did it massively. And all that he had learned in those hidden, perhaps hiding, years when (as the old priest remembered from his own Sunday School days) he had been growing “in wisdom and stature and favor with G-D and man,”--all that he then deployed into his world and into his particular human community with energy and focus, purpose and kindness, sensitivity and intuition, great feeling and great intelligence, profound judgment and deep perception. Into that community he strode quickly, powerfully, and “extrovert” if ever there was one. Now and then, though, he would turn away, take a boat across a river or into a lake, climb high into a hidden garden, visit trusted friends, and there he would turn inward, meditating, examining himself and his work, praying to his ever changing, often perplexing G-D.
Or so the oldish gay priest thought. Perhaps in that way, the test interpreter had been right: when you grow up an alien, hidden in full view, in your own country, completely different from what you can ever reveal to the world you live in, you do learn serious navigational skills. And you learn trepidation, and anxiety, and not a little fear.
So yes, when you enter a stranger’s house, as the Lord does Abraham and Sarah’s house in today’s story, in whatever guise--today G-D manifests as “three men”--you never know what you’re going to find, how you are going to be received, whether, even, if you will come out of the encounter in one piece.
And, too, when like Jesus, you come into a house of refuge and nourishment, a house you have known for a long time as perhaps a haven of peace and and a place where friends really care for one another, when you come into the house of Mary and Martha, or perhaps of Martha and Mary, you hope to be received with love and have at least a little of what you bring with you paid some attention to--when you do that, you hope for love and joy and companions on your way. But you never quite know until you are fully there, among these fellow humans, fully engaged with them individually and corporately as you can be within the limits of time and energy that are yours--you never really can know what you will find.
But what I (I, he says, emerging from the third person at last!), what I found on the first day and have found ever since is a community that received me with unfeigned joy, unfeignedly thankful as Bill said last week, for my ministry and for whatever gifts I have brought, and with complete open-hearted acceptance of me, as I now am--no judgment, no stigmatizing, nothing of that sort--just with love, and willingness to move together for this little time into wherever we might be called by G-D, to dwell together in sorrow and in joy, and tragedy even, and in hope. And most of all, I have found a determination to wait on G-D’s time, to wait in G-D’s time, to dwell in the shadow of the Almighty for as long as may be needed.
I have found the best kind of hospitality--and that in spite of a set of challenges and setbacks and surprises that might have knocked a lesser community into complete disfunction. And yet you have persevered, in faith and with passion, and most of all, in action.
So now a closing word about the women of the stories we heard today. Because they are stories both rooted in and descriptive of cultures that are unimaginably patriarchal, even by the measure of the religious patriarchy that our nation’s highest court’s majority seems intent on bending its citizens back to--because these stories emerge from and describe a world where patriarchy is the explicit unquestioned norm, the Hebrew and Gospel stories today really do massive injustice to the women in the room.
Sarah has made the home, and she creates the hospitality in which the three men are ensconced. Listen to the words. “Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said: Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it (as though she had no clue how to make bread), and make cakes.” And there is, handily, a servant, Abraham’s version perhaps of St. Martin's giant of a sexton, James Kent, another servant who is frequently, without much thought, directed hither and yon. Then, when the women and the servants have done the work, Abraham sets out the meal and it is he who keeps the men company while they eat. They, full of calf and curds and milk and bread, and also after all being G-D, perhaps recognize a bit more than Abraham, who has done the work to make all this hospitality possible. “Where,” they ask, “is your wife?” “Oh, she’s in the tent,” Abraham says (the reference to being in the tent is not accidental here either: Sarah is covered and hidden). And then G-D, in the guise of one of the men, promises Abraham his reward. Sarah is to get pregnant. She is to bear a son. And as we know, that son will spawn us all. Thank you, Sarah!
Then there are Mary and Martha. Here Jesus, the patriarch, also gets the women wrong. And here, please pay attention. Absent a Martha or three or ten in every household or community or community of G-D’s people--absent Martha, there will be, can be, no functioning household or community. There just cannot be. Never has been. Never will be. Now this is not solely about function, this story, though it certainly is that. It’s also about how easily the women who do the work can be left to it, often unsupported. Sometimes even their sisters turn away for more worthy endeavors--for listening, or massaging feet, or some such. Yet the work goes on.
So I pray you all, do not in these next days and weeks go all Jesus on your
Immeasurably devoted and skilled and effective Martha(s). Understand, too, that your Martha’s are Mary’s too. Martha’s they are though, now, here. They, and in particular your inestimable Rector’s Warden, is keeping this household running. Do not for even one second let her do that work alone. Do not wait to be asked. Do not, when asked for help, say, “Call me when you need me.” You must, absolutely, must be with Barbara Thomson in the great work before you that is mapping and living into St. Martin’s future while keeping all the wheels turning, and the house functioning, and phones answered and the bills paid and the pastoring done, and all the rest. And just as this is not a one priest church, neither is it a one Martha church. I implore you, each as you are able, to step in and step up.
You do that, this old gay priest may leave as he found himself almost as soon as he arrived: full of hope and joy, in the certainty that he and all of us are held as precious children of God in the capacious hands of God’s love.
I have in my life moved into a whole bunch of wonderful ministries. And, necessarily, I have left those same communities, at some point, and moved into the next place. Though sometimes I have been unsure of what or how that next place or thing may be, I am always sure I am--and in this place this morning--we are always holding hands with G-D. Since the very beginning of my ministry, at every juncture, this has been my prayer:
Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me one, let me stand.
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light,
Take my hand, Precious Lord, lead me on.
Farewell, children of G-D! Amen.
Jul 10, 2022 |
Where You Put Your Body
| The Rev. Bill Bixby
Where You Put Your Body
Read the Rev. Bill Bixby's sermon for the Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 10.
Today's readings are:
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
So, on Easter Day here at St. Martin’s, and here [gesturing toward altar and communion rails] at St. Martin’s, having been invited to celebrate Eucharist in LIFT worship with Anne Alexis and with Carol, I was moving with requisite ritual care (equally comprised of reverence for the Table and fear of tripping on my alb), placing the wafer in each upraised palm with a somewhat simpler distribution sentence for the many young ones (and older ones, too): “All of God’s love is in this bread.” Not the first time I have done bits of liturgical customizing—nor the first time that the fierce honesty of children welled up.
One time, a young fellow, seven/eight, declared quite audibly up and down the altar rail: “Mom—that’s not bread!” But, this past, dazzling Easter morn, a supremely confident, polite young brother of St. Martin’s rang out like a bell: “All of God’s love is in this bread. Thank you.” “Thank you.” Uncomplicated. Un-self-conscious. Unreserved. Alight with wonder. Laden with trust.
Anglicans, fittingly, have a phrase for just that kind of moment, that blessing of unalloyed thanks, a phrase permanently stored in me since I was 10 years old in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Orchard Park, New York. I’ll wager it’s in many of you, too:
“And we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days…”
Unfeignedly thankful. Pure poetry. Exquisitely Anglican. I am, today, unfeignedly thankful for this place at St. Martin’s, for the inestimable love on which we dine, week by week at this Table; for the inestimable love in this community at St. Martin's, in which I have been deeply nourished in Bible study, and used of God in sacred discernment spaces, and drawn up to ‘mask can’t stop me’ praise in music and song. And in which I have been delighted and refreshed by one winsome missioner priest who has now made it blessedly impossible not to contemplate our boxwoods, here in the garden, and think about…ticks. And about him. With unfeigned thanks, for him, I mean.
In 2010, I was with youth and young adults of Lutheran congregations across the US, joining an exceptional group of young Palestinian Lutheran leaders for three weeks of living together, traveling together, worshiping together, feasting together, asking hard questions together, building gentle friendships and peace together in the Holy Land.
On our third or fourth day, some 30 of us were moving, raggedly, through the Old City of Jerusalem, north from the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, and then east, tracing a stretch of the Via Dolorosa, in fact, bound for an Israeli security tunnel which leads south from the Muslim Quarter to the wide plazas adjacent to the Western Wall.
This location, at the northern mouth of that tunnel, is a crowded, kinda tense area under normal circumstances in Jerusalem, which are…almost never. After a quick briefing by one of our Palestinian adult hosts, the first set forward was a clump of our US youth, who sailed through after quick passport and backpack checks. When our Palestinian friends started through, the demeanor of the armed Israeli guards (most of whom were around the ages of our young people), changed perceptibly. Papers were presented, challenges were issued, words became elevated, postures stiffened. A couple of our Arab Lutheran kin in Christ were asked to step over to a more restricted area for body searches. This went on long enough for some of us (OK, me) to worry, as the line lengthened, and the general vibe got…kinda tense.
Just then, the clump of American youth who had gone through, and were watching and waiting on the far side, in the mouth of the tunnel, called out, “We’re coming back out; we’re with them,” gesturing toward our Palestinian friends. And, facing detectable scorn from a few Israeli guards, and head-scratching from folks behind us in the security queue, they did exactly that; squeezed back thru.
At which, I assumed the classic youth ministry worker stance: sheer amazement. “We’re coming back out; we’re with them!”
A fine Lutheran bishop, our national church’s bishop of Metro New York at the time of 9/11, once said: “When it comes down to it, Christian discipleship is about where you put your body.” Where you put your body. The story of the road-crossing, ditch-daring, urgent- care extending Samaritan is so well known as to, well, scarcely require a preacher.
For church folk, the characters, the plot, the presumed meanings are stuck to our inner flannelboards, and even a woman or man on the street can tell you what a Good Samaritan is, an exemplar of a biblical random act of kindness.
Except for this—Jesus’s story, Luke’s text, is more spare than we might think, in intriguing ways, and more demanding. The only significant identifier of the man who puts his body on the line is Samaritan. No other adjectives. The contrast is inescapable, very sharp: a Jewish priest, then a Levite, cross away, recoiling, shunning. The Samaritan, moved with pity, crosses over, toward. And acts. Extravagantly.
Where you put your body. The full, disclosive power of the parable, lies precisely there: a sudden confrontation, of centuries-old bad neighbors. For Jesus, the crux of the story is the unexpected coming together, in extremis, of two persons who, in that day, in Luke’s understanding, by tradition and social custom, held each other in official contempt.
Here’s a devastating clue, a foreshadowing of this parable: less than a full chapter before, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem—a narrative linchpin of Luke’s gospel account. Jesus is now going all the way, even, we know, to the cross. Jesus is moving through Samaritan territory, in the hill country north of Jerusalem, where the text says, he is “not received,” that is, not extended usual Near Eastern hospitality for travelers, even strangers. And, his disciples—ah, those disciples—are salivating with recently acquired power: “Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven upon them?” Hmmm…
Discipleship is about where you put your body. The parents walked gingerly into our ministry offices, with furrowed brows. Great parents, often supportive of the venturesome activities of our youth group in my third parish north of the city. One parent had even been a youth advisor. The furrowed brow delegation was worried. In just a couple of weeks, youth from our church and young leaders from a Latino/Latina mission in north Philadelphia—a congregation we had been carefullu co-inventing a partner church relationship with for nearly three years—had planned a fantastic retreat. In the city. With…an overnight. In the city.
I could see, I could feel, how conflicted these parents were. And upset A bit sheepish, a bit frightened. They affirmed up and down the ministry being nurtured with Nueva Creacion, they expressed thanks for the ways their own children had been sensitized, had been shaped—my kid sings in Spanish; my kid has a huge friendship with one of the youth there; my daughter went on a date with a young person from the congregation. But, what they were worried about was that overnight in North Philadelphia. Hmmm…
I suggested we meet with the planning team, including the youth co-leaders—one from each parish—about their concerns. So we did, about a week later. The young woman from our congregation, unabashedly, in the presence of her counterpart (also a girl), spoke the ‘where you put your body,’ summons: “the New Creation kids live there, sleep there all the time; we can do that for one night.” And the pure-hearted young Latina leader assured the parents—“we will be safe with Jesus.”
And, inside me, that classic youth ministry worker stance: Utter amazement.
We carried out the full plan, much to the eventual relief, and I trust, the modest faith-stretching, of the furrowed brow delegation.
Where you put your body.
The parable reverberates down to us, today. Jesus artfully and fearlessly narrates a crossing over, a going down, and even raising up, that cancels stereotypes, breaks down barriers, often cemented by religion. And by race. The young people alongside whom I served claimed just a taste of that transformation, of the gospel’s permission to toss out old scripts, prompt breakthrough relationship. For Jesus, in Jesus, God’s mercy moves among despised others, and is not reserved for the folks under one tent, in one enclave, with just one creed, in one political movement. The parable is, in fact, a dramatic take on love of enemy.
Jesus was not crucified because he told stories about astonishing compassion. Jesus was crucified because he told stories of astonishing compassion for the officially hated, he was crucified because he spoke of God’s inbreaking community of mercy beyond tribe and taboo. Jesus was crucified to dethrone every piety and every society organized by enmity, by scapegoating. Then, and now.
And, Jesus puts his body down for just that, crosses the road, pours himself out over us, promising lasting healing, and on the third day, putting us on his back, carries us up, out of death, to new life.
These days, I struggle to appropriate, to live out the thrust of the gospel, of this parable. And, if I may, I sense that I am by no means alone here at St. Martin's. So much viciousness, so much accretion of raw, unchecked power, so much injustice. How shall I, how shall we, then live into God’s inbreaking community, vis-a-vis some enemies, some forces that seem so, well, thoroughly evil?
I take heart from the example of Bishop Desmond Tutu, whose hymn of hate-vanquishing love we sang before the sermon. Your Bishop Tutu, Anglican Communion—the Arch, as he was affectionately known. In the freedom struggle against apartheid, this buoyant, wide-hearted leader was known to sit right down in front of white South African housing demolition squads, as well as to stand up to young township protesters, to insist they set down incendiary devices and weapons. Knowing where and how to put his body on the line, disarmingly, fruitfully, didn’t end with the formal achievement of liberation and the election of Nelson Mandela.
For years then, as chair and moving spirit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he placed himself, his gifts, his global reputation, his soul, in the very midst of the terrible anguish and terrible multi-layered racial animus, personal and systemic, of that reborn nation. He helped to catalyze and guide a searingly honest, deeply humane process of healing and restoration of public trust. Embracing blacks and whites, victims and perpetrators, oppressed and oppressors. The arc of the Arch’s witness shows one way, one possibility for both tenacious political engagement for just laws and just governing, and a tenacious insistence on Ubuntu, a South African theology of flourishing, all-embracing community, of fundamental human interdependence and the irreducible created dignity of every…every…person. Tutu stood for, and gave his life to bring into being, that truly revolutionary, reconciled, inclusive community, beyond tribe and taboo.
The community toward which Jesus told stories, beckoning us to take part: “Go, and do likewise.”
The community for which Jesus put his body down. For us, for the whole world.
The community for which, we say this morning, even here at this Table—unfeignedly, yes?—“Thank you.” “Thank you.”
Today's readings are:
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
So, on Easter Day here at St. Martin’s, and here [gesturing toward altar and communion rails] at St. Martin’s, having been invited to celebrate Eucharist in LIFT worship with Anne Alexis and with Carol, I was moving with requisite ritual care (equally comprised of reverence for the Table and fear of tripping on my alb), placing the wafer in each upraised palm with a somewhat simpler distribution sentence for the many young ones (and older ones, too): “All of God’s love is in this bread.” Not the first time I have done bits of liturgical customizing—nor the first time that the fierce honesty of children welled up.
One time, a young fellow, seven/eight, declared quite audibly up and down the altar rail: “Mom—that’s not bread!” But, this past, dazzling Easter morn, a supremely confident, polite young brother of St. Martin’s rang out like a bell: “All of God’s love is in this bread. Thank you.” “Thank you.” Uncomplicated. Un-self-conscious. Unreserved. Alight with wonder. Laden with trust.
Anglicans, fittingly, have a phrase for just that kind of moment, that blessing of unalloyed thanks, a phrase permanently stored in me since I was 10 years old in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Orchard Park, New York. I’ll wager it’s in many of you, too:
“And we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days…”
Unfeignedly thankful. Pure poetry. Exquisitely Anglican. I am, today, unfeignedly thankful for this place at St. Martin’s, for the inestimable love on which we dine, week by week at this Table; for the inestimable love in this community at St. Martin's, in which I have been deeply nourished in Bible study, and used of God in sacred discernment spaces, and drawn up to ‘mask can’t stop me’ praise in music and song. And in which I have been delighted and refreshed by one winsome missioner priest who has now made it blessedly impossible not to contemplate our boxwoods, here in the garden, and think about…ticks. And about him. With unfeigned thanks, for him, I mean.
In 2010, I was with youth and young adults of Lutheran congregations across the US, joining an exceptional group of young Palestinian Lutheran leaders for three weeks of living together, traveling together, worshiping together, feasting together, asking hard questions together, building gentle friendships and peace together in the Holy Land.
On our third or fourth day, some 30 of us were moving, raggedly, through the Old City of Jerusalem, north from the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, and then east, tracing a stretch of the Via Dolorosa, in fact, bound for an Israeli security tunnel which leads south from the Muslim Quarter to the wide plazas adjacent to the Western Wall.
This location, at the northern mouth of that tunnel, is a crowded, kinda tense area under normal circumstances in Jerusalem, which are…almost never. After a quick briefing by one of our Palestinian adult hosts, the first set forward was a clump of our US youth, who sailed through after quick passport and backpack checks. When our Palestinian friends started through, the demeanor of the armed Israeli guards (most of whom were around the ages of our young people), changed perceptibly. Papers were presented, challenges were issued, words became elevated, postures stiffened. A couple of our Arab Lutheran kin in Christ were asked to step over to a more restricted area for body searches. This went on long enough for some of us (OK, me) to worry, as the line lengthened, and the general vibe got…kinda tense.
Just then, the clump of American youth who had gone through, and were watching and waiting on the far side, in the mouth of the tunnel, called out, “We’re coming back out; we’re with them,” gesturing toward our Palestinian friends. And, facing detectable scorn from a few Israeli guards, and head-scratching from folks behind us in the security queue, they did exactly that; squeezed back thru.
At which, I assumed the classic youth ministry worker stance: sheer amazement. “We’re coming back out; we’re with them!”
A fine Lutheran bishop, our national church’s bishop of Metro New York at the time of 9/11, once said: “When it comes down to it, Christian discipleship is about where you put your body.” Where you put your body. The story of the road-crossing, ditch-daring, urgent- care extending Samaritan is so well known as to, well, scarcely require a preacher.
For church folk, the characters, the plot, the presumed meanings are stuck to our inner flannelboards, and even a woman or man on the street can tell you what a Good Samaritan is, an exemplar of a biblical random act of kindness.
Except for this—Jesus’s story, Luke’s text, is more spare than we might think, in intriguing ways, and more demanding. The only significant identifier of the man who puts his body on the line is Samaritan. No other adjectives. The contrast is inescapable, very sharp: a Jewish priest, then a Levite, cross away, recoiling, shunning. The Samaritan, moved with pity, crosses over, toward. And acts. Extravagantly.
Where you put your body. The full, disclosive power of the parable, lies precisely there: a sudden confrontation, of centuries-old bad neighbors. For Jesus, the crux of the story is the unexpected coming together, in extremis, of two persons who, in that day, in Luke’s understanding, by tradition and social custom, held each other in official contempt.
Here’s a devastating clue, a foreshadowing of this parable: less than a full chapter before, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem—a narrative linchpin of Luke’s gospel account. Jesus is now going all the way, even, we know, to the cross. Jesus is moving through Samaritan territory, in the hill country north of Jerusalem, where the text says, he is “not received,” that is, not extended usual Near Eastern hospitality for travelers, even strangers. And, his disciples—ah, those disciples—are salivating with recently acquired power: “Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven upon them?” Hmmm…
Discipleship is about where you put your body. The parents walked gingerly into our ministry offices, with furrowed brows. Great parents, often supportive of the venturesome activities of our youth group in my third parish north of the city. One parent had even been a youth advisor. The furrowed brow delegation was worried. In just a couple of weeks, youth from our church and young leaders from a Latino/Latina mission in north Philadelphia—a congregation we had been carefullu co-inventing a partner church relationship with for nearly three years—had planned a fantastic retreat. In the city. With…an overnight. In the city.
I could see, I could feel, how conflicted these parents were. And upset A bit sheepish, a bit frightened. They affirmed up and down the ministry being nurtured with Nueva Creacion, they expressed thanks for the ways their own children had been sensitized, had been shaped—my kid sings in Spanish; my kid has a huge friendship with one of the youth there; my daughter went on a date with a young person from the congregation. But, what they were worried about was that overnight in North Philadelphia. Hmmm…
I suggested we meet with the planning team, including the youth co-leaders—one from each parish—about their concerns. So we did, about a week later. The young woman from our congregation, unabashedly, in the presence of her counterpart (also a girl), spoke the ‘where you put your body,’ summons: “the New Creation kids live there, sleep there all the time; we can do that for one night.” And the pure-hearted young Latina leader assured the parents—“we will be safe with Jesus.”
And, inside me, that classic youth ministry worker stance: Utter amazement.
We carried out the full plan, much to the eventual relief, and I trust, the modest faith-stretching, of the furrowed brow delegation.
Where you put your body.
The parable reverberates down to us, today. Jesus artfully and fearlessly narrates a crossing over, a going down, and even raising up, that cancels stereotypes, breaks down barriers, often cemented by religion. And by race. The young people alongside whom I served claimed just a taste of that transformation, of the gospel’s permission to toss out old scripts, prompt breakthrough relationship. For Jesus, in Jesus, God’s mercy moves among despised others, and is not reserved for the folks under one tent, in one enclave, with just one creed, in one political movement. The parable is, in fact, a dramatic take on love of enemy.
Jesus was not crucified because he told stories about astonishing compassion. Jesus was crucified because he told stories of astonishing compassion for the officially hated, he was crucified because he spoke of God’s inbreaking community of mercy beyond tribe and taboo. Jesus was crucified to dethrone every piety and every society organized by enmity, by scapegoating. Then, and now.
And, Jesus puts his body down for just that, crosses the road, pours himself out over us, promising lasting healing, and on the third day, putting us on his back, carries us up, out of death, to new life.
These days, I struggle to appropriate, to live out the thrust of the gospel, of this parable. And, if I may, I sense that I am by no means alone here at St. Martin's. So much viciousness, so much accretion of raw, unchecked power, so much injustice. How shall I, how shall we, then live into God’s inbreaking community, vis-a-vis some enemies, some forces that seem so, well, thoroughly evil?
I take heart from the example of Bishop Desmond Tutu, whose hymn of hate-vanquishing love we sang before the sermon. Your Bishop Tutu, Anglican Communion—the Arch, as he was affectionately known. In the freedom struggle against apartheid, this buoyant, wide-hearted leader was known to sit right down in front of white South African housing demolition squads, as well as to stand up to young township protesters, to insist they set down incendiary devices and weapons. Knowing where and how to put his body on the line, disarmingly, fruitfully, didn’t end with the formal achievement of liberation and the election of Nelson Mandela.
For years then, as chair and moving spirit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he placed himself, his gifts, his global reputation, his soul, in the very midst of the terrible anguish and terrible multi-layered racial animus, personal and systemic, of that reborn nation. He helped to catalyze and guide a searingly honest, deeply humane process of healing and restoration of public trust. Embracing blacks and whites, victims and perpetrators, oppressed and oppressors. The arc of the Arch’s witness shows one way, one possibility for both tenacious political engagement for just laws and just governing, and a tenacious insistence on Ubuntu, a South African theology of flourishing, all-embracing community, of fundamental human interdependence and the irreducible created dignity of every…every…person. Tutu stood for, and gave his life to bring into being, that truly revolutionary, reconciled, inclusive community, beyond tribe and taboo.
The community toward which Jesus told stories, beckoning us to take part: “Go, and do likewise.”
The community for which Jesus put his body down. For us, for the whole world.
The community for which, we say this morning, even here at this Table—unfeignedly, yes?—“Thank you.” “Thank you.”
Jun 26, 2022 |
Moving Forward
| Anne Alexis Harra
Moving Forward
Listen in to the sermon from Ms. Anne Alexis Harra for The Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 26, 2022.
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Sermon text:
It is a remarkable honor to meditate on the Words of Life with you this morning, which admittedly feels rather heavy. I originally was on the schedule to preach next week – on Wednesday afternoon, Pastor Jim asked if I might switch to this week. Little did I know. Shaping these words to you, my Beloved St. Martin’s, a community in transition and one that is feeling a tremendous weight, is an outstanding gift. I am honored.
A great injustice was done on Friday, the exact type against which Paul warns in the passage from Galatians. The freedoms of powerful people were used as an opportunity for self-indulgence, to abuse the name of religious freedom and to strip away the dignity and bodily autonomy of women.
After the news broke on Friday I found myself in the midst of a crisis of faith. Finding the words to say to myself, let alone to a congregation already shouldering so much, was almost impossible. Around 7:30 last night with tears in my eyes I angrily said to my far-too-patient partner, “I have no words. This pain is too much. I don’t know where God is, and I don’t know what the future will bring.” My sweet Cole said to me, “Preach what’s on your heart. You’ll find the words.”
I feel like I resonate most with the words of the Psalmist this morning, who opened the psalm with a plea to God for protection during turbulence in Israel. The Psalmist reiterates that it is God who is her only good; with God’s presence near her, she will not fall. Let us take those words with us this week to hopefully lighten our burdens.
I fear we are staring down a long road of anguish and factionizing. St. Paul had this same concern for the Church in Galatia, a portion of whose Letter we read this morning. Despite having brought the Good News of God in Christ to Galatia, Paul was concerned about its factionizing. The Galatians were factionizing and dividing amongst themselves over the interpretation of the law. The Judaic faction of Galatia was adamant that Christian converts should practice Mosaic law, even going so far as to demand that these converts receive circumcision. Paul does not mince words when he warns the Galatians not to trade one form of subjugation for another. Subjugation of any body based on former law infringes on everybody’s freedom. It drives us apart, and it pulls us away from God.
This passage from Galatians today reminds us that our freedom does not come from us, but from the Love of God in Christ, the same Christ who willingly set out on a journey from Galilee to Jerusalem to meet his fate on the cross. True religious freedom comes from Christ and begets the Fruits of the Spirit: joy, patience, gentleness, faithfulness. It does not harm another for righteousness’ sake. Instead, we are coming face to face with profoundly gross misinterpretations of religious freedom, the kind which keep us stuck in the past and unable to move forward in our journey towards the Dominion of God.
In the gospel, Luke illustrates a strange encounter with Jesus, but highlights a harsh truth: The freedom that comes from following Christ involves sacrificing what we once thought was best. At the end of the gospel, we hear a peculiar dialogue between Jesus and one potential follower. The man wants to follow Jesus but asks to offer his family farewell, first. Jesus does not hold back: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.” These words would have been bizarre to anyone in ancient times because the “plowing norm” involved the person operating the plow looking backwards routinely to ensure that the rows were straight. In his response to the man, Jesus lets us know that constantly looking backwards is not the way to live into the Dominion of God. The old ways must make way for the new.
I stand before you this morning as a young woman, a hopeful future priest, and a child of God who has grave concerns that a few people with an excess of power are distorting the Scriptures, are appropriating Christian images for political gain, and are taking us backwards – away from the Dominion of God. The Dominion of God is one filled with dignity, mercy, justice, compassion, and its goodness knows no bounds. We can achieve this state, but we must look forward in order to do so. We are called to protect the vulnerable. We are called to life in the Spirit. We are called to freedom in Christ. We are called to fulfill the New Commandment: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Moving into the coming days and weeks, I pray that we journey forward with the same bravery and conviction for justice that our Savior demonstrated for us. Despite the agony in my heart, I have hope in the ancient words of the Psalmist: “I have set God always before me; because God is at my right hand I shall not fall. My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices; my body also shall rest in hope. For God will not abandon me to the grave, nor let God’s holy ones see the Pit.”
Friends, God will not let God’s holy ones see the Pit. God dwells among us. God is sustaining us right now and beckoning us forward. In this time of profound pain and confusion, we have an opportunity to set God before us, and heed Christ’s call to move forward into freedom. For freedom in Christ has – and will continue to – set us free. We will stand firm. And we will not again submit to a yoke of slavery. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Sermon text:
It is a remarkable honor to meditate on the Words of Life with you this morning, which admittedly feels rather heavy. I originally was on the schedule to preach next week – on Wednesday afternoon, Pastor Jim asked if I might switch to this week. Little did I know. Shaping these words to you, my Beloved St. Martin’s, a community in transition and one that is feeling a tremendous weight, is an outstanding gift. I am honored.
A great injustice was done on Friday, the exact type against which Paul warns in the passage from Galatians. The freedoms of powerful people were used as an opportunity for self-indulgence, to abuse the name of religious freedom and to strip away the dignity and bodily autonomy of women.
After the news broke on Friday I found myself in the midst of a crisis of faith. Finding the words to say to myself, let alone to a congregation already shouldering so much, was almost impossible. Around 7:30 last night with tears in my eyes I angrily said to my far-too-patient partner, “I have no words. This pain is too much. I don’t know where God is, and I don’t know what the future will bring.” My sweet Cole said to me, “Preach what’s on your heart. You’ll find the words.”
I feel like I resonate most with the words of the Psalmist this morning, who opened the psalm with a plea to God for protection during turbulence in Israel. The Psalmist reiterates that it is God who is her only good; with God’s presence near her, she will not fall. Let us take those words with us this week to hopefully lighten our burdens.
I fear we are staring down a long road of anguish and factionizing. St. Paul had this same concern for the Church in Galatia, a portion of whose Letter we read this morning. Despite having brought the Good News of God in Christ to Galatia, Paul was concerned about its factionizing. The Galatians were factionizing and dividing amongst themselves over the interpretation of the law. The Judaic faction of Galatia was adamant that Christian converts should practice Mosaic law, even going so far as to demand that these converts receive circumcision. Paul does not mince words when he warns the Galatians not to trade one form of subjugation for another. Subjugation of any body based on former law infringes on everybody’s freedom. It drives us apart, and it pulls us away from God.
This passage from Galatians today reminds us that our freedom does not come from us, but from the Love of God in Christ, the same Christ who willingly set out on a journey from Galilee to Jerusalem to meet his fate on the cross. True religious freedom comes from Christ and begets the Fruits of the Spirit: joy, patience, gentleness, faithfulness. It does not harm another for righteousness’ sake. Instead, we are coming face to face with profoundly gross misinterpretations of religious freedom, the kind which keep us stuck in the past and unable to move forward in our journey towards the Dominion of God.
In the gospel, Luke illustrates a strange encounter with Jesus, but highlights a harsh truth: The freedom that comes from following Christ involves sacrificing what we once thought was best. At the end of the gospel, we hear a peculiar dialogue between Jesus and one potential follower. The man wants to follow Jesus but asks to offer his family farewell, first. Jesus does not hold back: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.” These words would have been bizarre to anyone in ancient times because the “plowing norm” involved the person operating the plow looking backwards routinely to ensure that the rows were straight. In his response to the man, Jesus lets us know that constantly looking backwards is not the way to live into the Dominion of God. The old ways must make way for the new.
I stand before you this morning as a young woman, a hopeful future priest, and a child of God who has grave concerns that a few people with an excess of power are distorting the Scriptures, are appropriating Christian images for political gain, and are taking us backwards – away from the Dominion of God. The Dominion of God is one filled with dignity, mercy, justice, compassion, and its goodness knows no bounds. We can achieve this state, but we must look forward in order to do so. We are called to protect the vulnerable. We are called to life in the Spirit. We are called to freedom in Christ. We are called to fulfill the New Commandment: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Moving into the coming days and weeks, I pray that we journey forward with the same bravery and conviction for justice that our Savior demonstrated for us. Despite the agony in my heart, I have hope in the ancient words of the Psalmist: “I have set God always before me; because God is at my right hand I shall not fall. My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices; my body also shall rest in hope. For God will not abandon me to the grave, nor let God’s holy ones see the Pit.”
Friends, God will not let God’s holy ones see the Pit. God dwells among us. God is sustaining us right now and beckoning us forward. In this time of profound pain and confusion, we have an opportunity to set God before us, and heed Christ’s call to move forward into freedom. For freedom in Christ has – and will continue to – set us free. We will stand firm. And we will not again submit to a yoke of slavery. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Jun 19, 2022 |
Some Glad Morning: A Morning Meditation
| The Rev. James H. Littrell
Some Glad Morning: A Morning Meditation
Read the sermon text from The Rev. James H. Littrell for the Third Sunday After Pentecost, June 19, 2022.
Today's readings are:
Yesterday, I’m sure all here will agree, was one of those days that dawned beautiful and then stayed that way all day long, ‘til dusk gave way to that rarest of Philadelphia phenomena, a clear, cool, breezy summer night that gladdened my heart with thoughts of Vermont days and nights to come, and was so chilly that even my backyard mosquitoes were dissuaded from chowing down on my enticing shin bones while I was out grilling our salmon. So yesterday morning I was up bright and early, determined to do what I had not done since beginning my ministry here with you, which was to get to work on what passes for my garden, too long neglected while for the last month I had endeavored to be a faithful companion and pastor and priest with you in these early days of ministerial transition in which you are all embarked.
And to be sure, I have found that work with you everything an oldish gay priest who just two months ago thought himself thoroughly retired amid pandemic isolation and general gloom could possibly have imagined, and then some: rejuvenating, challenging (mostly in a good way), refreshing, and most of all, affirming of my competence and capacity to take on and carry out so large a work. I’ve come to understand that all these years have not been for naught and that I actually may have learned some things that I can put into useful practice with you.
I thank you all for that, and for all that goes with it: the opportunity to work with a devoted staff, a great Rector’s Warden and Vestry and generally with a laity as centered in Christ’s missional call and in care for one another as I have ever encountered, despite the occasional tick in the boxwood. I find myself every day overflowing with gratitude to God and to this community and to have been called by the One into the other. It’s a good feeling to have.
But I digress. I arose yesterday determined to get to my garden dirt, to move plants from the containers in which they had been languishing for too long into that dirt, to plant the little patch of grape tomatoes that I have made for my neighbors’ two- and four-year old sons for the past couple years as a summer pandemic entertainment, to get more of the hundreds of perennial bulbs I bought in April in a spasm of optimism into my stony soil, to continue to work plants into the clay left when we had our outside drain--all 55 feet of it--replaced back in March, and to pull some of the more pernicious weeds, especially the Bishop’s weed about to go to seed and the clay-loving crab grass from what passes for our front garden patch, a wild place if ever there was. And so I set out after an early breakfast to see what could be done. And for a few hours, I was lost in that sacred work, for so it felt.
I am far from a gardener in the sense in which that word is used around here, but I grew up on farms and cannot remember a summer when my hands weren’t digging in the dirt somewhere and when that digging didn’t feel like it was as much a part of me as my once curly hair or my love of a backwoods river.
So… I am digging and chopping and pulling and lifting and toting, and doing all that while thinking about today and what I might have to say into it once I got here, after having read and mulled and prayed over today’s readings all week--and they are fierce if you pay attention:
“See, it is written before me; I will not keep silent but will repay; I will indeed repay into their laps their iniquities and their ancestors’ iniquities together, says the Almighty…I will measure into their laps full payment for their actions…,” says Isaiah to us today. Some glad morning.
Put that into our Juneteenth pipes and smoke it, why don’t we? Or not. For, as Isaiah also says, “These are smoke in my nostrils, a fire that burns all day long.” There’s nothing quite like a fire gone wrong and a wrongway wind to bring tears to the eyes.
And if that’s not enough, that great Good Friday psalm speaks to us, God’s fortunate people, this word of caution and direction, beginning with what I think is one of the great prayers of our tradition: “Be not far away, O God; your are my strength, hasten to help me. Save me from the sword, my life from the power of the dog.”
And then, this: “For you do not despise nor abhor the poor in their poverty, neither do you hide your face from them; but when they cry, you hear them.”
And then this promise: “The poor shall eat and be satisfied, and those who seek the Holy One shall give God praise, [saying] ‘May your heart live for ever.’”
What incredible audacity is that, to wish that the heart of God should live forever? Well, I think it’s the audacity of the poor, of the wretched of the earth, of those whose only hope, only hope, is in that promise: that when they cry, the great heart of God will circle about and, in sharing their pain, carry them somehow into glory. Some glad morning.
And so we come, and I came yesterday while plugging a gladiola bulb into the clay, to the mysteries of Paul. In my youthful ministry, I loved this text. It seemed to promise that all the barriers that keep us apart would be, or perhaps even now were, broken down, collapsed into the ineffable mystery of God in Christ. In it was the answer to that great Nina Simone anthem of my closeted youth, “I wish I knew how it would feel to be free.” For surely, here Paul tells us that in Christ’s new dominion there is no longer, as he says, Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. Surely he is saying that all those words and labels and actual things that divide us are brought together in the sovereignty of God. And yet, and yet. What I wondered, and I wonder, what does this last sentence mean: ``If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” Does this not suggest that we are brought together in the bosom of Abraham? Are we all Jews, then. And if so, what of the non-Christian Jews? And if so, I asked myself, where does that also leave me, who stands so clearly outside that bosom by virtue of being who I am? If we are all one in Christ, if all our divisions and dividers are obliterated when we, by baptism, clothe ourselves with Christ, what then of all those who stand outside the Abrahamic promise and the clothing--almost always in pictures, the white clothing--in which are clothed the baptized, in which they come to Jesus?
As I plugged another bulb into the clay, I found I had no good answer to that vexation, but what I felt was at least a little alienation from the great apostle Paul and his orthodox certainties. Food for thought, thought I, plugging away. Some glad morning.
And then, tugging at a particularly stubborn snot of crab grass, I arrived at the Gospel. As a kid, I loved this story, for all its passion and activity, for its many demons and its many pigs, for the vivid way in which the man who had demons is described: naked, forsaken by all, living in the tombs, under guard, bound with shackles and chains from which he breaks out, so great are the demons. And for Jesus' conversation with those demons, clothed in the flesh of this poor man, who beg him not to order them to go back into the abyss but rather into a nearby herd of pigs. And he does, and they do, and then into the lake they rush and are drowned! Wow! Now that’s Gospel for sure, at least Gospel for a little boy. And for sure, there is a great deal here to engage even us grown ups, and I invite you to have at it.
But what I discovered in all this meditative garden plugging away were just a few things that I took in to lunch and took down for this sermon: first, the passion of God for the poor and the dispossessed and the different and the alien and the alienated; the impatience of that same God with the rest, with the self-satisfied, with the performative, with the certain.
Second, just a few words and phrases: smoke in the nostrils; repay their iniquities and the iniquities of their ancestors; saved from the power of the dog; slave, free, male, female, wretched, demon, swine, fear, healing; and the closing declaration of the Gospel: tell out how much Jesus has done.
I suppose that on this day, the first in our calendar of Ordinary Time, we must perforce call into this holy time several things: the institutions, past and present and future, which over and over and over again allow American culture to enslave others, even as the long ago Texas announcement of the freedom of those enslaved people is made a national holiday and there is even, as my across the street friend and neighbor pointed out with both disbelief and anger, a Juneteenth ice cream; the icons and emblems of those past and present times and of our ancestors’ stories of those displacements and enslavements displayed still, everywhere and often subtly, including here in this room; what it means for those of us who are white people to sing with such great gusto the Negro national anthem, and in a sense to claim as our own those lyrics written write out of enslavement and into the first Jim Crow regime of our nation; what is the promise of the Almighty God whom we say is Love but whose Love can be fierce as fire--I will repay, says the Almighty; what means the promise of the Almighty that the chief concern of that great Love and the chief end of that Passion are the poor and the dispossessed; what means it that by that Love and through that divine Compassion we are called to walk with the demoniacs and the suffering, even into the abysses in which they live everywhere, not gazing on that suffering from afar, or performing our dismay and then turning back into our ordinary time, but living with the active intention of changing the world toward a fuller approximation of what God’s Love, when understood as a verb, when understood as you and me, can actually do in a broken world; what does it mean never to relent in that ministry and in that work that we can only do together?
So what to do with this hard hard work and this hard hard history. Well, what came to me as I dug away in that dirt and clay yesterday was that maybe the place and way to begin to understand Juneteenth for most of us who are gathered here or listening today is to begin with a detailed interrogation of the spaces right around us, of this space right here. Maybe we need to begin by taking a look at our own garden, by seeing what we see if we look at the details and where they came from and what they say and mean, and then to begin by doing some weeding and some planting. It may be that community engagement, as we like to call our work in the world these days, needs also to engage this glass, these bricks, those icons in the back of the church and their descriptors, and the stories that this beautiful place, the very fabric of it have to tell. And then to act, not alone nor in silos of ministry, but as an entire community, to do the repair that Love requires, and the planting that follows, some glad morning.
Amen.
Today's readings are:
Yesterday, I’m sure all here will agree, was one of those days that dawned beautiful and then stayed that way all day long, ‘til dusk gave way to that rarest of Philadelphia phenomena, a clear, cool, breezy summer night that gladdened my heart with thoughts of Vermont days and nights to come, and was so chilly that even my backyard mosquitoes were dissuaded from chowing down on my enticing shin bones while I was out grilling our salmon. So yesterday morning I was up bright and early, determined to do what I had not done since beginning my ministry here with you, which was to get to work on what passes for my garden, too long neglected while for the last month I had endeavored to be a faithful companion and pastor and priest with you in these early days of ministerial transition in which you are all embarked.
And to be sure, I have found that work with you everything an oldish gay priest who just two months ago thought himself thoroughly retired amid pandemic isolation and general gloom could possibly have imagined, and then some: rejuvenating, challenging (mostly in a good way), refreshing, and most of all, affirming of my competence and capacity to take on and carry out so large a work. I’ve come to understand that all these years have not been for naught and that I actually may have learned some things that I can put into useful practice with you.
I thank you all for that, and for all that goes with it: the opportunity to work with a devoted staff, a great Rector’s Warden and Vestry and generally with a laity as centered in Christ’s missional call and in care for one another as I have ever encountered, despite the occasional tick in the boxwood. I find myself every day overflowing with gratitude to God and to this community and to have been called by the One into the other. It’s a good feeling to have.
But I digress. I arose yesterday determined to get to my garden dirt, to move plants from the containers in which they had been languishing for too long into that dirt, to plant the little patch of grape tomatoes that I have made for my neighbors’ two- and four-year old sons for the past couple years as a summer pandemic entertainment, to get more of the hundreds of perennial bulbs I bought in April in a spasm of optimism into my stony soil, to continue to work plants into the clay left when we had our outside drain--all 55 feet of it--replaced back in March, and to pull some of the more pernicious weeds, especially the Bishop’s weed about to go to seed and the clay-loving crab grass from what passes for our front garden patch, a wild place if ever there was. And so I set out after an early breakfast to see what could be done. And for a few hours, I was lost in that sacred work, for so it felt.
I am far from a gardener in the sense in which that word is used around here, but I grew up on farms and cannot remember a summer when my hands weren’t digging in the dirt somewhere and when that digging didn’t feel like it was as much a part of me as my once curly hair or my love of a backwoods river.
So… I am digging and chopping and pulling and lifting and toting, and doing all that while thinking about today and what I might have to say into it once I got here, after having read and mulled and prayed over today’s readings all week--and they are fierce if you pay attention:
“See, it is written before me; I will not keep silent but will repay; I will indeed repay into their laps their iniquities and their ancestors’ iniquities together, says the Almighty…I will measure into their laps full payment for their actions…,” says Isaiah to us today. Some glad morning.
Put that into our Juneteenth pipes and smoke it, why don’t we? Or not. For, as Isaiah also says, “These are smoke in my nostrils, a fire that burns all day long.” There’s nothing quite like a fire gone wrong and a wrongway wind to bring tears to the eyes.
And if that’s not enough, that great Good Friday psalm speaks to us, God’s fortunate people, this word of caution and direction, beginning with what I think is one of the great prayers of our tradition: “Be not far away, O God; your are my strength, hasten to help me. Save me from the sword, my life from the power of the dog.”
And then, this: “For you do not despise nor abhor the poor in their poverty, neither do you hide your face from them; but when they cry, you hear them.”
And then this promise: “The poor shall eat and be satisfied, and those who seek the Holy One shall give God praise, [saying] ‘May your heart live for ever.’”
What incredible audacity is that, to wish that the heart of God should live forever? Well, I think it’s the audacity of the poor, of the wretched of the earth, of those whose only hope, only hope, is in that promise: that when they cry, the great heart of God will circle about and, in sharing their pain, carry them somehow into glory. Some glad morning.
And so we come, and I came yesterday while plugging a gladiola bulb into the clay, to the mysteries of Paul. In my youthful ministry, I loved this text. It seemed to promise that all the barriers that keep us apart would be, or perhaps even now were, broken down, collapsed into the ineffable mystery of God in Christ. In it was the answer to that great Nina Simone anthem of my closeted youth, “I wish I knew how it would feel to be free.” For surely, here Paul tells us that in Christ’s new dominion there is no longer, as he says, Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. Surely he is saying that all those words and labels and actual things that divide us are brought together in the sovereignty of God. And yet, and yet. What I wondered, and I wonder, what does this last sentence mean: ``If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” Does this not suggest that we are brought together in the bosom of Abraham? Are we all Jews, then. And if so, what of the non-Christian Jews? And if so, I asked myself, where does that also leave me, who stands so clearly outside that bosom by virtue of being who I am? If we are all one in Christ, if all our divisions and dividers are obliterated when we, by baptism, clothe ourselves with Christ, what then of all those who stand outside the Abrahamic promise and the clothing--almost always in pictures, the white clothing--in which are clothed the baptized, in which they come to Jesus?
As I plugged another bulb into the clay, I found I had no good answer to that vexation, but what I felt was at least a little alienation from the great apostle Paul and his orthodox certainties. Food for thought, thought I, plugging away. Some glad morning.
And then, tugging at a particularly stubborn snot of crab grass, I arrived at the Gospel. As a kid, I loved this story, for all its passion and activity, for its many demons and its many pigs, for the vivid way in which the man who had demons is described: naked, forsaken by all, living in the tombs, under guard, bound with shackles and chains from which he breaks out, so great are the demons. And for Jesus' conversation with those demons, clothed in the flesh of this poor man, who beg him not to order them to go back into the abyss but rather into a nearby herd of pigs. And he does, and they do, and then into the lake they rush and are drowned! Wow! Now that’s Gospel for sure, at least Gospel for a little boy. And for sure, there is a great deal here to engage even us grown ups, and I invite you to have at it.
But what I discovered in all this meditative garden plugging away were just a few things that I took in to lunch and took down for this sermon: first, the passion of God for the poor and the dispossessed and the different and the alien and the alienated; the impatience of that same God with the rest, with the self-satisfied, with the performative, with the certain.
Second, just a few words and phrases: smoke in the nostrils; repay their iniquities and the iniquities of their ancestors; saved from the power of the dog; slave, free, male, female, wretched, demon, swine, fear, healing; and the closing declaration of the Gospel: tell out how much Jesus has done.
I suppose that on this day, the first in our calendar of Ordinary Time, we must perforce call into this holy time several things: the institutions, past and present and future, which over and over and over again allow American culture to enslave others, even as the long ago Texas announcement of the freedom of those enslaved people is made a national holiday and there is even, as my across the street friend and neighbor pointed out with both disbelief and anger, a Juneteenth ice cream; the icons and emblems of those past and present times and of our ancestors’ stories of those displacements and enslavements displayed still, everywhere and often subtly, including here in this room; what it means for those of us who are white people to sing with such great gusto the Negro national anthem, and in a sense to claim as our own those lyrics written write out of enslavement and into the first Jim Crow regime of our nation; what is the promise of the Almighty God whom we say is Love but whose Love can be fierce as fire--I will repay, says the Almighty; what means the promise of the Almighty that the chief concern of that great Love and the chief end of that Passion are the poor and the dispossessed; what means it that by that Love and through that divine Compassion we are called to walk with the demoniacs and the suffering, even into the abysses in which they live everywhere, not gazing on that suffering from afar, or performing our dismay and then turning back into our ordinary time, but living with the active intention of changing the world toward a fuller approximation of what God’s Love, when understood as a verb, when understood as you and me, can actually do in a broken world; what does it mean never to relent in that ministry and in that work that we can only do together?
So what to do with this hard hard work and this hard hard history. Well, what came to me as I dug away in that dirt and clay yesterday was that maybe the place and way to begin to understand Juneteenth for most of us who are gathered here or listening today is to begin with a detailed interrogation of the spaces right around us, of this space right here. Maybe we need to begin by taking a look at our own garden, by seeing what we see if we look at the details and where they came from and what they say and mean, and then to begin by doing some weeding and some planting. It may be that community engagement, as we like to call our work in the world these days, needs also to engage this glass, these bricks, those icons in the back of the church and their descriptors, and the stories that this beautiful place, the very fabric of it have to tell. And then to act, not alone nor in silos of ministry, but as an entire community, to do the repair that Love requires, and the planting that follows, some glad morning.
Amen.
Jun 05, 2022 |
Beatitudes for Pride
| The Rev. Dr. Nora Johnson
Beatitudes for Pride
Hear from the Rev. Dr. Nora Johnson preaching for our Pride Evensong service.
Today's readings are:
Psalm 150
Romans 12:9-18
Matthew 5:1-12
From the Gospel of Matthew this evening we have been given the beatitudes from the great Sermon on the Mount. I love the Sermon on the Mount. Everybody loves the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, if we aren’t careful, many of us have heard the Sermon so many times that it can almost sound like an abstract checklist to us: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the persecuted. It can sound like we are hearing a set of policy statements by Jesus, or a set of ideas, or worse yet hearing a politician’s list of talking points.
Sometimes, to escape that deadening familiarity, I like to try to imagine what it must have felt like for Jesus to look out at those who were listening to him speak, and what it must have felt like for them to listen to him and meet his eye. Catching the eye of Jesus as he says “Blessed are those who mourn” is just a fundamentally different experience than hearing Jesus’s abstract ideas about mourning or about seeking righteousness.
To be in that group around Jesus listening, with the disciples or with the crowd from which he has just come, is to have, I think, a deep experience of one’s own blessedness. And I have to believe that Jesus spoke these words not to make an impression on his disciples, not to teach someone a lesson, but because he was moved by the grace and the beauty of those people he loved. In their awkwardness and in their folly and in their hunger, he loved them. He spoke from his heart. He didn’t so much explain to them that they were blessed. He blessed them deeply in that moment.
It seems possible to me, too, that Jesus was moved to narrate his own experience here as one who was himself outcast and downtrodden. I think he saw himself in the eyes of the poor and the lowly. He told us that if we were looking for him, that’s where we would find him. So we could think of the beatitudes as a kind of homecoming for Jesus, a moment in which he himself is resting in love, at rest right in the place where he belongs. You are blessed, he says to them, and in that moment he is one with them just as he is one with God. I can almost imagine that this moment of homecoming and belonging gave him a vast sense of patience. His vision of us from high on that mountain is maybe part of what allows him to let us be who we are, let us take our time coming to him. He sees the blessedness we can’t begin yet to express ourselves.
It's a paradox, but probably not an accident, that the ways of being that Jesus describes in this sermon on the mount can be ways of getting cut off from other people. Poverty of spirit, like physical poverty, can make you excluded from systems of justice, isolated in grief, everyone around you speaking evil of you and persecuting you for no reason. Or you are forgotten: too meek to push your way to the front of the line, looking to make peace where all is war and destruction and peace is just a laughable afterthought, dismissed from the beginning as a peacemaker. Trying to practice mercy in a merciless environment. What friends do you have? Jesus recognizes himself I think in this awful isolation. that threatens us at every moment.
There he is, the very love of God incarnate, one day to be executed like a criminal and abandoned by his friends. Jesus knows about isolation and exile, and he knows that there is a particular beauty, a particular healing, in looking into the eyes of the poor and the meek and those who long for justice, and being one with them. Knowing that in his gaze they are one with God, that he is the meeting place between human frailty and divine life.
The awful isolation to which we willingly subject an outsider is just swept away in his loving gaze. The doors open and the walls come tumbling down.
Now that loving gaze that we feel coming from Jesus is also the gaze of the church if we are really being the church. That knowing look of union is the church’s work. It’s one way to describe what the sacraments and the word of God and the life of the church are all doing: they are teaching the world its blessedness in the eyes of God. The church is gazing on all who suffer, on all who are cast out, with the eyes of Jesus, teaching all of us our blessedness, our beauty, our pride.
That’s the work of the church. Sadly, there are at least two things we know about this work of the church, we in the LGBTQ+ community. One: we know that the church is shockingly broken, shockingly unable to show us our beauty. Yes, the Episcopal Church has, after a lengthy controversy, and with some wonderful leadership, come around to a place of witness, and we can be grateful for that and for the good work of other denominations. It feels so good to gather like this.
But it has to be said that as a whole church, as Christians, as the body of Christ throughout the world, as the historical bearers of the word and the sacraments, we are still much more apt to trample on a queer or transgender kid than we are to mirror their great beauty. We still represent a faith that doesn’t want to see itself in that particular form of lowliness. It would be so much easier for the average Christian to imagine that a young transgender person doesn’t exist than to look and see ourselves in them. And a certain number of Christians will go to great lengthas to make it clear that transgender kids need not exist. Christians are still refusing that vision. Or worse, Christians are deliberately and often cynically targeting the queer and trans communities for persecution.
So that’s the first thing we know in our communities: how the Church is broken. The second thing we know is that as queer, non-binary, bisexual, transgender, lesbian, gay, and allied people we are and have long been a powerful force that calls the Church simply to become itself. We are here, we have argued, we are queer, we are fabulous. We are much more than a subgroup or the latest in a long line of “issues” to be faced. We are not a theological dispute.
We are a mirror in which Jesus sees himself reflected. Who needs to be more beautiful than that? Jesus sees himself in our vulnerability, in our growing fear of isolation and persecution. Whenever we are targeted Jesus sees himself. When we mourn, when we thirst for justice. When jobs and relationships and wedding cakes and safe housing and acknowledgement in the classroom and basic human respect are unavailable to us because we are just too queer. In those times—and yes, those times are now—in those times we are bright reflections of the blessed face of Jesus. And if the church wants to know Jesus, the church needs to know us. Never forget it: if the church wants to be the church it must know you.
Of course the sorrow of missing out on that wonderful exchange of blessing doesn’t stop with just us and Jesus. We know that it’s not just us. We know that there are injuries from wealth and poverty and colonialism, harm done by categories of race and ability, forms of brutal discrimination all around and also everywhere within our own communities--intersecting and overlapping and sometimes competing ways that we just refuse to see Jesus where he sees himself. And yes, we know about the violence in our streets and the rot in our government and the constant dread about the future.
But on a day like this, when we can gather in pride and love, when we can hear ourselves described as blessed and we can believe it for a moment, when St. Martin’s throws its doors open and declares that you and I belong here--that’s when we know that we have a powerful gift to share with the church and with the world.
That look of love that Jesus casts on us, knowing that look, is something we have to offer to other Christians. To come here today to celebrate our pride by praising God with prayer and music and community is to start some very good work in the world. We are here together this evening learning how to do the work of the church, how to turn to the world like Jesus does, how to catch the eye of the one who needs to be seen, how to recognize Jesus in that one, and how to say it over and over in a loving exchange:
Blessed are you.
Blessed are you.
Blessed are you.
Amen.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Today's readings are:
Psalm 150
Romans 12:9-18
Matthew 5:1-12
From the Gospel of Matthew this evening we have been given the beatitudes from the great Sermon on the Mount. I love the Sermon on the Mount. Everybody loves the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, if we aren’t careful, many of us have heard the Sermon so many times that it can almost sound like an abstract checklist to us: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the persecuted. It can sound like we are hearing a set of policy statements by Jesus, or a set of ideas, or worse yet hearing a politician’s list of talking points.
Sometimes, to escape that deadening familiarity, I like to try to imagine what it must have felt like for Jesus to look out at those who were listening to him speak, and what it must have felt like for them to listen to him and meet his eye. Catching the eye of Jesus as he says “Blessed are those who mourn” is just a fundamentally different experience than hearing Jesus’s abstract ideas about mourning or about seeking righteousness.
To be in that group around Jesus listening, with the disciples or with the crowd from which he has just come, is to have, I think, a deep experience of one’s own blessedness. And I have to believe that Jesus spoke these words not to make an impression on his disciples, not to teach someone a lesson, but because he was moved by the grace and the beauty of those people he loved. In their awkwardness and in their folly and in their hunger, he loved them. He spoke from his heart. He didn’t so much explain to them that they were blessed. He blessed them deeply in that moment.
It seems possible to me, too, that Jesus was moved to narrate his own experience here as one who was himself outcast and downtrodden. I think he saw himself in the eyes of the poor and the lowly. He told us that if we were looking for him, that’s where we would find him. So we could think of the beatitudes as a kind of homecoming for Jesus, a moment in which he himself is resting in love, at rest right in the place where he belongs. You are blessed, he says to them, and in that moment he is one with them just as he is one with God. I can almost imagine that this moment of homecoming and belonging gave him a vast sense of patience. His vision of us from high on that mountain is maybe part of what allows him to let us be who we are, let us take our time coming to him. He sees the blessedness we can’t begin yet to express ourselves.
It's a paradox, but probably not an accident, that the ways of being that Jesus describes in this sermon on the mount can be ways of getting cut off from other people. Poverty of spirit, like physical poverty, can make you excluded from systems of justice, isolated in grief, everyone around you speaking evil of you and persecuting you for no reason. Or you are forgotten: too meek to push your way to the front of the line, looking to make peace where all is war and destruction and peace is just a laughable afterthought, dismissed from the beginning as a peacemaker. Trying to practice mercy in a merciless environment. What friends do you have? Jesus recognizes himself I think in this awful isolation. that threatens us at every moment.
There he is, the very love of God incarnate, one day to be executed like a criminal and abandoned by his friends. Jesus knows about isolation and exile, and he knows that there is a particular beauty, a particular healing, in looking into the eyes of the poor and the meek and those who long for justice, and being one with them. Knowing that in his gaze they are one with God, that he is the meeting place between human frailty and divine life.
The awful isolation to which we willingly subject an outsider is just swept away in his loving gaze. The doors open and the walls come tumbling down.
Now that loving gaze that we feel coming from Jesus is also the gaze of the church if we are really being the church. That knowing look of union is the church’s work. It’s one way to describe what the sacraments and the word of God and the life of the church are all doing: they are teaching the world its blessedness in the eyes of God. The church is gazing on all who suffer, on all who are cast out, with the eyes of Jesus, teaching all of us our blessedness, our beauty, our pride.
That’s the work of the church. Sadly, there are at least two things we know about this work of the church, we in the LGBTQ+ community. One: we know that the church is shockingly broken, shockingly unable to show us our beauty. Yes, the Episcopal Church has, after a lengthy controversy, and with some wonderful leadership, come around to a place of witness, and we can be grateful for that and for the good work of other denominations. It feels so good to gather like this.
But it has to be said that as a whole church, as Christians, as the body of Christ throughout the world, as the historical bearers of the word and the sacraments, we are still much more apt to trample on a queer or transgender kid than we are to mirror their great beauty. We still represent a faith that doesn’t want to see itself in that particular form of lowliness. It would be so much easier for the average Christian to imagine that a young transgender person doesn’t exist than to look and see ourselves in them. And a certain number of Christians will go to great lengthas to make it clear that transgender kids need not exist. Christians are still refusing that vision. Or worse, Christians are deliberately and often cynically targeting the queer and trans communities for persecution.
So that’s the first thing we know in our communities: how the Church is broken. The second thing we know is that as queer, non-binary, bisexual, transgender, lesbian, gay, and allied people we are and have long been a powerful force that calls the Church simply to become itself. We are here, we have argued, we are queer, we are fabulous. We are much more than a subgroup or the latest in a long line of “issues” to be faced. We are not a theological dispute.
We are a mirror in which Jesus sees himself reflected. Who needs to be more beautiful than that? Jesus sees himself in our vulnerability, in our growing fear of isolation and persecution. Whenever we are targeted Jesus sees himself. When we mourn, when we thirst for justice. When jobs and relationships and wedding cakes and safe housing and acknowledgement in the classroom and basic human respect are unavailable to us because we are just too queer. In those times—and yes, those times are now—in those times we are bright reflections of the blessed face of Jesus. And if the church wants to know Jesus, the church needs to know us. Never forget it: if the church wants to be the church it must know you.
Of course the sorrow of missing out on that wonderful exchange of blessing doesn’t stop with just us and Jesus. We know that it’s not just us. We know that there are injuries from wealth and poverty and colonialism, harm done by categories of race and ability, forms of brutal discrimination all around and also everywhere within our own communities--intersecting and overlapping and sometimes competing ways that we just refuse to see Jesus where he sees himself. And yes, we know about the violence in our streets and the rot in our government and the constant dread about the future.
But on a day like this, when we can gather in pride and love, when we can hear ourselves described as blessed and we can believe it for a moment, when St. Martin’s throws its doors open and declares that you and I belong here--that’s when we know that we have a powerful gift to share with the church and with the world.
That look of love that Jesus casts on us, knowing that look, is something we have to offer to other Christians. To come here today to celebrate our pride by praising God with prayer and music and community is to start some very good work in the world. We are here together this evening learning how to do the work of the church, how to turn to the world like Jesus does, how to catch the eye of the one who needs to be seen, how to recognize Jesus in that one, and how to say it over and over in a loving exchange:
Blessed are you.
Blessed are you.
Blessed are you.
Amen.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Jun 05, 2022 |
Ticks in the Boxwoods
| The Rev. James H. Littrell
Ticks in the Boxwoods
Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. James H. Littrell for the Day of Pentecost, June 5, 2022.
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Once upon a time, there was an old (ish) retired (sort of) gay (totally) Episcopal priest who arrived, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, at a lovely--idyllic even--Episcopal church sitting in a lovely swath of greenery almost at the apex of the tallest hill in a great and ancient city (ancient by American standards anyway) in a part of the world, relatively temperate and plentifully watered, not too far but far enough from a great ocean, for millennia populated by a great variety of more or less indigenous people, most recently people who called themselves Lenape, and more recently (in human time) settled by a strange group of humans who had crossed that self-same ocean, at some risk to life and limb and, in some cases, fortune. In varying degrees, these new people had left their homes far away in search of, variously, better lives, fuller liberty, greater opportunity and perhaps fortune. Sailing up a great river from the ocean, they eventually landed and began to settle in, made rough homes, dug rough passages from pathways, and then rough streets and roads from these passages, traversed a tributary of the great river, crossed the peninsula created by the two rivers. Therein they made plans for and executed a city of sorts, a city of square parks, interlaced by parallel and perpendicular streets named for lovely green trees. Many of these people were members of a new religious society, a people who styled themselves Friends and who claimed to come in peace, seeking harmony with all God’s holy creation and all God’s creatures. Indeed, right behind me in that window back there, as many of you know, is one notion of the leader of that first settling society. William Penn his name was, and up there he is smoking a pipe of peace with his new Lenape neighbors, a pipe, he and his Society said, was of peace and brotherly love. That, in fact, is what he named the city: Philadelphia.
Like most human aspirations to perfection, the city fairly quickly fell short of its own expressed values. Faith and commerce held hands, and, yes, Indian wrestled, until Friend’s quest for a city based in and living out the loving values it espoused, collapsed under the sheer power of the vast commercial enterprises that inevitably unfolded in the land. So rich was it in abundance and resource that the urge to commerce and the concomitant necessity of ordinance to safeguard the engines of that commerce, and the power necessary to maintain order and law, all combined and simply vanquished the initial impulse to be a city of mutual love, based in the God of love and the love of God.
Time passed. The great city grew and grew and grew. The indigenous people, mutual friends though Friends may have wanted them to be, withered and perished under the onslaught of commerce and trade. There arrived others, too, non-Friends, seizing the handles of burgeoning wealth and opportunity with very little aspiration to brotherly or sisterly love as foundational in their actual lives. Some of the early Friends and then, in greater numbers, the people who arrived a little later, came to the growing city with other dark-hued humans from Africa, humans who were nonetheless numbered and registered right along with sheep and goats and cows and horses as property and as chattel. They too were harnessed, quite literally, to the great engines of commerce.
The city grew yet larger. A great war came with the great king across the ocean who thought the land and commerce and a portion of all its proceeds belonged to him. The war was fought in the name of many things, most often liberty and freedom from foreign oppression. Some said, though, that it was a war mainly about who benefited from the great abundance of the new country and from its growing wealth. The new city and country won the war, but freedom did not come to many, and certainly not to the enslaved humans of the city, who continued to help empower the great civic enterprise for yet quite a long time, even, in one way or another, right up to right now. One of them, or someone’s idea of one of them, a kneeling child, is also pictured in that window behind me, and if you haven’t looked, you perhaps should. I was shown it yesterday, and it quite literally took my breath away. Thank God for the Holy Spirit and its flames of fire!
But back to the city. The city, fueled by a continuing and abundant and growing supply of raw materials and resources arriving from every corner of the known world, continued to grow apace, and a marvelous thing happened: a steam powered engine was invented and before long there arrived in the newly uniting states (though not united until after yet another ferocious war) a thing called a railroad, vast engines and great carrier trolleys ran on steel tracks, enormous and efficient, and the spokes of this vast new thing drove out from every city in the new country into the places around and far beyond them, harvesting ever more of the abundance, and eviscerating almost every single indigenous person who stood in the way of these mighty wheels and the freight they carried.
Philadelphia was no exception. In fact, as many of you may know, the greatest railroad and the largest corporation in the world in its time was born and sustained right here, for almost a century. At the same time, some of those visionary and creative Philadelphians imagined whole new communities linked to the heart of the great city by rail, places where the makers and beneficiaries of commerce could once again have their homes and enjoy their leisure in green and pleasant environs, up in the forested hills and across the rivers’ tributaries, high above but convenient to the business of the now thriving but also very very dirty city. Churches were built in these new communities, indeed purposefully built, because churches, and especially Episcopal churches--and in the case of this particular community--not one but two Episcopal churches--churches were deemed essential in the making and preservation of an ordered and peaceful, green and pleasant and prosperous community. And thus was made the still very green and pleasant community and the church embedded in it, into which the old (ish) priest, sort of retired priest, very gay priest, unexpectedly arrived one day in May in the year 2022, 330 years after William Penn, of the Society of Friends (whom the Episcopalians and others called jeeringly Quakers because of their spirit-filled quaking manner of fervid religious speech while they gathered for worship in their Meeting houses) founded the city of Philadelphia. 330 years later.
The priest was happy, he found, to be called so suddenly out of his pandemic induced retirement (for there had indeed been, indeed still was, a terrible global pandemic, in which millions and millions of humans had and were still dying). He felt relatively safe, being shot full of a new miraculous vaccine and tucked mostly safe behind a good mask, and he was delighted - delighted - to be amongst the people of the community, whom he found to be, in his early days with them, generous of spirit, moderately adventurous, deeply concerned for the fabric and program and spiritual enterprise of their community, and mostly confident in its future.
And so this old priest, who had arrived in this idyllic place quite soon after not one, not two, but three resident priests, all of long standing, had moved on to other callings, one after another, the latest departure having been the senior priest, began to try together to gather themselves up in the bonds of God’s love in these early days. And the old priest and the community of God’s love at St. Martin’s, after a minute or two of mutual sizing one another up, began gingerly and, at least in the priest’s case, tenderly, to try to discern together a path into the future to which they were together called.
And for the old(ish) priest, the enterprise was experienced almost completely as joy, even though in those early days were full of tragedy in the community and in the nation. He was so glad to be again among loving and caring and completely imperfect human beings again. He rejoiced to himself and to his beloved Louis, his companion for lo the last 43 years, who pronounced to the priest that he seemed happy again, which made him, Louis, happy too.
And the newly arrived old(ish) priest, whose name was Jim and who people mostly called Fr. Jim began to have many wonderfully enriching and enlightening conversations, some of them delving deep into his new parishioner’s lives, some hinting at riches yet to come, one conversant even going so far as to thank him for his own imperfections, or, as that person styled them, for his slight bumbling, which they said gave them and the whole community permission to be a little less than perfect too. And that, in this community where so much perfection was often expected and even demanded, and which perhaps too often had little tolerance for the bumble, it seemed, was a little bit of grace. The old(ish) priest, anyway, had long since given up most of his aspirations to perfection and was working hard at just being an honest and helpful and competent priest and pastor as much as he could be in this slightly fraught time. So he thought a little bumbling was fine, and even if it wasn’t fine, it was, as they say, what it was; and he was who he was.
And then there came a day, it was the day before the great Feast of Pentecost: Pentecost, when all the people of God in Christ in all the whole world were to celebrate in thousands of ways and hundreds of tongues, the day long ago when, in a rush as of a violent wind and with tongues as of fire, the Divine Spirit was made manifest and palpable in the human community. The Day of Pentecost, when people of every language and across every single diverse shape and manifestation of humankind, came to know that all things could become new, and ancient hurts dissolved, and resolved, and visions for the future seen and then made real, and dreams dreamed into life, when united in God’s powerful love and filled with God’s mighty Breath, and lit up by the Fire of Christ’s love, when faithful but a little bit bewildered people became drunk on the sheer magnificence of God’s glory, and began to learn again the truth of Jesus’ promised Peace and the urgency of Jesus’ call to do the actual work of Love. And in the doing, to find God’s Peace, the Peace, the Blessed Assurance, that every now and then, abolishes the troubled heart and the fearful soul.
So it was that day, on the eve of Pentecost, when the old (ish) priest sat out there beside the columbarium on a bench surrounded by sage and boxwood for a conversation with another parishioner. And as they delved deeper into the talking, and as they did, the old priest’s companion on the bench, rather suddenly reached toward the priest’s neck, surprising the old man a little, and then asked if he could take something off the priest’s collar. “I think it might be a tick,” he said, and Father Jim said in response, “Definitely! Have at it!” And it was a tick indeed, and then shortly there appeared another on Father’s neck just above the collar, and then another on his sleeve, and then he felt a little creepy crawl up the back of his neck--another tick! And his companion said, “Yep, ticks in the boxwood. Ticks like it in the boxwood.” “Is that so,” said the old priest, rejoicing - rejoicing - that he had yet again learned a new thing, and suggesting they move quickly away from the boxwood, which is what they did.
So this is a parable. In seminary school they teach you that parables have just one main point.
At the risk of insulting your considerable intelligences, let me suggest to you that you think as I did about the history of that boxwood, and of this green and pleasant place, and its ancient boxwood smell, the smell, for me, of old coastal towns in the south, the smell of English gardens, the smell of all that history that brings us to this day, which is in fact Pentecost. And then remember, as all that history, often wondrous and often terrible and frequently painful and, here in this place especially, seeming almost idyllic in its outcomes, all that history unfolds in your minds, to call to mind the ticks that lurk in the boxwood, happily awaiting your company.
Pentecost calls us toward unity of spirit, toward living more fully into God’s compassion, toward being honest and reconciling and forgiving people, toward fuller and more open hearts and lives, and yes, pocketbooks, and most of all, into the activity which is God’s love, not as children unaware, but as fully forming humans, never forgetting that there be ticks in the boxwood, that imperfection is our most perfect state, and that bumbling but fiery Love is the best love of all.
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Once upon a time, there was an old (ish) retired (sort of) gay (totally) Episcopal priest who arrived, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, at a lovely--idyllic even--Episcopal church sitting in a lovely swath of greenery almost at the apex of the tallest hill in a great and ancient city (ancient by American standards anyway) in a part of the world, relatively temperate and plentifully watered, not too far but far enough from a great ocean, for millennia populated by a great variety of more or less indigenous people, most recently people who called themselves Lenape, and more recently (in human time) settled by a strange group of humans who had crossed that self-same ocean, at some risk to life and limb and, in some cases, fortune. In varying degrees, these new people had left their homes far away in search of, variously, better lives, fuller liberty, greater opportunity and perhaps fortune. Sailing up a great river from the ocean, they eventually landed and began to settle in, made rough homes, dug rough passages from pathways, and then rough streets and roads from these passages, traversed a tributary of the great river, crossed the peninsula created by the two rivers. Therein they made plans for and executed a city of sorts, a city of square parks, interlaced by parallel and perpendicular streets named for lovely green trees. Many of these people were members of a new religious society, a people who styled themselves Friends and who claimed to come in peace, seeking harmony with all God’s holy creation and all God’s creatures. Indeed, right behind me in that window back there, as many of you know, is one notion of the leader of that first settling society. William Penn his name was, and up there he is smoking a pipe of peace with his new Lenape neighbors, a pipe, he and his Society said, was of peace and brotherly love. That, in fact, is what he named the city: Philadelphia.
Like most human aspirations to perfection, the city fairly quickly fell short of its own expressed values. Faith and commerce held hands, and, yes, Indian wrestled, until Friend’s quest for a city based in and living out the loving values it espoused, collapsed under the sheer power of the vast commercial enterprises that inevitably unfolded in the land. So rich was it in abundance and resource that the urge to commerce and the concomitant necessity of ordinance to safeguard the engines of that commerce, and the power necessary to maintain order and law, all combined and simply vanquished the initial impulse to be a city of mutual love, based in the God of love and the love of God.
Time passed. The great city grew and grew and grew. The indigenous people, mutual friends though Friends may have wanted them to be, withered and perished under the onslaught of commerce and trade. There arrived others, too, non-Friends, seizing the handles of burgeoning wealth and opportunity with very little aspiration to brotherly or sisterly love as foundational in their actual lives. Some of the early Friends and then, in greater numbers, the people who arrived a little later, came to the growing city with other dark-hued humans from Africa, humans who were nonetheless numbered and registered right along with sheep and goats and cows and horses as property and as chattel. They too were harnessed, quite literally, to the great engines of commerce.
The city grew yet larger. A great war came with the great king across the ocean who thought the land and commerce and a portion of all its proceeds belonged to him. The war was fought in the name of many things, most often liberty and freedom from foreign oppression. Some said, though, that it was a war mainly about who benefited from the great abundance of the new country and from its growing wealth. The new city and country won the war, but freedom did not come to many, and certainly not to the enslaved humans of the city, who continued to help empower the great civic enterprise for yet quite a long time, even, in one way or another, right up to right now. One of them, or someone’s idea of one of them, a kneeling child, is also pictured in that window behind me, and if you haven’t looked, you perhaps should. I was shown it yesterday, and it quite literally took my breath away. Thank God for the Holy Spirit and its flames of fire!
But back to the city. The city, fueled by a continuing and abundant and growing supply of raw materials and resources arriving from every corner of the known world, continued to grow apace, and a marvelous thing happened: a steam powered engine was invented and before long there arrived in the newly uniting states (though not united until after yet another ferocious war) a thing called a railroad, vast engines and great carrier trolleys ran on steel tracks, enormous and efficient, and the spokes of this vast new thing drove out from every city in the new country into the places around and far beyond them, harvesting ever more of the abundance, and eviscerating almost every single indigenous person who stood in the way of these mighty wheels and the freight they carried.
Philadelphia was no exception. In fact, as many of you may know, the greatest railroad and the largest corporation in the world in its time was born and sustained right here, for almost a century. At the same time, some of those visionary and creative Philadelphians imagined whole new communities linked to the heart of the great city by rail, places where the makers and beneficiaries of commerce could once again have their homes and enjoy their leisure in green and pleasant environs, up in the forested hills and across the rivers’ tributaries, high above but convenient to the business of the now thriving but also very very dirty city. Churches were built in these new communities, indeed purposefully built, because churches, and especially Episcopal churches--and in the case of this particular community--not one but two Episcopal churches--churches were deemed essential in the making and preservation of an ordered and peaceful, green and pleasant and prosperous community. And thus was made the still very green and pleasant community and the church embedded in it, into which the old (ish) priest, sort of retired priest, very gay priest, unexpectedly arrived one day in May in the year 2022, 330 years after William Penn, of the Society of Friends (whom the Episcopalians and others called jeeringly Quakers because of their spirit-filled quaking manner of fervid religious speech while they gathered for worship in their Meeting houses) founded the city of Philadelphia. 330 years later.
The priest was happy, he found, to be called so suddenly out of his pandemic induced retirement (for there had indeed been, indeed still was, a terrible global pandemic, in which millions and millions of humans had and were still dying). He felt relatively safe, being shot full of a new miraculous vaccine and tucked mostly safe behind a good mask, and he was delighted - delighted - to be amongst the people of the community, whom he found to be, in his early days with them, generous of spirit, moderately adventurous, deeply concerned for the fabric and program and spiritual enterprise of their community, and mostly confident in its future.
And so this old priest, who had arrived in this idyllic place quite soon after not one, not two, but three resident priests, all of long standing, had moved on to other callings, one after another, the latest departure having been the senior priest, began to try together to gather themselves up in the bonds of God’s love in these early days. And the old priest and the community of God’s love at St. Martin’s, after a minute or two of mutual sizing one another up, began gingerly and, at least in the priest’s case, tenderly, to try to discern together a path into the future to which they were together called.
And for the old(ish) priest, the enterprise was experienced almost completely as joy, even though in those early days were full of tragedy in the community and in the nation. He was so glad to be again among loving and caring and completely imperfect human beings again. He rejoiced to himself and to his beloved Louis, his companion for lo the last 43 years, who pronounced to the priest that he seemed happy again, which made him, Louis, happy too.
And the newly arrived old(ish) priest, whose name was Jim and who people mostly called Fr. Jim began to have many wonderfully enriching and enlightening conversations, some of them delving deep into his new parishioner’s lives, some hinting at riches yet to come, one conversant even going so far as to thank him for his own imperfections, or, as that person styled them, for his slight bumbling, which they said gave them and the whole community permission to be a little less than perfect too. And that, in this community where so much perfection was often expected and even demanded, and which perhaps too often had little tolerance for the bumble, it seemed, was a little bit of grace. The old(ish) priest, anyway, had long since given up most of his aspirations to perfection and was working hard at just being an honest and helpful and competent priest and pastor as much as he could be in this slightly fraught time. So he thought a little bumbling was fine, and even if it wasn’t fine, it was, as they say, what it was; and he was who he was.
And then there came a day, it was the day before the great Feast of Pentecost: Pentecost, when all the people of God in Christ in all the whole world were to celebrate in thousands of ways and hundreds of tongues, the day long ago when, in a rush as of a violent wind and with tongues as of fire, the Divine Spirit was made manifest and palpable in the human community. The Day of Pentecost, when people of every language and across every single diverse shape and manifestation of humankind, came to know that all things could become new, and ancient hurts dissolved, and resolved, and visions for the future seen and then made real, and dreams dreamed into life, when united in God’s powerful love and filled with God’s mighty Breath, and lit up by the Fire of Christ’s love, when faithful but a little bit bewildered people became drunk on the sheer magnificence of God’s glory, and began to learn again the truth of Jesus’ promised Peace and the urgency of Jesus’ call to do the actual work of Love. And in the doing, to find God’s Peace, the Peace, the Blessed Assurance, that every now and then, abolishes the troubled heart and the fearful soul.
So it was that day, on the eve of Pentecost, when the old (ish) priest sat out there beside the columbarium on a bench surrounded by sage and boxwood for a conversation with another parishioner. And as they delved deeper into the talking, and as they did, the old priest’s companion on the bench, rather suddenly reached toward the priest’s neck, surprising the old man a little, and then asked if he could take something off the priest’s collar. “I think it might be a tick,” he said, and Father Jim said in response, “Definitely! Have at it!” And it was a tick indeed, and then shortly there appeared another on Father’s neck just above the collar, and then another on his sleeve, and then he felt a little creepy crawl up the back of his neck--another tick! And his companion said, “Yep, ticks in the boxwood. Ticks like it in the boxwood.” “Is that so,” said the old priest, rejoicing - rejoicing - that he had yet again learned a new thing, and suggesting they move quickly away from the boxwood, which is what they did.
So this is a parable. In seminary school they teach you that parables have just one main point.
At the risk of insulting your considerable intelligences, let me suggest to you that you think as I did about the history of that boxwood, and of this green and pleasant place, and its ancient boxwood smell, the smell, for me, of old coastal towns in the south, the smell of English gardens, the smell of all that history that brings us to this day, which is in fact Pentecost. And then remember, as all that history, often wondrous and often terrible and frequently painful and, here in this place especially, seeming almost idyllic in its outcomes, all that history unfolds in your minds, to call to mind the ticks that lurk in the boxwood, happily awaiting your company.
Pentecost calls us toward unity of spirit, toward living more fully into God’s compassion, toward being honest and reconciling and forgiving people, toward fuller and more open hearts and lives, and yes, pocketbooks, and most of all, into the activity which is God’s love, not as children unaware, but as fully forming humans, never forgetting that there be ticks in the boxwood, that imperfection is our most perfect state, and that bumbling but fiery Love is the best love of all.
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
May 29, 2022 |
Where Do We Go From Here?
| The Rev. David F. Potter
Where Do We Go From Here?
Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. David Potter for the Last Sunday of Easter, May 29, 2022.
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Acts 16:16-34
Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21
John 17:20-26
Psalm 97
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Where do we go from here?
The Rev. David Potter
May 29, 2022
On this Ascension Sunday, we commemorate the earthly departure of Jesus with these words. And through them, the Church is called to unity.
This prayer Jesus offers anticipates and responds to a question which will no doubt later surface for Jesus’ followers: “Where do we go from here?”
Throughout this past week, this same question has continually rumbled around in my own thoughts and prayers. And after completing seminary just last weekend, it is especially relevant. For myself and any others in this graduation season, what comes next is often a question posed to us—just as much as it is a question and discern we ask of ourselves.
And surely this same wondering is present here in this community at St. Martin-in the-Fields. Uncertainty is inherent in any search process for new clergy, to say the least.
But, still even more widely, in light of over two years of pandemic concerns and restrictions, especially now as they begin to ease, this question seemingly lingers everywhere. Where do we go from here?
We are in transition. A world lies behind us which is no more—and the world before us remains unknown. Now, living through these times of change like these is far from easy. At times it may even feel like simply too much.
The tension between what has been and what will be can feel like chaos. And in this place, I often find myself searching for some reassurance of stability—for some anchor to hold on.
So, for those carrying burdens here in this place this morning, receive this as permission to come as you are. In these brief moments, may we all know and may we remind ourselves that we hold these burdens with and for one another.
“That they all may be one.” In a moment of tremendous transition, Jesus prays these words. In the remaining instruction of his earthly ministry, his desire for the disciples, for his followers, becomes abundantly clear:
that they know they are loved,
that they love one another,
and that through them the world might come to know love.
Soon the disciples will no longer have Jesus with them—and they will face many challenges and much unknown. And it is in this context with great obstacles to loving one another, that Jesus admonishes his followers toward unity.
This kind of unity is a discipline to which he knows they will need to return over and over again—because apart from a resilient commitment to one another, the heavy burdens they carry will simply be too much to bear.
This kind of unity is no simple feel-good-warm-and-fuzzy feeling. And neither is it a demand for uniformity within the disciples. Rather, what Jesus calls them to, and calls the church to, is something essential to both their individual and their common wellbeing.
Now, I admit, in these polarizing times, my initial impulse is not always toward becoming “completely one” with those I disagree with. Perhaps this is something you can relate to. Because cultivating unity across the broad chasms of ideological and political difference can often seem futile and quite naive.
And when great potential for harm exists by remaining in relationship with others, especially with others who may not affirm our right to exist, appealing to unity can be quite dangerous.
In this past week, yet another mass shooting has claimed the lives of innocent children. This time at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas—merely weeks after the deadly and racist shootings in Detroit and Buffalo.
But in the numbing wake of senseless death and overwhelming grief, there are simply no adequate words... Where do we go from here?
Unity is risky business. There is much at stake in all that divides us, and there is certainly no lack of issues that divide our society.
As this all-too-common occurrence of gun violence becomes ever more increasingly politicized—it seems a deep groaning in my spirit is about all I can muster.
A phrase from the poet Nayyirah Waheed reminds me though that it is important to “keep the rage tender.” Stay tender in the sorrow, grief, and anger—because when God’s image in persons is destroyed, becoming desensitized is spiritual death.
The human tenderness required for unity is no easy task—and it would seem there are always obstacles and reasons to turn away from one another. But as James Baldwin writes, “One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own.” We need one another.
In these greatly divided times uplifting the value of remaining in right-relationship with one another is neither easy nor is it very popular. And yet... the Gospel of Jesus Christ invites all persons into common kinship.
We must remain tender, somehow or some way...
We don’t take on this task alone, though. While remaining in community with one another, walking hand in hand, we walk also with those who have gone before us. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. engages our present predicament in his seminal work entitled: Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
Two options are present before us. As we midwife this new world and new ways of being, we can either 1) become community or we can 2) descend into chaos. Dr. King offered this still-relevant diagnosis and prescription of our situation in 1967. Either we learn to love one another with shared dignity and belonging, or we will unravel in competitive attempts to preserve an ever-increasing scarcity of individual privileges and liberties.
This same wisdom is shared by artists and prophets, visionaries and activists alike—along with anyone who has labored toward a vision of collective flourishing. And we know something in our tradition too: week after week in our liturgy we pray “Bless all whose lives are closely linked with ours...”
All of human life is interwoven in a web of mutuality.
The ability to know and have life in abundance ourselves is interdependent on each and every person’s ability. If healing, wholeness, and joy are to be made complete in our lives, we must recognize it is inseparable from that of our neighbors.
So, in this rising tide of polarization—of social transition and civic tension—where do we go from here?
“Righteous Father,” Jesus prays, “the world does not know you, but I know you... I made your name known to them, and I will make it known...”
Guided by the upside-down logic of our common faith, we hold these claims:
that enemies cannot be destroyed—but only transformed by love…
that liberty preserved at the end of a gun’s barrel is a false freedom…
that salvation comes not by instruments of death—but through their subversion...
When Jesus admonishes his followers toward common belonging like that love that is shared within the Trinity, he holds no illusions of calm, ideal circumstances.
Rather, it is within the midst of many obstacles—and his appeal to unity is made on a foundation of a radical ethic of love - love for one’s self, for one’s neighbor, for God. Because it is only through deep abiding love that we can remain in relationship and become community.
As we grasp for stability, it is this common faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is and will be our anchor.
So Beloveds,
when we inevitably fail to dwell together in unity;
when the yoke of faith feels anything but easy and light;
when we are wearied and heavy laden:
Know that we do not walk alone.
Even in our weakness the Spirit of God, with sighs too deep for words, intercedes on our behalf, leading us into the way of salvation.
So then, that we might become “completely one:”
may our shared mourning and action and prayer through the Spirit empower us to become beloved community, and participate in the healing and salvation of this nation. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
May 28, 2022 |
New Every Morning
| The Rev. James H. Littrell
New Every Morning
Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. James H. Littrell for the Memorial of William Newbold, May 28, 2022.
Today's readings are:
Lamentations 3:22-26,31-33
Romans 8:14-19,34-35,37-39
John 14:1-6
New Every Morning
Fr. Jim Littrell
May 28, 2022
The writer of the Book of Lamentations, a little bit of which we just heard, says to us:
“The steadfast love of God never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness!”
And then Paul, writing to the first Christians in Rome, that great imperial capital, from jail, from his cell facing a terrible death, writes that nothing in all creation will be able to separate all those early Christians and himself from that same steadfast love of God. And John, in that Gospel I just read, assures us that God’s domain, God’s dominion, the space of God, is more spacious and open and welcoming than any of us can begin to imagine. Using the metaphor of a house, he speaks to us of its endless, endless capacity to take us in. It’s endless capaciousness. The steadfast love of God is as vast and nurturing and loving and hugging and warm and safe as anything any of us can imagine, and then so much more than that.
So I am here to tell you this terrible morning, when every heart in this room is fractured, is in so much pain, that your son, your brother, your grandson, your cousin, your nephew, your friend William Connor Newbold is right now, in this very heartbroken time, saying to us, with Jesus, “do not let your hearts be troubled. I am fine. God is holding me close. And you would not believe how wonderful that is.” But, he begs us with God, “please do believe it!”
Heartbreak is a real thing, Leslie mused to me in one of our conversations this week. It’s a real thing. It actually hurts. And she’s right. Hearts break, and hearts in this holy place this morning are broken. And I believe that into that fracture, that brokenness, God’s steadfast love and God’s infinite Light is pouring right now. I want to tell you two things about that.
First, heartbreak is like any other human fracture. It hurts. And it will heal, in time, and especially - and this is really important - especially if it is nurtured by your love and care for one another in the days and months and years ahead. And second, also like a broken bone, your broken hearts will heal, but they will never be the same. There will always be a space in them where William was.
What I want you to believe with me is that he is, right now, right here, in this room, working with God to mend your hearts. He and God want you to laugh again. They want you to play again. They want you to see the colors of the world bright again. And they want you to love and care for one another in this moment and in the time ahead.
And, also, they know you will weep. And weep. And weep. They know how sad you are, and will be. And they love you and all your tears so much. And they say, God and William, that even your pain cannot separate you from God’s endless love. God loves you always and in every condition, and God will wipe away the tears from your eyes.
“And how do I know that?” William says to us. How do we know that William is now held in God’s love? “Well, here’s how,” William says to you: “I know because all my tears and my sadness and my pain are gone. Gone. All my pain is gone.”
The steadfast love of God never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning! They are new this morning.
There is a hymn I like a lot and I want to share a little bit of it with you. It’s by a composer of contemporary hymns named Brian Wren. It’s a prayer hymn, of sorts, inviting us to bring the many names of God into our hearts: he invokes in the hymn the God of all the stories we tell,the parables we tell of our God, the God who is a mother to us, nurturing, ordering, and piloting and caring, the God who is a loving father to us, hugging every child, a God he calls (and I resonate with this a lot!), “old aching God, gray with endless care, glad of good surprises, wiser than despair.” And then Wren names this God, who I think he means to be Jesus, but which brings me back to William: “Young, growing God, eager, on the move, saying no to falsehood and unkindness,...giving all you have.” The hymn ends with a kind of summary of God’s names: “Great loving God,” Wren writes, “never fully known, joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, everlasting home.”
And that is exactly where William is: far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, he is right there in the everlasting home which is God’s steadfast love, from which nothing, nothing in all creation can separate us. Nothing at all, not now, not ever.
Now how do I know that all those names, that William’s very self, is wrapped up in all the names of God, in God’s compassionate arms? Well, I guess my 79 years have taught me that. But, also, as Leslie likes to say, and as I heard this morning, there are signs.
I am, theologically, most of all a Christian mystic. And so yesterday, as I was getting ready to come up here to the church and meet with Leslie and Will, I was listening, as I often do, to the BBC’s afternoon concert, which in the morning when I’m getting ready for the day is happening in the evening there, which is morning our time. And there I am brushing my teeth when I hear coming out of the speaker the most beautiful music I’ve heard in a really, really long time.
It was so amazing it made me stop brushing my teeth and just stop and listen to this music. It’s some kind of organ music. I listen and I think, “What is this?” I think I hear in it a little Bach, but then the music moves into this kind of deep, powerful minor key, a kind of lament. It sounds to me like a kind of cry, almost. The chord just deepens and deepens in this minor key and then, gradually, that cry resolves in music that I can only describe as pure splendor. “What is this???” The music ends. I listen and an announcer tells me that what I have just heard is a transcription and augmentation for organ of a chorale, sure enough, by Bach, from his Easter Cantata. And this chorale, and this piece, is called: “Weigen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen,” which means pretty much, Weeping, Lament, Worry, Fear. And this glorious music in which all of that is contained, all of what we are in the middle of right now, all of our Wagen and our Klagen and our Sorgen and our Zagen, all our weeping and all our lamenting and all our worrying and all our fear - all of that music was composed by Franz Lizst in 1862 right after the tragic death of his daughter. And that music is about the deepest sorrow a human being can experience, your sorrow, and it’s based on and set smack in the middle of an Easter chorale, a cantada about the Resurrection.
Well. I did this thing, I stood there, struck, with a toothbrush in my hand. And then I took my finger and put it on the little red dot to push the stream back, and then I listened to this music all over again, and I thought this: that music came to me directly from the great God who lifts us out of death back into life, over and over and over and over again until we are healed, and who at the last, takes us into God’s endless life and light. And that amazing music arrived in my life, kindness of a courier, a heavenly courier whose name is William Connor Newbold. I am certain of it.
He is joined with God’s merciful love. He knows our weeping and lamentation and our worry and our fear in exactly the same way as God does, because they are joined together. And together, because they are joined, they are with Jesus, who is all compassion, and they say together to us,
“The steadfast love of God never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness!”
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Today's readings are:
Lamentations 3:22-26,31-33
Romans 8:14-19,34-35,37-39
John 14:1-6
New Every Morning
Fr. Jim Littrell
May 28, 2022
The writer of the Book of Lamentations, a little bit of which we just heard, says to us:
“The steadfast love of God never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness!”
And then Paul, writing to the first Christians in Rome, that great imperial capital, from jail, from his cell facing a terrible death, writes that nothing in all creation will be able to separate all those early Christians and himself from that same steadfast love of God. And John, in that Gospel I just read, assures us that God’s domain, God’s dominion, the space of God, is more spacious and open and welcoming than any of us can begin to imagine. Using the metaphor of a house, he speaks to us of its endless, endless capacity to take us in. It’s endless capaciousness. The steadfast love of God is as vast and nurturing and loving and hugging and warm and safe as anything any of us can imagine, and then so much more than that.
So I am here to tell you this terrible morning, when every heart in this room is fractured, is in so much pain, that your son, your brother, your grandson, your cousin, your nephew, your friend William Connor Newbold is right now, in this very heartbroken time, saying to us, with Jesus, “do not let your hearts be troubled. I am fine. God is holding me close. And you would not believe how wonderful that is.” But, he begs us with God, “please do believe it!”
Heartbreak is a real thing, Leslie mused to me in one of our conversations this week. It’s a real thing. It actually hurts. And she’s right. Hearts break, and hearts in this holy place this morning are broken. And I believe that into that fracture, that brokenness, God’s steadfast love and God’s infinite Light is pouring right now. I want to tell you two things about that.
First, heartbreak is like any other human fracture. It hurts. And it will heal, in time, and especially - and this is really important - especially if it is nurtured by your love and care for one another in the days and months and years ahead. And second, also like a broken bone, your broken hearts will heal, but they will never be the same. There will always be a space in them where William was.
What I want you to believe with me is that he is, right now, right here, in this room, working with God to mend your hearts. He and God want you to laugh again. They want you to play again. They want you to see the colors of the world bright again. And they want you to love and care for one another in this moment and in the time ahead.
And, also, they know you will weep. And weep. And weep. They know how sad you are, and will be. And they love you and all your tears so much. And they say, God and William, that even your pain cannot separate you from God’s endless love. God loves you always and in every condition, and God will wipe away the tears from your eyes.
“And how do I know that?” William says to us. How do we know that William is now held in God’s love? “Well, here’s how,” William says to you: “I know because all my tears and my sadness and my pain are gone. Gone. All my pain is gone.”
The steadfast love of God never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning! They are new this morning.
There is a hymn I like a lot and I want to share a little bit of it with you. It’s by a composer of contemporary hymns named Brian Wren. It’s a prayer hymn, of sorts, inviting us to bring the many names of God into our hearts: he invokes in the hymn the God of all the stories we tell,the parables we tell of our God, the God who is a mother to us, nurturing, ordering, and piloting and caring, the God who is a loving father to us, hugging every child, a God he calls (and I resonate with this a lot!), “old aching God, gray with endless care, glad of good surprises, wiser than despair.” And then Wren names this God, who I think he means to be Jesus, but which brings me back to William: “Young, growing God, eager, on the move, saying no to falsehood and unkindness,...giving all you have.” The hymn ends with a kind of summary of God’s names: “Great loving God,” Wren writes, “never fully known, joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, everlasting home.”
And that is exactly where William is: far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, he is right there in the everlasting home which is God’s steadfast love, from which nothing, nothing in all creation can separate us. Nothing at all, not now, not ever.
Now how do I know that all those names, that William’s very self, is wrapped up in all the names of God, in God’s compassionate arms? Well, I guess my 79 years have taught me that. But, also, as Leslie likes to say, and as I heard this morning, there are signs.
I am, theologically, most of all a Christian mystic. And so yesterday, as I was getting ready to come up here to the church and meet with Leslie and Will, I was listening, as I often do, to the BBC’s afternoon concert, which in the morning when I’m getting ready for the day is happening in the evening there, which is morning our time. And there I am brushing my teeth when I hear coming out of the speaker the most beautiful music I’ve heard in a really, really long time.
It was so amazing it made me stop brushing my teeth and just stop and listen to this music. It’s some kind of organ music. I listen and I think, “What is this?” I think I hear in it a little Bach, but then the music moves into this kind of deep, powerful minor key, a kind of lament. It sounds to me like a kind of cry, almost. The chord just deepens and deepens in this minor key and then, gradually, that cry resolves in music that I can only describe as pure splendor. “What is this???” The music ends. I listen and an announcer tells me that what I have just heard is a transcription and augmentation for organ of a chorale, sure enough, by Bach, from his Easter Cantata. And this chorale, and this piece, is called: “Weigen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen,” which means pretty much, Weeping, Lament, Worry, Fear. And this glorious music in which all of that is contained, all of what we are in the middle of right now, all of our Wagen and our Klagen and our Sorgen and our Zagen, all our weeping and all our lamenting and all our worrying and all our fear - all of that music was composed by Franz Lizst in 1862 right after the tragic death of his daughter. And that music is about the deepest sorrow a human being can experience, your sorrow, and it’s based on and set smack in the middle of an Easter chorale, a cantada about the Resurrection.
Well. I did this thing, I stood there, struck, with a toothbrush in my hand. And then I took my finger and put it on the little red dot to push the stream back, and then I listened to this music all over again, and I thought this: that music came to me directly from the great God who lifts us out of death back into life, over and over and over and over again until we are healed, and who at the last, takes us into God’s endless life and light. And that amazing music arrived in my life, kindness of a courier, a heavenly courier whose name is William Connor Newbold. I am certain of it.
He is joined with God’s merciful love. He knows our weeping and lamentation and our worry and our fear in exactly the same way as God does, because they are joined together. And together, because they are joined, they are with Jesus, who is all compassion, and they say together to us,
“The steadfast love of God never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness!”
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
May 22, 2022 |
River
| The Rev. James H. Littrell
River
Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. James H. Littrell for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 22, 2022.
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Acts 16:9-15
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 5:1-9
Psalm 67
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
River
Fr. Jim Littrell
May 22, 2022
Listen again and pray with me God’s Word to and for us this morning:
On the sabbath day, we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there a was a place of prayer. And women were there, talking and praying....And Lydia said, Come home and stay with us. And they said, No.no. We would not trouble you. But Lydia insisted, and so they went with her, to her home.
Then the angel of God showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city...where there will be no more night; no need for light of lamp or sun, where God will be their light forever and ever.
Now in Jerusalem by the Gate of the Sheep, there is a pool, called Bethesda, which means place of healing, which has five porticoes or entrances. In these lay many invalids: blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man, we are told, had been there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he went over to him and said, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am crawling to the water, someone else gets ahead of me, and I just never get to the pool.” Jesus said, “Come. Stand up. Take up your mat and walk.” At once, we are told, the man was made well, took up his mat, and, haltingly we must imagine, began to walk. Now that day was the sabbath.
I come to you this morning in the name of almighty God, whose insistent love wills us into being in every moment of our lives and in our deaths: in our endings, in our heartbreak and mourning, in our grief and sorrow, and, when the morning comes again for us, in our joy and in our gladness. May it be so. Amen.
Good morning, friends.
I am, as most of you know by now, Jim Littrell. I am a priest in the Episcopal church and I am really glad to be with St. Martin’s this morning, to have been with you this last week, and, God and my new friend and boss and your Rector’s Warden, Barbara Thomson willing, glad to be with you for the next few weeks, eight, to be exact. We’re not quite sure what title I might have. “Supply priest” always sounds to me like something you order from Amazon to replenish the broom closet or restock the plates and cups in the kitchen.
So I thought, no, that’s not it. I thought I might call myself a bridge priest, albeit the very first bridge after a bridge goes out, a one-way, very temporary bridge where the light takes forever to change. And then after a while they lay down a second sturdier two-way temporary bridge and that bridge suffices for the time it takes for the parish to build a lasting bridge, and that bridge is built and it’s a good solid bridge and it lasts for a long time. That doesn’t quite do the naming job, but what I am titled is not very important, to me or to you. What’s important is what I will try to be and do while I am with you in this limited time that really matters. And I think a large part of my job is to spend time with you as we are nurtured in the river of Light, as we gather and pray by the river of Life, and when either necessary or just desirable, to take a dip in the healing waters of the Bethesda pool.
I love a good clean country river. I do. My partner, Louis and I seek them out. We have hiked for miles to get to a great swimming hole.
And when I get to those swimming pools, I just plunge in and feel every single time like I’ve been washed in the blood of the everlasting Lamb that John the Visioner tells us about in the Book of Revelation, flowing from the place that Jarrett preached about last week, the new Jerusalem, the City of God—Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, and end and beginning, and beginning and end, and end and beginning.
And, friends, it is exactly there, in that cool refreshing river, that all of us are gathered and held by God’s love, made manifest in our love - our love for one another and our love for our community - held in place, John tells us, by the healing currents of the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. Right down St. Martin’s Lane all the way to Broad Street. And there will be no more night.
They—that is to say we, if do well the job of loving one another and the city of humanity through which that river flows, if we do that, then, John says, we will find ourselves all together, swimming in the water of life bright as crystal, where we need no light of lamp or sun, where God is and will be our light, forever and ever, Amen.
What a vision! And especially what a vision in a hard human time, in a time in which endings are everywhere and often soul harrowing, in a world, as always, torn asunder by our amazing ability as humans to squander our capacity, our enormous capacity, to flow God’s river, to flow God’s light, to flow God’s love into the world. We squander that gift—and sometimes suddenly, but more often, little by little, drip by drip—we turn our lives to those things that captivate us and that steal our souls, until all that’s left us is a dry riverbed, a dead pool, and at the last, a dusty death.
In times of uncertainty, in times of trauma, in times of flux, that danger lurks, like some medieval Satan waiting to light on our shoulder, whisper sweet nothings in our ear, and lead us, the beloved community, right smack into some kind of temptation.
So today, the Word of God, the Love of God, the Light of God, does something else, says something else to all the creatures of darkness and despair and death, of confusion and uncertainty (and just as surely to our overconfidence and our subtle arrogance that we cannot be tempted because, after all, we know the way)—to all that, the Light of God says... well, says a couple of things I think.
Says, I am in the midst of you, and that right early, and that right late, and that in all the time and space of all creation and all eternity: I, the God who am Light and Love, am in the midst of you. I AM. I have got you!
Says, let’s go down, let’s go down to the river, to pray, and to frolic, and to be washed over and over again in crystal water, to have our tears and our sorrow and our grieving, and our broken hearts accepted as the gifts they are and taken into the great river of God’s Love and Light. God says, Come on in! The water’s fine!
Says, take all the time you need, but stay with me, for in me is Time beyond Time, Light beyond Light, Life beyond Life. Stay with me. And I, you may be sure, will stay with you, always.
Says, there will come a time, and even now may be, probably is for some of you, that time, when washed in my Light and held in my Love, you gather yourself, lie a while in this brilliant sun, dry off, and return to the paths that lead to the river and the pool. And there, there you will see, as Jesus, who is God, who is I AM, sees: the benighted, the poor, and the suffering, the halt, the lame, the invalids, the invalid, the don’t matters, the never matters, they that live with despair in their hearts, and they that struggle through fields of all kinds of war and terror, bearing their children in their arms and their paralyzed ancients on their backs.
And seeing them, you will speak my powerful word of Love and do my powerful work of Love, and with your hands and your hearts, and with all that you have, reach out to one trampled human being, and give them your hand, and space in your capacious heart, and you will raise them up, and carry their mat, and as they lean on you, you will lead them, at first haltingly and then ever more surely, and bear them with you back into the healing pool, into the crystal river of Light, into Being Well.
For that, says God, I have called you to be my disciples.
Now, I think, is the time, for a time, for all of us to go down to the river, to plunge ourselves, as individuals and perhaps more important, as a community beloved of God, to plunge ourselves into its healing pools, to pray and wash and wash and pray, and play and heal. And then, in God’s infinite patient Time, embraced and held by God’s passionate Love, and bathed in the crystal water of Life, then to say to just one other, for that is sufficient, to say with Lydia, come home, come stay with me. To say with Jesus, be well. Let me help you to the water of Life, the river of Light that flows through the middle of the city.
And all will be well.
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Acts 16:9-15
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 5:1-9
Psalm 67
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
River
Fr. Jim Littrell
May 22, 2022
Listen again and pray with me God’s Word to and for us this morning:
On the sabbath day, we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there a was a place of prayer. And women were there, talking and praying....And Lydia said, Come home and stay with us. And they said, No.no. We would not trouble you. But Lydia insisted, and so they went with her, to her home.
Then the angel of God showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city...where there will be no more night; no need for light of lamp or sun, where God will be their light forever and ever.
Now in Jerusalem by the Gate of the Sheep, there is a pool, called Bethesda, which means place of healing, which has five porticoes or entrances. In these lay many invalids: blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man, we are told, had been there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he went over to him and said, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am crawling to the water, someone else gets ahead of me, and I just never get to the pool.” Jesus said, “Come. Stand up. Take up your mat and walk.” At once, we are told, the man was made well, took up his mat, and, haltingly we must imagine, began to walk. Now that day was the sabbath.
I come to you this morning in the name of almighty God, whose insistent love wills us into being in every moment of our lives and in our deaths: in our endings, in our heartbreak and mourning, in our grief and sorrow, and, when the morning comes again for us, in our joy and in our gladness. May it be so. Amen.
Good morning, friends.
I am, as most of you know by now, Jim Littrell. I am a priest in the Episcopal church and I am really glad to be with St. Martin’s this morning, to have been with you this last week, and, God and my new friend and boss and your Rector’s Warden, Barbara Thomson willing, glad to be with you for the next few weeks, eight, to be exact. We’re not quite sure what title I might have. “Supply priest” always sounds to me like something you order from Amazon to replenish the broom closet or restock the plates and cups in the kitchen.
So I thought, no, that’s not it. I thought I might call myself a bridge priest, albeit the very first bridge after a bridge goes out, a one-way, very temporary bridge where the light takes forever to change. And then after a while they lay down a second sturdier two-way temporary bridge and that bridge suffices for the time it takes for the parish to build a lasting bridge, and that bridge is built and it’s a good solid bridge and it lasts for a long time. That doesn’t quite do the naming job, but what I am titled is not very important, to me or to you. What’s important is what I will try to be and do while I am with you in this limited time that really matters. And I think a large part of my job is to spend time with you as we are nurtured in the river of Light, as we gather and pray by the river of Life, and when either necessary or just desirable, to take a dip in the healing waters of the Bethesda pool.
I love a good clean country river. I do. My partner, Louis and I seek them out. We have hiked for miles to get to a great swimming hole.
And when I get to those swimming pools, I just plunge in and feel every single time like I’ve been washed in the blood of the everlasting Lamb that John the Visioner tells us about in the Book of Revelation, flowing from the place that Jarrett preached about last week, the new Jerusalem, the City of God—Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, and end and beginning, and beginning and end, and end and beginning.
And, friends, it is exactly there, in that cool refreshing river, that all of us are gathered and held by God’s love, made manifest in our love - our love for one another and our love for our community - held in place, John tells us, by the healing currents of the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. Right down St. Martin’s Lane all the way to Broad Street. And there will be no more night.
They—that is to say we, if do well the job of loving one another and the city of humanity through which that river flows, if we do that, then, John says, we will find ourselves all together, swimming in the water of life bright as crystal, where we need no light of lamp or sun, where God is and will be our light, forever and ever, Amen.
What a vision! And especially what a vision in a hard human time, in a time in which endings are everywhere and often soul harrowing, in a world, as always, torn asunder by our amazing ability as humans to squander our capacity, our enormous capacity, to flow God’s river, to flow God’s light, to flow God’s love into the world. We squander that gift—and sometimes suddenly, but more often, little by little, drip by drip—we turn our lives to those things that captivate us and that steal our souls, until all that’s left us is a dry riverbed, a dead pool, and at the last, a dusty death.
In times of uncertainty, in times of trauma, in times of flux, that danger lurks, like some medieval Satan waiting to light on our shoulder, whisper sweet nothings in our ear, and lead us, the beloved community, right smack into some kind of temptation.
So today, the Word of God, the Love of God, the Light of God, does something else, says something else to all the creatures of darkness and despair and death, of confusion and uncertainty (and just as surely to our overconfidence and our subtle arrogance that we cannot be tempted because, after all, we know the way)—to all that, the Light of God says... well, says a couple of things I think.
Says, I am in the midst of you, and that right early, and that right late, and that in all the time and space of all creation and all eternity: I, the God who am Light and Love, am in the midst of you. I AM. I have got you!
Says, let’s go down, let’s go down to the river, to pray, and to frolic, and to be washed over and over again in crystal water, to have our tears and our sorrow and our grieving, and our broken hearts accepted as the gifts they are and taken into the great river of God’s Love and Light. God says, Come on in! The water’s fine!
Says, take all the time you need, but stay with me, for in me is Time beyond Time, Light beyond Light, Life beyond Life. Stay with me. And I, you may be sure, will stay with you, always.
Says, there will come a time, and even now may be, probably is for some of you, that time, when washed in my Light and held in my Love, you gather yourself, lie a while in this brilliant sun, dry off, and return to the paths that lead to the river and the pool. And there, there you will see, as Jesus, who is God, who is I AM, sees: the benighted, the poor, and the suffering, the halt, the lame, the invalids, the invalid, the don’t matters, the never matters, they that live with despair in their hearts, and they that struggle through fields of all kinds of war and terror, bearing their children in their arms and their paralyzed ancients on their backs.
And seeing them, you will speak my powerful word of Love and do my powerful work of Love, and with your hands and your hearts, and with all that you have, reach out to one trampled human being, and give them your hand, and space in your capacious heart, and you will raise them up, and carry their mat, and as they lean on you, you will lead them, at first haltingly and then ever more surely, and bear them with you back into the healing pool, into the crystal river of Light, into Being Well.
For that, says God, I have called you to be my disciples.
Now, I think, is the time, for a time, for all of us to go down to the river, to plunge ourselves, as individuals and perhaps more important, as a community beloved of God, to plunge ourselves into its healing pools, to pray and wash and wash and pray, and play and heal. And then, in God’s infinite patient Time, embraced and held by God’s passionate Love, and bathed in the crystal water of Life, then to say to just one other, for that is sufficient, to say with Lydia, come home, come stay with me. To say with Jesus, be well. Let me help you to the water of Life, the river of Light that flows through the middle of the city.
And all will be well.
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
May 15, 2022 |
Alpha and Omega
| The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Alpha and Omega
Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 15, 2022.
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Alpha and Omega
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
May 15, 2022
Please join me in the spirit of prayer.
Ever loving, ever faithful God, our alpha and omega, I give you thanks that in you we always have a new beginning, whatever our endings may be, that you are with us as we come and as we go. Lord God, continue to feed our souls from the wellspring of life so that we may serve you in courageous witness to the new Jerusalem to come. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
We gather around an ending today and my favorite story about endings concerns my own father. The last flight of my father (my father, as some of you know, was an airline pilot) - the last flight of a pilot is a very big deal. Dad worked, speaking of endings, for Trans World Airlines for 30 years and even as it crumbled beneath him his last flight was a celebration. In the airline industry this last flight is called a fini-flight and the capstone of it is the final landing.
Pilots take great pride in landing (as opposed to the opposite). They take great pride in what they call painting a landing: getting just perfect that delicate balance of momentum, trajectory and gravity, to get that heavy plane to slide onto that runway. That shows the art and skill of a pilot. So, dad's last flight went from San Diego to St. Louis, then to New York LaGuardia.
Air traffic control, under the influence of my sister who is an air traffic controller, gave him the best approach possible into LaGuardia right up the Hudson River. The night was cloudless, the dome of the sky was full of stars reflected in the inky dark of the Hudson River. Yes, the big 757 took a graceful left turn and there was the statue of liberty on the left and lower Manhattan on the right, the World Trade Center, then the Chrysler building, then the empire state building and the tartan plaid of white headlights and red taillights on the grid of the city. Then, riverside church on the right and then a big graceful right turn over the Bronx, and there was Yankee stadium, beautiful glowing under the lights straight ahead and beyond that the welcoming runway of LaGuardia all lined up, cockpit focused and quiet as they hummed through their procedures, dad in command in the left seat, the gear going down with that familiar foot, the runway fills the windshield right over the threshold onto the landing and BAM.
Bam. Bounce. Bam. Waddle. Bam Shake. Luckily the masks didn't come down in front of us. And there I heard come from my dad's mouth the name of our Lord. The name of God came to his lips not as a prayer but as a swear, characteristic of him but then knowing him as well he chuckled, sighed deeply, and said “oh well.”
I hope I can land this last sermon. I hope I can land this fini-sermon with God on my lips as a prayer and not a swear.
We gather around an ending today and in God's grace we know that God is as present in endings as God is in beginnings. God is just as present in endings as beginnings. God is alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. St. John the divine teaches us endings with God are full of promise, generativity, creativity, grace redemption, new life. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end.
Genesis begins our sacred story and Revelation ends it, not with a hard stop but with a new beginning. The New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, joining heaven and earth, finally healing that gap we've created with God, and oddly enough affirming human life in its most complex, diverse, battle-scarred, corruptible, historically burdened location in a city, and not just any city. Jerusalem. The city that kills the prophets all the day long, the city where Jesus was condemned and died, the great wounded city of God's heart, for me reappearing here much like Jesus appears with his wounds intact in the resurrection.
God's project continues not in a new garden of innocence, naivete and childlikeness, but in an old battle-scarred city burdened with history. That is where God chooses to meld heaven and earth at the end. Now, St. John the divine was a pastor, and I resonate with him as a pastor. I connect with him as someone who loves and pastors a flock, we both live the commitment of loving our people every step of the way, through better, for worse, richer, for poor, and sickness and health. John's people are facing unexpected endings. They are facing martyrdom. They're facing persecution, punishment for their intolerable non-conformity to the world as it is. John himself writes from prison. His faith is uncertain.
What does he offer his suffering flock? What John offers is that God is alpha and omega, that God is as present in endings as in beginnings and God is present in the form of the lamb upon the throne, the lamb upon the throne, the one who knows all of our suffering having met his end in the same way as the martyrs. And having passed through that ending to new life he has made a way for us through all of our endings to new life. The lamb on the throne is the paschal mystery of resurrection revealed as God's nature at endings.
John's people and our people here are not beyond the intimacy and promise of God, In our losses, in our endings instead we are in the paschal heart of God's presence. John is just giving good pastoral care to his persecuted people. He is encouraging them to faithfulness, to witness to courageous non-conformity in a hostile world, and if I may be allowed to say so, we need such pastoral guidance in this moment and we need Christians formed this way. Our world is desperate and despairing, in need of witnesses to another way of life. Our world is in need of followers of Jesus who bring hope and healing and creativity to the unredeemed world, despair, futility, and vanity.
Our world needs us, intolerably non-conforming Christians whose lives point to the lamb upon the throne, non-violently, lovingly, liberating the good in life in all and pointing only to him, to no other Lord, no other idol, no other end of this life. We are here and wherever we are to be found - the depository of God's promise for this world - every time we moan about the direction of our country or the world we need to ask ourselves, “how am I moving into that space as a representative of Christ? Do I have the gospel on my lips? Do I have the name of Jesus and his good news to share? Am I a pathway to new life and hope for the despairing world around me that cannot make it on its own?
So many have come this morning to say goodbye and I am so grateful we are here together to share an ending and I am grateful. What is equally important to me however is that just as many people show up here next Sunday, that just as many or more people show up here at St. Martin's next Sunday for each other, to live the new commandment and love each other in this place as I know you love to do. That is the heart of this place - not rectors who come and go. Show up next week with love for one another, with love for the mission you share, with love for this community and most of all with love of the God who sustained you, for today may be an omega but next week God will be your alpha. A new beginning of love and life and mission for you, and that is my prayer for you. That is the prayer I want to end on, and not a swear.
In fact, I have two prayers: One I wrote, and one that's better than that.
My prayer for you is just this: thank you God for the people of St. Martin’s. Thank you God for the body of Jesus Christ in this place. By your holy spirit make them strong witnesses full of hope, promise and Godliness, living for the end of the world as it is and for the coming of the new Jerusalem where all may live the new commandment to love one another in complexity and diversity, and we pray it all in the name of the lamb on the throne. Amen.
And the second prayer, better than my own: Christ be with you, Christ within you, Christ behind you, Christ before you, Christ beside you, Christ to win you, Christ to comfort and restore you, Christ beneath you, Christ above you, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all who love you, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Alpha and Omega
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
May 15, 2022
Please join me in the spirit of prayer.
Ever loving, ever faithful God, our alpha and omega, I give you thanks that in you we always have a new beginning, whatever our endings may be, that you are with us as we come and as we go. Lord God, continue to feed our souls from the wellspring of life so that we may serve you in courageous witness to the new Jerusalem to come. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
We gather around an ending today and my favorite story about endings concerns my own father. The last flight of my father (my father, as some of you know, was an airline pilot) - the last flight of a pilot is a very big deal. Dad worked, speaking of endings, for Trans World Airlines for 30 years and even as it crumbled beneath him his last flight was a celebration. In the airline industry this last flight is called a fini-flight and the capstone of it is the final landing.
Pilots take great pride in landing (as opposed to the opposite). They take great pride in what they call painting a landing: getting just perfect that delicate balance of momentum, trajectory and gravity, to get that heavy plane to slide onto that runway. That shows the art and skill of a pilot. So, dad's last flight went from San Diego to St. Louis, then to New York LaGuardia.
Air traffic control, under the influence of my sister who is an air traffic controller, gave him the best approach possible into LaGuardia right up the Hudson River. The night was cloudless, the dome of the sky was full of stars reflected in the inky dark of the Hudson River. Yes, the big 757 took a graceful left turn and there was the statue of liberty on the left and lower Manhattan on the right, the World Trade Center, then the Chrysler building, then the empire state building and the tartan plaid of white headlights and red taillights on the grid of the city. Then, riverside church on the right and then a big graceful right turn over the Bronx, and there was Yankee stadium, beautiful glowing under the lights straight ahead and beyond that the welcoming runway of LaGuardia all lined up, cockpit focused and quiet as they hummed through their procedures, dad in command in the left seat, the gear going down with that familiar foot, the runway fills the windshield right over the threshold onto the landing and BAM.
Bam. Bounce. Bam. Waddle. Bam Shake. Luckily the masks didn't come down in front of us. And there I heard come from my dad's mouth the name of our Lord. The name of God came to his lips not as a prayer but as a swear, characteristic of him but then knowing him as well he chuckled, sighed deeply, and said “oh well.”
I hope I can land this last sermon. I hope I can land this fini-sermon with God on my lips as a prayer and not a swear.
We gather around an ending today and in God's grace we know that God is as present in endings as God is in beginnings. God is just as present in endings as beginnings. God is alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. St. John the divine teaches us endings with God are full of promise, generativity, creativity, grace redemption, new life. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end.
Genesis begins our sacred story and Revelation ends it, not with a hard stop but with a new beginning. The New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, joining heaven and earth, finally healing that gap we've created with God, and oddly enough affirming human life in its most complex, diverse, battle-scarred, corruptible, historically burdened location in a city, and not just any city. Jerusalem. The city that kills the prophets all the day long, the city where Jesus was condemned and died, the great wounded city of God's heart, for me reappearing here much like Jesus appears with his wounds intact in the resurrection.
God's project continues not in a new garden of innocence, naivete and childlikeness, but in an old battle-scarred city burdened with history. That is where God chooses to meld heaven and earth at the end. Now, St. John the divine was a pastor, and I resonate with him as a pastor. I connect with him as someone who loves and pastors a flock, we both live the commitment of loving our people every step of the way, through better, for worse, richer, for poor, and sickness and health. John's people are facing unexpected endings. They are facing martyrdom. They're facing persecution, punishment for their intolerable non-conformity to the world as it is. John himself writes from prison. His faith is uncertain.
What does he offer his suffering flock? What John offers is that God is alpha and omega, that God is as present in endings as in beginnings and God is present in the form of the lamb upon the throne, the lamb upon the throne, the one who knows all of our suffering having met his end in the same way as the martyrs. And having passed through that ending to new life he has made a way for us through all of our endings to new life. The lamb on the throne is the paschal mystery of resurrection revealed as God's nature at endings.
John's people and our people here are not beyond the intimacy and promise of God, In our losses, in our endings instead we are in the paschal heart of God's presence. John is just giving good pastoral care to his persecuted people. He is encouraging them to faithfulness, to witness to courageous non-conformity in a hostile world, and if I may be allowed to say so, we need such pastoral guidance in this moment and we need Christians formed this way. Our world is desperate and despairing, in need of witnesses to another way of life. Our world is in need of followers of Jesus who bring hope and healing and creativity to the unredeemed world, despair, futility, and vanity.
Our world needs us, intolerably non-conforming Christians whose lives point to the lamb upon the throne, non-violently, lovingly, liberating the good in life in all and pointing only to him, to no other Lord, no other idol, no other end of this life. We are here and wherever we are to be found - the depository of God's promise for this world - every time we moan about the direction of our country or the world we need to ask ourselves, “how am I moving into that space as a representative of Christ? Do I have the gospel on my lips? Do I have the name of Jesus and his good news to share? Am I a pathway to new life and hope for the despairing world around me that cannot make it on its own?
So many have come this morning to say goodbye and I am so grateful we are here together to share an ending and I am grateful. What is equally important to me however is that just as many people show up here next Sunday, that just as many or more people show up here at St. Martin's next Sunday for each other, to live the new commandment and love each other in this place as I know you love to do. That is the heart of this place - not rectors who come and go. Show up next week with love for one another, with love for the mission you share, with love for this community and most of all with love of the God who sustained you, for today may be an omega but next week God will be your alpha. A new beginning of love and life and mission for you, and that is my prayer for you. That is the prayer I want to end on, and not a swear.
In fact, I have two prayers: One I wrote, and one that's better than that.
My prayer for you is just this: thank you God for the people of St. Martin’s. Thank you God for the body of Jesus Christ in this place. By your holy spirit make them strong witnesses full of hope, promise and Godliness, living for the end of the world as it is and for the coming of the new Jerusalem where all may live the new commandment to love one another in complexity and diversity, and we pray it all in the name of the lamb on the throne. Amen.
And the second prayer, better than my own: Christ be with you, Christ within you, Christ behind you, Christ before you, Christ beside you, Christ to win you, Christ to comfort and restore you, Christ beneath you, Christ above you, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all who love you, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
May 08, 2022 |
The Good Shepherd
| The Rev. Carol Duncan
The Good Shepherd
Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. Carol Duncan for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 8, 2022.
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Acts 9:36-43
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
Psalm 23
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
The Good Shepherd
The Rev. Carol Duncan
May 8, 2022
Jesus Good Shepherd, as you call us each by name, open our minds, hearts, souls and inner being to respond to you in all your guises, visible and invisible. I make this prayer in your holy name of love. Amen.
Dear flock, please be seated in this fruitful pasture.
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday and you are all in the pasture. It is also the next to last Sunday we will have Jarrett with us.
I want to consider what it means to be Jesus’ flock, Jesus’ people, at St Martin’s when we are about to be without an appointed shepherd for quite a while. I find it a challenging and a bracing prospect. And I want to pay tribute to a faithful shepherd who has guided us for 11 years, very much by Jesus’ compass leading him.
Today’s readings are meant to give us a sense of the rod and staff of our heritage. Four different settings, four versions of shepherd and flock. How do we find ourselves in these passages?
I love the first scene of shepherding from Acts. A group of women disciples doing good works and acts of charity. So much like us: Tabitha and her friends would surely recognize Blessed Baking, Women Connecting, Stephen Ministry, Biblical Study groups and all the rest. We have been in their shoes, doing what we can to ease the suffering of our loved ones. When one of us is sick or dies, we call our pastor, our shepherd, just as the women of Joppa did. And we have known that Jarrett will be there instantly. I am not crediting him with raising the dead. But Jarrett does the next best thing. He conducts the most deeply moving funerals, consistently, of any priest I have ever known. The work of a good shepherd is to comfort, to discern and convey the deep abiding meaning of our lives. We honor and embrace this work. We are a church that values and practices being community in pain and in joy. Even when it is difficult. We have learned that. We follow the pattern set in Joppa. I think we can count on ourselves for that.
The second scene of shepherdship: the 23rd Psalm – so moving and so comforting, it follows us all our lives. Its water and oil are redolent of baptism. Jarrett was so thrilled when he got to baptize a teenager by full immersion. He figured out the logistics of how to do it by obtaining a moveable trough big enough to submerge a sizeable body. We did it on the front patio. A space, by the way, that Jarrett envisioned as a way to enlarge our worship space so we could share the surrounding community with our worship. St. Martin’s more typical baptisms are celebrated inside the church at the beginning of a Sunday service so the whole congregation can welcome and incorporate the newly baptized. After the baptism, Jarrett processes up the aisle joyfully, extravagantly sprinkling us all with baptismal water. The freshly baptized settle down with their families to bask in the newly recognized holiness of their members. The rest of us recall again that the Baptismal Covenant as Jarrett has come to help us understand is the source and root of all we are about at St. Martin’s. Everything that we do. Everything.
Now the hard example of how shepherds work, from Revelation. This is perhaps most Jarrettlike and most us. We do not take the easy just-go-to-church-on-Sunday version of Christianity. Under Jarrett’s leadership, we have some sense of who it is who comes first in God’s care. Those who hunger and thirst, who are kept from learning and thriving, who are refugees. These are the ones who come out of the great ordeal of our present world. We have learned to hear them guided by Jarrett through the work of POWER, of Beloved Community, of Supper, through St. James School, through Beyond Borders. We have changed how we respond. Now, rather than donating money toward scattered programs, we invest major funds and our energy to respond covenantally to the suffering we’ve learned to see in our world. We are learning to listen, rather than to assume we know how to fix the problem. When someone asks us “Who are these and where do they come from?” We say “Please tell us. We are listening.” The church in these increasingly secular years needs a shepherd like those of the early church. We can’t take faith for granted. We live in a world that engenders martyrs. We will need a shepherd like Jarrett who considers and acts to counter systemic injustice in the name of Jesus.
The fourth scene of shepherding from the Gospel reminds me very much of Jarrett and how he has led us over these eleven years. In today’s Gospel, Jesus answered his antagonists, “I have told you and you do not believe.” So many times, most often in Community Engagement meetings, but other times too, Jarrett will say “I have said it, I have told you.” Finally, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh year, Jarrett marshaled us to collect some of his shepherding guidance in a handbook. We wrote it down. The Community Engagement Committee has worked for years on the ideas and structure of this handbook. Community Engagement is the coordinating body of all the various outreach ministries of St. Martin’s. The vision statement of the handbook says that we “engage as agents of Christ’s love in the world by developing mutual relationships at the local, regional, national, and international levels that advance the mission and values of St. Martin’s as we discern God’s will as a Church, together.’ This vision of doing Christ’s loving work in the world together will serve us as a firm foundation from which to grow and thrive and we will thank Jarrett for it for years. Find it on our website in the Community Engagement tab. You should read it. There’s beautiful writing in it. When you read it, you will recognize our voices in it, and Jesus’ shepherding voice behind ours, long into the future. I know I speak for many when I say we are grateful. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Acts 9:36-43
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
Psalm 23
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
The Good Shepherd
The Rev. Carol Duncan
May 8, 2022
Jesus Good Shepherd, as you call us each by name, open our minds, hearts, souls and inner being to respond to you in all your guises, visible and invisible. I make this prayer in your holy name of love. Amen.
Dear flock, please be seated in this fruitful pasture.
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday and you are all in the pasture. It is also the next to last Sunday we will have Jarrett with us.
I want to consider what it means to be Jesus’ flock, Jesus’ people, at St Martin’s when we are about to be without an appointed shepherd for quite a while. I find it a challenging and a bracing prospect. And I want to pay tribute to a faithful shepherd who has guided us for 11 years, very much by Jesus’ compass leading him.
Today’s readings are meant to give us a sense of the rod and staff of our heritage. Four different settings, four versions of shepherd and flock. How do we find ourselves in these passages?
I love the first scene of shepherding from Acts. A group of women disciples doing good works and acts of charity. So much like us: Tabitha and her friends would surely recognize Blessed Baking, Women Connecting, Stephen Ministry, Biblical Study groups and all the rest. We have been in their shoes, doing what we can to ease the suffering of our loved ones. When one of us is sick or dies, we call our pastor, our shepherd, just as the women of Joppa did. And we have known that Jarrett will be there instantly. I am not crediting him with raising the dead. But Jarrett does the next best thing. He conducts the most deeply moving funerals, consistently, of any priest I have ever known. The work of a good shepherd is to comfort, to discern and convey the deep abiding meaning of our lives. We honor and embrace this work. We are a church that values and practices being community in pain and in joy. Even when it is difficult. We have learned that. We follow the pattern set in Joppa. I think we can count on ourselves for that.
The second scene of shepherdship: the 23rd Psalm – so moving and so comforting, it follows us all our lives. Its water and oil are redolent of baptism. Jarrett was so thrilled when he got to baptize a teenager by full immersion. He figured out the logistics of how to do it by obtaining a moveable trough big enough to submerge a sizeable body. We did it on the front patio. A space, by the way, that Jarrett envisioned as a way to enlarge our worship space so we could share the surrounding community with our worship. St. Martin’s more typical baptisms are celebrated inside the church at the beginning of a Sunday service so the whole congregation can welcome and incorporate the newly baptized. After the baptism, Jarrett processes up the aisle joyfully, extravagantly sprinkling us all with baptismal water. The freshly baptized settle down with their families to bask in the newly recognized holiness of their members. The rest of us recall again that the Baptismal Covenant as Jarrett has come to help us understand is the source and root of all we are about at St. Martin’s. Everything that we do. Everything.
Now the hard example of how shepherds work, from Revelation. This is perhaps most Jarrettlike and most us. We do not take the easy just-go-to-church-on-Sunday version of Christianity. Under Jarrett’s leadership, we have some sense of who it is who comes first in God’s care. Those who hunger and thirst, who are kept from learning and thriving, who are refugees. These are the ones who come out of the great ordeal of our present world. We have learned to hear them guided by Jarrett through the work of POWER, of Beloved Community, of Supper, through St. James School, through Beyond Borders. We have changed how we respond. Now, rather than donating money toward scattered programs, we invest major funds and our energy to respond covenantally to the suffering we’ve learned to see in our world. We are learning to listen, rather than to assume we know how to fix the problem. When someone asks us “Who are these and where do they come from?” We say “Please tell us. We are listening.” The church in these increasingly secular years needs a shepherd like those of the early church. We can’t take faith for granted. We live in a world that engenders martyrs. We will need a shepherd like Jarrett who considers and acts to counter systemic injustice in the name of Jesus.
The fourth scene of shepherding from the Gospel reminds me very much of Jarrett and how he has led us over these eleven years. In today’s Gospel, Jesus answered his antagonists, “I have told you and you do not believe.” So many times, most often in Community Engagement meetings, but other times too, Jarrett will say “I have said it, I have told you.” Finally, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh year, Jarrett marshaled us to collect some of his shepherding guidance in a handbook. We wrote it down. The Community Engagement Committee has worked for years on the ideas and structure of this handbook. Community Engagement is the coordinating body of all the various outreach ministries of St. Martin’s. The vision statement of the handbook says that we “engage as agents of Christ’s love in the world by developing mutual relationships at the local, regional, national, and international levels that advance the mission and values of St. Martin’s as we discern God’s will as a Church, together.’ This vision of doing Christ’s loving work in the world together will serve us as a firm foundation from which to grow and thrive and we will thank Jarrett for it for years. Find it on our website in the Community Engagement tab. You should read it. There’s beautiful writing in it. When you read it, you will recognize our voices in it, and Jesus’ shepherding voice behind ours, long into the future. I know I speak for many when I say we are grateful. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
May 01, 2022 |
God Keeps the Offer Alive
| The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
God Keeps the Offer Alive
Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Third Sunday of Easter, May 1, 2022.
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Please join me in the spirit of prayer.
Have you ever given your whole heart? Have you ever given your whole heart to someone and had your love rejected? Have you ever given your whole love to someone you adored or to a cause you cared about deeply or an institution that was beloved to you and had your love unreciprocated, had your love rejected, had your love attacked, even disdained? Do you have in your body that memory of the pain that comes from unrequited love, from entering that space of vulnerability where we risk so much and are available for so much damage to be loving and not to be loved in?
Return if like me you can feel that in your body, you can know you're not alone. You can know that this is an experience that God shares with us, for Jesus was and is the whole heart of God. Jesus was and is the whole heart of God shared with the world to include us in God's unbreakable love. And we know how the story goes that God took this risk, God made the ultimate offering to us of God's whole heart and Jesus was rejected, was disdained, was attacked and was killed, so God knows what it's like to offer love and have it refused, have it rejected.
And thanks be to God we know that the story doesn't end with that painful horrifying rejection but the story goes on. In fact God will not let this story end, God continues the story of love by raising Jesus from the dead. By raising Jesus from the dead God says, “this love is always on offer to you. My offer of love is alive forever for those who respond to it. My offer is there for you. Enter into this incredible transformation that is offered when you are loved this much.” And so we respond to that love and we grow in that love. Sometimes we reject it, sometimes we balk, sometimes we walk the other way. And whenever this love is rejected or attacked we know the cross is among us, but we also know that the resurrection is among us and that we can turn back to this new life that is alive for us and always on offer for the redemption of our souls.
We see the power of this paschal mystery in these stories we are offered today in the gospel and in the acts of the apostles. We see it in this story of a fisherman turned into a shepherd - a fisherman turned into a shepherd and someone who ran away in fear turned into someone willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.
We see this good news story playing out in all of its power today in the story of Paul as well, a persecutor of the church who becomes one with the persecuted. The persecutor of the church who becomes one with those that he had persecuted, one who had breathed threats and murder who now breathes good news and new life. This is the transforming power of the Risen Christ still at work, and we know it so powerfully because it's the same Jesus we knew in his ministry doing all the same things. It's the in the continuity that we know there is in Christ, the one who healed, the one who loved, the one who included, the one who preached peace, the one who reconciled us to God and our enemies, is still adding in his risen life with Peter and with Paul and with all of us here today. The offering of new life is always alive for us, thanks be to God.
Let's start with Peter. My beloved, beloved, beloved Peter, how I love you. Peter, I want to be as bumbly and beloved as you are.
Peter is met by the Risen Christ on the beach in John in a situation of nurture. There is Jesus feeding his disciples, also instructing his disciples, he tells them where to find the fish, but this nurturing setting of breakfast on the beach is so much what Jesus taught his disciples to expect in his resurrected life, they will know he is there because he is nurturing them, he is feeding them. And more than that, Jesus is restoring Peter, restoring him to his purpose. Jesus wants Peter back. Jesus wants Peter restored so Peter can live out his purpose in the kingdom of God to spread the good news. Jesus needs to recover Peter from his betrayal.
There Peter is dripping wet on the beach in his clothes and Jesus has this dialogue with Peter, this uncomfortable dialogue with Peter where he is holding him accountable and pushing him deeper. Jesus wants Peter back and this is not going to be a forgiving or reconciliation that includes forgetting, this will not be forgiving and forgetting this will be remembering and forgiving.
Jesus leads Peter through those three questions, those tender painful difficult questions: Peter do you love me? Peter do you love me? Peter do you love me? And we know that these questions, they recapitulate the three betrayals when Peter said, “I don't know this man” and betrayed his Lord three times. These three questions are shepherding Peter back into this relationship and ministering to him by drawing him back into that essential love of his Lord that is core to his life.
“Do you love me?” It's painful. It is painful. We hear it right in the passage. It hurts Peter's feelings to be questioned this way but we know with Jesus in his ministry he is always drawing us deeper into this love that we have for him.
And why is Jesus drawing Peter deeper? Why? Because he has a mission for Peter, he has a purpose for Peter, a ministry for Peter. Like in his ministry Jesus is always looking for partners to send out to share the good news and he knows if Peter is going to do that to his full potential he must be fundamentally grounded in his love for Jesus. He must grow in his courage to love Jesus if he's going to become a good shepherd. A good shepherd who lays his life down for the sheep, a good shepherd who will pay the ultimate price for faithfulness and devotion when Peter is crucified for being an apostle.
This is Jesus doing tough love. This is Jesus caring for his friend and preparing him to have that depth of love he will need to give his life away for his friends. Do you love me? Feed my sheep. A life is restored, a vocation is restored. The church finds an advocate. This is the Risen Christ at work.
We have Paul as well. We have Paul in a slightly different story, Paul breathing threats and murder. Paul the persecutor of the earlier followers of Jesus. He is knocked down. The context is not breakfast on the beach. The context is a slap down on the road to Damascus. Notice there's no horse, by the way, every picture you've seen of Paul getting knocked off a horse - there's no horse in the story. I would love to know how many people saw a horse when we read the story.
Paul, being intense and zealous and hard-headed, is one of those folks a little bit like me who needs a good knock from God to get it together. God has multiple approaches. Paul knocked down is enfeebled, he's blinded, he's made dependent. He is humbled in every way and made to depend on exactly the same people he was persecuting. He is taken in by Judas, he is prayed for by Ananias, all under the direction of the Risen Christ. He is turned over into the hands of those he called enemies and those early followers of Jesus were challenged to live up to the teaching - love your enemies. Love the guy who's breathing threats and murder. Love the guy who stood by when Stephen was stoned to death. Love this deadly enemy and bring him in.
And here in Paul we have another testimony of how the Risen Christ works to change a life, to transform a life from threats and murder to good news and new life, rom persecutor to persecuted, in a way that would teach us all how to accept transformation, to be humbled, to be blinded, which is to say to no longer be so sure about what we thought we knew. To be dependent on others, on community, to pray for us and to lead us into what love means. Paul is transformed by this power of the Risen Christ that was available to him and is equally available to us.
If we risk it, if we so dare, this Risen Christ offers us transformation of life. How will we be changed from fisherman to shepherd? How will we be changed from persecutor to persecuted? How will we make ourselves available to the Risen Christ who is working in us to change us forever? I really sincerely believe that people are right to be wary of this relationship with Christ because deep inside we know it will change us. For those of us who have faith in this process and know that Christ leads us only deeper into love, we must be escorts on this journey. We must be people who remind our brothers and sisters, our siblings in christ, that this is a journey deeper into love from death into life, from despair into hope, from fear into courage, and most of all that it's a journey that enlists us to be part of the healing of the world, the healing of the world we know in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Please join me in the spirit of prayer.
Have you ever given your whole heart? Have you ever given your whole heart to someone and had your love rejected? Have you ever given your whole love to someone you adored or to a cause you cared about deeply or an institution that was beloved to you and had your love unreciprocated, had your love rejected, had your love attacked, even disdained? Do you have in your body that memory of the pain that comes from unrequited love, from entering that space of vulnerability where we risk so much and are available for so much damage to be loving and not to be loved in?
Return if like me you can feel that in your body, you can know you're not alone. You can know that this is an experience that God shares with us, for Jesus was and is the whole heart of God. Jesus was and is the whole heart of God shared with the world to include us in God's unbreakable love. And we know how the story goes that God took this risk, God made the ultimate offering to us of God's whole heart and Jesus was rejected, was disdained, was attacked and was killed, so God knows what it's like to offer love and have it refused, have it rejected.
And thanks be to God we know that the story doesn't end with that painful horrifying rejection but the story goes on. In fact God will not let this story end, God continues the story of love by raising Jesus from the dead. By raising Jesus from the dead God says, “this love is always on offer to you. My offer of love is alive forever for those who respond to it. My offer is there for you. Enter into this incredible transformation that is offered when you are loved this much.” And so we respond to that love and we grow in that love. Sometimes we reject it, sometimes we balk, sometimes we walk the other way. And whenever this love is rejected or attacked we know the cross is among us, but we also know that the resurrection is among us and that we can turn back to this new life that is alive for us and always on offer for the redemption of our souls.
We see the power of this paschal mystery in these stories we are offered today in the gospel and in the acts of the apostles. We see it in this story of a fisherman turned into a shepherd - a fisherman turned into a shepherd and someone who ran away in fear turned into someone willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.
We see this good news story playing out in all of its power today in the story of Paul as well, a persecutor of the church who becomes one with the persecuted. The persecutor of the church who becomes one with those that he had persecuted, one who had breathed threats and murder who now breathes good news and new life. This is the transforming power of the Risen Christ still at work, and we know it so powerfully because it's the same Jesus we knew in his ministry doing all the same things. It's the in the continuity that we know there is in Christ, the one who healed, the one who loved, the one who included, the one who preached peace, the one who reconciled us to God and our enemies, is still adding in his risen life with Peter and with Paul and with all of us here today. The offering of new life is always alive for us, thanks be to God.
Let's start with Peter. My beloved, beloved, beloved Peter, how I love you. Peter, I want to be as bumbly and beloved as you are.
Peter is met by the Risen Christ on the beach in John in a situation of nurture. There is Jesus feeding his disciples, also instructing his disciples, he tells them where to find the fish, but this nurturing setting of breakfast on the beach is so much what Jesus taught his disciples to expect in his resurrected life, they will know he is there because he is nurturing them, he is feeding them. And more than that, Jesus is restoring Peter, restoring him to his purpose. Jesus wants Peter back. Jesus wants Peter restored so Peter can live out his purpose in the kingdom of God to spread the good news. Jesus needs to recover Peter from his betrayal.
There Peter is dripping wet on the beach in his clothes and Jesus has this dialogue with Peter, this uncomfortable dialogue with Peter where he is holding him accountable and pushing him deeper. Jesus wants Peter back and this is not going to be a forgiving or reconciliation that includes forgetting, this will not be forgiving and forgetting this will be remembering and forgiving.
Jesus leads Peter through those three questions, those tender painful difficult questions: Peter do you love me? Peter do you love me? Peter do you love me? And we know that these questions, they recapitulate the three betrayals when Peter said, “I don't know this man” and betrayed his Lord three times. These three questions are shepherding Peter back into this relationship and ministering to him by drawing him back into that essential love of his Lord that is core to his life.
“Do you love me?” It's painful. It is painful. We hear it right in the passage. It hurts Peter's feelings to be questioned this way but we know with Jesus in his ministry he is always drawing us deeper into this love that we have for him.
And why is Jesus drawing Peter deeper? Why? Because he has a mission for Peter, he has a purpose for Peter, a ministry for Peter. Like in his ministry Jesus is always looking for partners to send out to share the good news and he knows if Peter is going to do that to his full potential he must be fundamentally grounded in his love for Jesus. He must grow in his courage to love Jesus if he's going to become a good shepherd. A good shepherd who lays his life down for the sheep, a good shepherd who will pay the ultimate price for faithfulness and devotion when Peter is crucified for being an apostle.
This is Jesus doing tough love. This is Jesus caring for his friend and preparing him to have that depth of love he will need to give his life away for his friends. Do you love me? Feed my sheep. A life is restored, a vocation is restored. The church finds an advocate. This is the Risen Christ at work.
We have Paul as well. We have Paul in a slightly different story, Paul breathing threats and murder. Paul the persecutor of the earlier followers of Jesus. He is knocked down. The context is not breakfast on the beach. The context is a slap down on the road to Damascus. Notice there's no horse, by the way, every picture you've seen of Paul getting knocked off a horse - there's no horse in the story. I would love to know how many people saw a horse when we read the story.
Paul, being intense and zealous and hard-headed, is one of those folks a little bit like me who needs a good knock from God to get it together. God has multiple approaches. Paul knocked down is enfeebled, he's blinded, he's made dependent. He is humbled in every way and made to depend on exactly the same people he was persecuting. He is taken in by Judas, he is prayed for by Ananias, all under the direction of the Risen Christ. He is turned over into the hands of those he called enemies and those early followers of Jesus were challenged to live up to the teaching - love your enemies. Love the guy who's breathing threats and murder. Love the guy who stood by when Stephen was stoned to death. Love this deadly enemy and bring him in.
And here in Paul we have another testimony of how the Risen Christ works to change a life, to transform a life from threats and murder to good news and new life, rom persecutor to persecuted, in a way that would teach us all how to accept transformation, to be humbled, to be blinded, which is to say to no longer be so sure about what we thought we knew. To be dependent on others, on community, to pray for us and to lead us into what love means. Paul is transformed by this power of the Risen Christ that was available to him and is equally available to us.
If we risk it, if we so dare, this Risen Christ offers us transformation of life. How will we be changed from fisherman to shepherd? How will we be changed from persecutor to persecuted? How will we make ourselves available to the Risen Christ who is working in us to change us forever? I really sincerely believe that people are right to be wary of this relationship with Christ because deep inside we know it will change us. For those of us who have faith in this process and know that Christ leads us only deeper into love, we must be escorts on this journey. We must be people who remind our brothers and sisters, our siblings in christ, that this is a journey deeper into love from death into life, from despair into hope, from fear into courage, and most of all that it's a journey that enlists us to be part of the healing of the world, the healing of the world we know in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Apr 24, 2022 |
Community
| Anne Alexis Harra
Community
Listen in to the sermon from Anne Alexis Harra for the Second Sunday in Easter, April 24, 2022.
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Community
Anne Alexis Harra
April 24, 2022
Let everything that has breath praise you, O God of Salvation.
Please be seated.
Today is a day to be joyful in the Lord, and in the Resurrection indeed. Spring seems spring-ier than ever. My house smells like hyacinths and I couldn’t be happier. It seems that nature itself is rejoicing in the Good News this morning. We welcomed a new beloved child of God into the Body of Christ as we are gathered to bask in the beautiful forgiveness and glow of the Easter Season. Alleluia!
When, friends, has the Resurrected Christ appeared to you? When has Jesus dwelt among you and said “Peace be with you.” Were you alone in prayer? Or perhaps, were you accomplishing a major life moment? Were you supported and raised up in a community? For me, life in this community continues to shape my faith and inform my questions. Only in community have I grown so profoundly in faith and received the courage to say, “The Lord is risen indeed, and I see that Resurrection everywhere around me and within me.”
Friends, life in the Resurrection is beautiful. Luckily for us, the promise of the Resurrection is the very essence of our passage from the Book of Acts today. Luke tells us in Acts that the disciples were publicly teaching in Jerusalem, which was a risky feat for them, and perhaps more importantly, they were doing so because they said, “we are witnesses to the events of the Resurrection.” These are the same disciples who we encountered as bereaved, doubtful and full of fear in the Gospel of John– until they encountered Jesus. Life in the Holy Spirit and the peace of the Risen Christ triggered a death to fear and a Resurrection to joy in the Lord in the disciples and in all of us. That same joy was what enabled the disciples to respond to the jealousy and criticism of the high priest and council with nothing but love and devotion to God.
Our Lessons today emphasized the importance of community in recognizing the Risen Christ. Community is fundamentally at the heart of ministry, and it is foundational to our lives as followers of Christ. I have found that we are far more likely to encounter the Resurrection when we are around people who love us, who hold us and who uplift us. I consider myself deeply blessed to be in a community of people who lovingly sow the seeds of ministry, together, who open the door for me to ask questions. So as I prepared for this sermon, I couldn’t help but give thanks for the community of St. Martin’s.
As I look at my most beloved St. Martin’s, I see a community full of disciples with the same zealous energy of the Holy Spirit and love of Christ that I do in the apostles from our passage in Acts this morning. It is this same community that just moments ago witnessed baby Kai’s baptism into the Body of Christ, that assured Kai’s family in our faithful support of Kai’s faith journey, and that boldly proclaimed that we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. We first meet the Risen Christ in Baptism, which is entry into the community of faith, and this underscores the need for community as we grow in faith and questions.
Community is essential in helping us recognize the Resurrected Christ. We cannot do it on our own. And God doesn’t want us to do it on our own. It is not lost on me that Thomas recognizes the Risen Christ while amongst his friends, the fact the disciples are in their formation together when Christ appears to them the first and second time, is significant. Thomas has his moment of vulnerability and of faith when he is amongst friends, the people he loves and the people who love him. Similarly, Luke emphasizes our need for community in the passage from Acts. The apostles are brought together as a group to the Temple council and the high priest. It is Peter and the apostles who spoke to the high priest and declared that they answer not to man, but to God. They proclaimed Jesus’ death and resurrection. And, they inform the high priest that they were witnesses to these things. It is brave of the apostles to be so audacious before the high priest, but that is the strength of the community, especially one that has witnessed and experienced the Risen Christ in our midst.
When we are in a community that uplifts us and empowers us to recognize and embrace the power of the Risen Christ, we are given a beautiful opportunity to grow in faithfulness, like the apostles. When we are in a community that allows us to ask questions and think critically, we encounter the Christ in new ways which only serves to strengthen our relationship with him. How deeply reassuring it is to know that when we are in community, we do not need to have all the answers. How freeing that is.
I believe that Thomas and Jesus’ encounter this morning functioned as a catalyst to vital questions of faith and what the resurrection means for us, as Christ’s disciples in 2022. Thomas sadly has received a bad rap over the years but the truth is, his skepticism opened a door to fruitful discussions of faith, theology, and Christology. It is important that he expressed both his doubt and his faith in a community where he felt safe and comfortable enough to do so. It’s also significant that we see Thomas proclaim one of the essential Christological statements - “My Lord and My God” - while he is in his community. I would much rather see a disciple like Thomas, who earnestly is grasping with huge questions, but doing so faithfully, than one who simply parrots messages in the hopes of gaining more glory.
Friends, this week and beyond I encourage you to consider your communities, both in and out of St. Martin’s. Your communities of families, of friends, of St. Martin’s, of Women Connecting, or wherever you find yourself. What about your community draws you nearer to Christ? How do you see yourself fulfilling the Baptismal Covenant which connects us to the entire Christian community? How do you serve your community to the Glory of God, and how does your community help you encounter the Risen Christ?
The strength of the community here is something that inspires me and anchors my belief in the Resurrection. Many people in my family can tell you I was not the same person before I came to St. Martin’s and it is amazing what joy and life in the Holy Spirit does to a very weary soul. As we look toward the future and the inevitable transition that will come with it, we have opportunities to grow, to learn, to ask questions, and to be bold. We will be in the presence of the Almighty God, who was and who is and who is to come. We will be in the presence of the Risen Christ who before all else offers us peace. We will grow in faith and rejoice in the promise of salvation. We will continue to grow members into the Body of Christ. And, friends, we will boldly proclaim the resurrection with the same zest and convictions that the apostles had. Alleluia, the Lord is Risen!
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Community
Anne Alexis Harra
April 24, 2022
Let everything that has breath praise you, O God of Salvation.
Please be seated.
Today is a day to be joyful in the Lord, and in the Resurrection indeed. Spring seems spring-ier than ever. My house smells like hyacinths and I couldn’t be happier. It seems that nature itself is rejoicing in the Good News this morning. We welcomed a new beloved child of God into the Body of Christ as we are gathered to bask in the beautiful forgiveness and glow of the Easter Season. Alleluia!
When, friends, has the Resurrected Christ appeared to you? When has Jesus dwelt among you and said “Peace be with you.” Were you alone in prayer? Or perhaps, were you accomplishing a major life moment? Were you supported and raised up in a community? For me, life in this community continues to shape my faith and inform my questions. Only in community have I grown so profoundly in faith and received the courage to say, “The Lord is risen indeed, and I see that Resurrection everywhere around me and within me.”
Friends, life in the Resurrection is beautiful. Luckily for us, the promise of the Resurrection is the very essence of our passage from the Book of Acts today. Luke tells us in Acts that the disciples were publicly teaching in Jerusalem, which was a risky feat for them, and perhaps more importantly, they were doing so because they said, “we are witnesses to the events of the Resurrection.” These are the same disciples who we encountered as bereaved, doubtful and full of fear in the Gospel of John– until they encountered Jesus. Life in the Holy Spirit and the peace of the Risen Christ triggered a death to fear and a Resurrection to joy in the Lord in the disciples and in all of us. That same joy was what enabled the disciples to respond to the jealousy and criticism of the high priest and council with nothing but love and devotion to God.
Our Lessons today emphasized the importance of community in recognizing the Risen Christ. Community is fundamentally at the heart of ministry, and it is foundational to our lives as followers of Christ. I have found that we are far more likely to encounter the Resurrection when we are around people who love us, who hold us and who uplift us. I consider myself deeply blessed to be in a community of people who lovingly sow the seeds of ministry, together, who open the door for me to ask questions. So as I prepared for this sermon, I couldn’t help but give thanks for the community of St. Martin’s.
As I look at my most beloved St. Martin’s, I see a community full of disciples with the same zealous energy of the Holy Spirit and love of Christ that I do in the apostles from our passage in Acts this morning. It is this same community that just moments ago witnessed baby Kai’s baptism into the Body of Christ, that assured Kai’s family in our faithful support of Kai’s faith journey, and that boldly proclaimed that we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. We first meet the Risen Christ in Baptism, which is entry into the community of faith, and this underscores the need for community as we grow in faith and questions.
Community is essential in helping us recognize the Resurrected Christ. We cannot do it on our own. And God doesn’t want us to do it on our own. It is not lost on me that Thomas recognizes the Risen Christ while amongst his friends, the fact the disciples are in their formation together when Christ appears to them the first and second time, is significant. Thomas has his moment of vulnerability and of faith when he is amongst friends, the people he loves and the people who love him. Similarly, Luke emphasizes our need for community in the passage from Acts. The apostles are brought together as a group to the Temple council and the high priest. It is Peter and the apostles who spoke to the high priest and declared that they answer not to man, but to God. They proclaimed Jesus’ death and resurrection. And, they inform the high priest that they were witnesses to these things. It is brave of the apostles to be so audacious before the high priest, but that is the strength of the community, especially one that has witnessed and experienced the Risen Christ in our midst.
When we are in a community that uplifts us and empowers us to recognize and embrace the power of the Risen Christ, we are given a beautiful opportunity to grow in faithfulness, like the apostles. When we are in a community that allows us to ask questions and think critically, we encounter the Christ in new ways which only serves to strengthen our relationship with him. How deeply reassuring it is to know that when we are in community, we do not need to have all the answers. How freeing that is.
I believe that Thomas and Jesus’ encounter this morning functioned as a catalyst to vital questions of faith and what the resurrection means for us, as Christ’s disciples in 2022. Thomas sadly has received a bad rap over the years but the truth is, his skepticism opened a door to fruitful discussions of faith, theology, and Christology. It is important that he expressed both his doubt and his faith in a community where he felt safe and comfortable enough to do so. It’s also significant that we see Thomas proclaim one of the essential Christological statements - “My Lord and My God” - while he is in his community. I would much rather see a disciple like Thomas, who earnestly is grasping with huge questions, but doing so faithfully, than one who simply parrots messages in the hopes of gaining more glory.
Friends, this week and beyond I encourage you to consider your communities, both in and out of St. Martin’s. Your communities of families, of friends, of St. Martin’s, of Women Connecting, or wherever you find yourself. What about your community draws you nearer to Christ? How do you see yourself fulfilling the Baptismal Covenant which connects us to the entire Christian community? How do you serve your community to the Glory of God, and how does your community help you encounter the Risen Christ?
The strength of the community here is something that inspires me and anchors my belief in the Resurrection. Many people in my family can tell you I was not the same person before I came to St. Martin’s and it is amazing what joy and life in the Holy Spirit does to a very weary soul. As we look toward the future and the inevitable transition that will come with it, we have opportunities to grow, to learn, to ask questions, and to be bold. We will be in the presence of the Almighty God, who was and who is and who is to come. We will be in the presence of the Risen Christ who before all else offers us peace. We will grow in faith and rejoice in the promise of salvation. We will continue to grow members into the Body of Christ. And, friends, we will boldly proclaim the resurrection with the same zest and convictions that the apostles had. Alleluia, the Lord is Risen!
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Apr 10, 2022 |
Rollercoasters
| Anne Alexis Harra
Rollercoasters
Listen to this week’s sermon from LIFT Worship from Anne Alexis Harra for Palm Sunday, April 10, 2022
Learn more about LIFT, Living in Faith Together, at stmartinec.org/lift
Today’s Readings:
Readings were taken from God’s Word, My Voice: A Children’s Lectionary
- - - - -
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Who here likes to ride rollercoasters? I used to be really afraid of rollercoasters. I didn’t like that I wasn’t in control. When we ride rollercoasters, the experience is almost always entirely out of our control: how fast we’re going in the car, if we’re going up or down or even upside down, how many hills there are. I don’t feel so afraid of them anymore, though. Riding a rollercoaster usually means we have to be brave enough to let go of control for just a few moments so we can come off the ride feeling exhilarated, free, and maybe a little nauseous. :)
Holy Week is a special kind of rollercoaster: it is an emotional rollercoaster. In these days leading up to Jesus’ death and glorious resurrection, we will feel all the emotions. We will not be in a whole lot of control. We will truly feel like we’re on a rollercoaster!
Today is the first part of this ride: today is Palm Sunday. Today we are climbing up the big hill in the rollercoaster car. We are excited today because Jesus has made a triumphant entry into the big city of Jerusalem. We are excited with the disciples and the people who wave their palms to welcome Jesus. We feel Jesus with us.
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was crucial to completing God’s work for Jesus. Can someone refresh my memory – what kind of animal did Jesus ride into Jerusalem? A donkey, that’s right! Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey fulfilled a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible (Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, Zech. 9:9.). The people of Israel were excited to welcome Jesus! But sadly, that excitement didn’t last forever. Jesus knew that he was going to Jerusalem to die for our sins, and then God would raise him to new life.
Now friends, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but I need to be honest with you: we are climbing up the hill. We eventually will begin to descend, or come down, the hill, quite fast. We will feel sad when our friend Jesus dies on Good Friday. We will feel unsettled on Holy Saturday, as we wait with the disciples. We will feel safe, exhilarated, free, full of joy on Easter Sunday, when we come to the conclusion of our ride.
If you’re like me, and you need some reassurance before we really get going on our adventure, I have some good news. Throughout our Holy Week rollercoaster, we will always be safe and loved by God. We can bring all our feelings and prayers to our friend, Jesus. And lastly, nobody is ever alone on one of these rides. We have one another, and we have God. And we will remember that Jesus is our eternal king of peace. Thank you for joining me on our Holy Week ride, friends. Hosanna in the highest. Amen.
Learn more about LIFT, Living in Faith Together, at stmartinec.org/lift
Today’s Readings:
Readings were taken from God’s Word, My Voice: A Children’s Lectionary
- - - - -
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Who here likes to ride rollercoasters? I used to be really afraid of rollercoasters. I didn’t like that I wasn’t in control. When we ride rollercoasters, the experience is almost always entirely out of our control: how fast we’re going in the car, if we’re going up or down or even upside down, how many hills there are. I don’t feel so afraid of them anymore, though. Riding a rollercoaster usually means we have to be brave enough to let go of control for just a few moments so we can come off the ride feeling exhilarated, free, and maybe a little nauseous. :)
Holy Week is a special kind of rollercoaster: it is an emotional rollercoaster. In these days leading up to Jesus’ death and glorious resurrection, we will feel all the emotions. We will not be in a whole lot of control. We will truly feel like we’re on a rollercoaster!
Today is the first part of this ride: today is Palm Sunday. Today we are climbing up the big hill in the rollercoaster car. We are excited today because Jesus has made a triumphant entry into the big city of Jerusalem. We are excited with the disciples and the people who wave their palms to welcome Jesus. We feel Jesus with us.
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was crucial to completing God’s work for Jesus. Can someone refresh my memory – what kind of animal did Jesus ride into Jerusalem? A donkey, that’s right! Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey fulfilled a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible (Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, Zech. 9:9.). The people of Israel were excited to welcome Jesus! But sadly, that excitement didn’t last forever. Jesus knew that he was going to Jerusalem to die for our sins, and then God would raise him to new life.
Now friends, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but I need to be honest with you: we are climbing up the hill. We eventually will begin to descend, or come down, the hill, quite fast. We will feel sad when our friend Jesus dies on Good Friday. We will feel unsettled on Holy Saturday, as we wait with the disciples. We will feel safe, exhilarated, free, full of joy on Easter Sunday, when we come to the conclusion of our ride.
If you’re like me, and you need some reassurance before we really get going on our adventure, I have some good news. Throughout our Holy Week rollercoaster, we will always be safe and loved by God. We can bring all our feelings and prayers to our friend, Jesus. And lastly, nobody is ever alone on one of these rides. We have one another, and we have God. And we will remember that Jesus is our eternal king of peace. Thank you for joining me on our Holy Week ride, friends. Hosanna in the highest. Amen.
Apr 10, 2022 |
Talking about the Passion
| The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Talking about the Passion
Tune into the sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for Palm Sunday, April 10, 2022.
Learn more about Easter at St. Martin’s: stmartinec.org/easter
Today's readings are:
Talking About the Passion
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
April 10, 2022
Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Lord God, we stand in awe and wonder before your cross. Help us know that your cross is the medicine of the world, the healing of the world, the return of the world to life in you. We give you thanks that you have taken on the consequences of our sin in the body of your love and that you have defeated those powers so we may have our lives in you.
In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
A brief meditation today as we head into Holy Week:
Every year as we approach Holy Week I ask myself, what shall I pray for this year? What shall I pray for as I give my prayerful attention to the passion of my savior Jesus Christ? How shall I open my heart to the gifts he is giving me and all of us through his passion, death and resurrection? And I encourage you all to set an intention this week. Set for yourself an intention. What will you pray for? What will you ask for? What gifts do you hope to receive when you give your full worshipful attention to these events we celebrate this week? For me it's going to be a focus on spiritual freedom, especially spiritual freedom available to us even when we feel powerless, even when we feel overpowered. How can I in some small way take on the freedom of Jesus Christ who is the ultimate example of spiritual freedom?
I see that spiritual freedom in Jesus throughout the passion - it's ironically in Luke in the fact that Pilate and Herod become friends. Jesus creates a reconciliation between his enemies in the course of his passion, showing us what his life is all about, even while he's under the power of the state. The freedom of Jesus for me is so beautifully present in Maundy Thursday, in the giving of the supper in his name the night before he dies. The night before he dies a death under torture he gives his disciples a way to understand what's about to happen. He has the spiritual freedom of love and grace in a moment of absolute terror to nurture and feed and love his friends and support them through the loss and terror they're about to experience. That is simply awe-inspiring freedom.
We heard it in the story of the cross just now, forgiving and loving while being tortured. Forgiving and loving while dying. That is that awe-inspiring spiritual freedom which to me says this Jesus Christ is so far beyond me, so far beyond me and living out harmony with God. In what might seem like total powerlessness he lives the power of love.
Now, crucifixion and torture are meant to destroy community. That's what torture does in a police state. It tears people apart from one another, it causes people to betray each other, it creates suspicion and fear. It's meant to terrorize the population, and maybe worst of all torture is meant at its worst to cause us to betray ourselves, to betray our highest values, our highest commitments for the sake of relief. And here we have Jesus in love under torture resisting all of those things, creating community, including people, forgiving enemies, bringing people together.
Once again: wonder, awe, praise. This Jesus Christ is beyond me in his spiritual freedom, yet this is the spiritual freedom my life depends on and it is the ultimate gift Christ gives us - the ability in our constraints, in our limitations, in our frustrations, in our powerlessness to have a source of integrity, to have a source of gentle loving presence in ourselves through Christ as the one who set us free by his cross to have that freedom.
This is my prayer during Holy Week: to grow in spiritual freedom, especially when I feel constrained or powerless, especially when there are greater powers acting than I can affect, to hang on to Christ who is with me, setting me free in each moment because he's defeated the powers so we may live with him. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Learn more about Easter at St. Martin’s: stmartinec.org/easter
Today's readings are:
- Mark 11:1-11
- Isaiah 50:4-9a
- Psalm 31:9-16
- Philippians 2:5-11
- Luke 23:1-49
Talking About the Passion
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
April 10, 2022
Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Lord God, we stand in awe and wonder before your cross. Help us know that your cross is the medicine of the world, the healing of the world, the return of the world to life in you. We give you thanks that you have taken on the consequences of our sin in the body of your love and that you have defeated those powers so we may have our lives in you.
In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
A brief meditation today as we head into Holy Week:
Every year as we approach Holy Week I ask myself, what shall I pray for this year? What shall I pray for as I give my prayerful attention to the passion of my savior Jesus Christ? How shall I open my heart to the gifts he is giving me and all of us through his passion, death and resurrection? And I encourage you all to set an intention this week. Set for yourself an intention. What will you pray for? What will you ask for? What gifts do you hope to receive when you give your full worshipful attention to these events we celebrate this week? For me it's going to be a focus on spiritual freedom, especially spiritual freedom available to us even when we feel powerless, even when we feel overpowered. How can I in some small way take on the freedom of Jesus Christ who is the ultimate example of spiritual freedom?
I see that spiritual freedom in Jesus throughout the passion - it's ironically in Luke in the fact that Pilate and Herod become friends. Jesus creates a reconciliation between his enemies in the course of his passion, showing us what his life is all about, even while he's under the power of the state. The freedom of Jesus for me is so beautifully present in Maundy Thursday, in the giving of the supper in his name the night before he dies. The night before he dies a death under torture he gives his disciples a way to understand what's about to happen. He has the spiritual freedom of love and grace in a moment of absolute terror to nurture and feed and love his friends and support them through the loss and terror they're about to experience. That is simply awe-inspiring freedom.
We heard it in the story of the cross just now, forgiving and loving while being tortured. Forgiving and loving while dying. That is that awe-inspiring spiritual freedom which to me says this Jesus Christ is so far beyond me, so far beyond me and living out harmony with God. In what might seem like total powerlessness he lives the power of love.
Now, crucifixion and torture are meant to destroy community. That's what torture does in a police state. It tears people apart from one another, it causes people to betray each other, it creates suspicion and fear. It's meant to terrorize the population, and maybe worst of all torture is meant at its worst to cause us to betray ourselves, to betray our highest values, our highest commitments for the sake of relief. And here we have Jesus in love under torture resisting all of those things, creating community, including people, forgiving enemies, bringing people together.
Once again: wonder, awe, praise. This Jesus Christ is beyond me in his spiritual freedom, yet this is the spiritual freedom my life depends on and it is the ultimate gift Christ gives us - the ability in our constraints, in our limitations, in our frustrations, in our powerlessness to have a source of integrity, to have a source of gentle loving presence in ourselves through Christ as the one who set us free by his cross to have that freedom.
This is my prayer during Holy Week: to grow in spiritual freedom, especially when I feel constrained or powerless, especially when there are greater powers acting than I can affect, to hang on to Christ who is with me, setting me free in each moment because he's defeated the powers so we may live with him. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
Apr 03, 2022 |
Greater Than >
| The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Greater Than >
Tune into the sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 3, 2022.
Support St. Martin’s mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Lord God by your grace help us join Mary in our worship today. Help us join her in her extravagant adoration and her loving sorrow, her profound awareness of the cost you will pay and the cost of following you. Lord God help all of us who go out weeping and come back rejoicing in song. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
Back in elementary school I liked math. Math was fun. Each year began with fresh new workbooks fragrant with new paper and printer’s glue. The teacher passed out wonderful blue on white dittos. We pressed them up to our faces, inhaling that inky, oily, mimeograph musk. We learned fun mathematics like roman numerals. Who knew how helpful that was going to be? I can tell you what page I am on in a preface.
My favorite unit each year was “greater than, lesser than, and equals to”. I love those neat little rows of numbers and the horizontal carrot we would have to draw to indicate that 101 was greater than 99 and so on down the page.
In future years the teacher would add greater than or equal to, lesser than or equal to, adding a straight line under that horizontal carrot. What rich concepts they were giving us. Concepts that enchanted my mind and stayed with me: greater than and including, greater than and affirming what came before, greater than and surpassing all, in one simple sign.
That greater than sign, although not intended in my very secular public school, became for me a favorite symbol for God. I scribble it on notepads. I hold it in my imagination when I need to remember who my God is, a greater love than I could ever imagine. A greater healing than I could ever hope for. A greater goodness than I could ever generate on my own. A greater faithfulness, a greater steadfastness, a greater mercy, a greater hope, a greater creativity than my cramped heart and mind could ever approach under my own steam.
God's ways are greater than my ways and so I praise God, so I give thanks to God, so I place my trust in God. This greater than of God inspires extravagant praise, super abundant, repsonic, excessive, gushing love. It is the order of the day in both Paul to the Philippians and Mary in the gospel. In fair warning if you were raised to be repressed, reticent, reserved, such overflowing might trigger hot shame in your face, some embarrassment or at least some discomfort, but let us let Paul and Mary pull ourselves into adoration, pull ourselves into infatuation. These faithful souls were not afraid to pour out their souls and love of Jesus.
I want to start by re-reading Paul's letter to the Philippians as enraptured and repsonic rhetoric.
We know from his letter to the Romans that he affirms the goodness of the Torah and holds it as precious and not less than the new covenant in Christ. It's just that for Paul, Christ is equal to and more than. He has finally found full participation in the eternal life and goodness of God through his new life in Christ, and for him this affirms while surpassing his former righteousness under the Torah. And this is important for me to spell out because we're being offered the same gift as Paul. We're invited into the same rapturous life with God. It's also important to spell out because too many have read St. Paul through a northern European anti-semitic lens that reads Paul as in either/or between law and gospel.
What I recall is much more subtle on the topic and I need to affirm this because too often I hear folks mistakenly compare, quote, the “God of the old testament” and the “God of Jesus.” Same God.
The Torah, the law, is affirmed in the gospel. We must watch our tendency to demean it. The Torah is a good gift from God, the God given instructions and obligations to a priestly people set apart to live in covenant with a holy God. The Torah marked and continues to mark to this day the ultimate allegiance of Israel to God, so marked Israel represents God among hostile nations that create peril and cause to themselves then and now. Torah fidelity is risky. It's courageous identification with God and I so appreciate the risks it calls out by naming the sacred for what it is.
We need to bring a subtle reading to the Gospel of John as well. This is my day for subtle reasoning. The author of John likes to set up these either/or situations that heighten the drama through conflict. Do we follow Mary or do we follow Judas? I think John's not subtle about that one - he has an ax to grind, an agenda, and he shares this critical fault with social media algorithms that juice up conflict and polarization to maximize attention regardless of the terrible effects on our common life.
And I could, even as I read the story of Jesus, Mary and Judas, see the memes, see the social media treatment of the passage oozing the snark about virtue signaling on both sides. Oh isn't Mary so pious? Oh isn't Judas so righteous? All used to throw confusion, antagonism and agitation around.
Sadly enough John would probably be on social media. It's his style too, so permit me to reframe the scene not as a meme but as an icon, an icon that includes Jesus, Judas and Mary as an image of God's loving work. Let's start with Mary. Here's Mary, her admiration at the feet of Jesus says love the Lord your God with all your soul, all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength. This is the first commandment. She embodies the first commandment. Mary is, in this icon, the first commandment, and the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as herself. Judas plays the part of the second and co-equal commandment. Love of God and love of neighbor. Mary and Judas go together.
In Christ, those forms of caritas, both forms of charity and love coexist and support each other. They cannot have their full power without each other. Adore God, serve God in nature, serve God and neighbor, adore God. It's all one piece. They are not in opposition. They're not opposed to each other.
But that extravagant adoration of merit, anointing Jesus with perfume worth a year's worth of wages, takes us deeper into the greater than of this icon that I'm imagining. Mary is preparing Jesus for his death. This icon is not only an illustration of our highest callings, this icon is a prelude to the final showdown, the final battle where Jesus confronts and defeats the powers that prevent our faithfulness.
Mary is preparing Jesus for that final conflict that will make faithfulness possible. In her loving sorrow, in her mourning, she's loving him. She knows what comes next for a prophet. She knows that he is marked for death. The authorities have already met and he must die. Why? Because he raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. Why? Because challenging the power of death rattles the empire to its core. If we cannot terrorize the masses with death how will we control them? How will we retain domination?
And so in following Mary, what is revealed is that death in general is not the ultimate source of our fear and anxiety. It's when death is used to erode the faith and courage we need to resist the forces that manipulate death, that is when death is an enemy needing to be overcome. Death can be a friend to suffer, a gentle release at the end of life, and in all my experience with dying people very rarely are they afraid. Rather they are mourning, saying goodbye to people they love, and they're mostly concerned with causing them distress.
Jesus will overcome the tool of death. Death as execution. And this is the greater than. This is the greater love we cannot give ourselves but it must be done for us by God in Christ. This is the greater than that opens a greater life to us, greater than we can even begin to imagine, a peace greater than we can understand. God is greater than us so I praise God. In Christ God means to be greater than and equal to us so we may surpass our former lives and be found in Christ. Amen.
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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
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Today's readings are:
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Lord God by your grace help us join Mary in our worship today. Help us join her in her extravagant adoration and her loving sorrow, her profound awareness of the cost you will pay and the cost of following you. Lord God help all of us who go out weeping and come back rejoicing in song. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
Back in elementary school I liked math. Math was fun. Each year began with fresh new workbooks fragrant with new paper and printer’s glue. The teacher passed out wonderful blue on white dittos. We pressed them up to our faces, inhaling that inky, oily, mimeograph musk. We learned fun mathematics like roman numerals. Who knew how helpful that was going to be? I can tell you what page I am on in a preface.
My favorite unit each year was “greater than, lesser than, and equals to”. I love those neat little rows of numbers and the horizontal carrot we would have to draw to indicate that 101 was greater than 99 and so on down the page.
In future years the teacher would add greater than or equal to, lesser than or equal to, adding a straight line under that horizontal carrot. What rich concepts they were giving us. Concepts that enchanted my mind and stayed with me: greater than and including, greater than and affirming what came before, greater than and surpassing all, in one simple sign.
That greater than sign, although not intended in my very secular public school, became for me a favorite symbol for God. I scribble it on notepads. I hold it in my imagination when I need to remember who my God is, a greater love than I could ever imagine. A greater healing than I could ever hope for. A greater goodness than I could ever generate on my own. A greater faithfulness, a greater steadfastness, a greater mercy, a greater hope, a greater creativity than my cramped heart and mind could ever approach under my own steam.
God's ways are greater than my ways and so I praise God, so I give thanks to God, so I place my trust in God. This greater than of God inspires extravagant praise, super abundant, repsonic, excessive, gushing love. It is the order of the day in both Paul to the Philippians and Mary in the gospel. In fair warning if you were raised to be repressed, reticent, reserved, such overflowing might trigger hot shame in your face, some embarrassment or at least some discomfort, but let us let Paul and Mary pull ourselves into adoration, pull ourselves into infatuation. These faithful souls were not afraid to pour out their souls and love of Jesus.
I want to start by re-reading Paul's letter to the Philippians as enraptured and repsonic rhetoric.
We know from his letter to the Romans that he affirms the goodness of the Torah and holds it as precious and not less than the new covenant in Christ. It's just that for Paul, Christ is equal to and more than. He has finally found full participation in the eternal life and goodness of God through his new life in Christ, and for him this affirms while surpassing his former righteousness under the Torah. And this is important for me to spell out because we're being offered the same gift as Paul. We're invited into the same rapturous life with God. It's also important to spell out because too many have read St. Paul through a northern European anti-semitic lens that reads Paul as in either/or between law and gospel.
What I recall is much more subtle on the topic and I need to affirm this because too often I hear folks mistakenly compare, quote, the “God of the old testament” and the “God of Jesus.” Same God.
The Torah, the law, is affirmed in the gospel. We must watch our tendency to demean it. The Torah is a good gift from God, the God given instructions and obligations to a priestly people set apart to live in covenant with a holy God. The Torah marked and continues to mark to this day the ultimate allegiance of Israel to God, so marked Israel represents God among hostile nations that create peril and cause to themselves then and now. Torah fidelity is risky. It's courageous identification with God and I so appreciate the risks it calls out by naming the sacred for what it is.
We need to bring a subtle reading to the Gospel of John as well. This is my day for subtle reasoning. The author of John likes to set up these either/or situations that heighten the drama through conflict. Do we follow Mary or do we follow Judas? I think John's not subtle about that one - he has an ax to grind, an agenda, and he shares this critical fault with social media algorithms that juice up conflict and polarization to maximize attention regardless of the terrible effects on our common life.
And I could, even as I read the story of Jesus, Mary and Judas, see the memes, see the social media treatment of the passage oozing the snark about virtue signaling on both sides. Oh isn't Mary so pious? Oh isn't Judas so righteous? All used to throw confusion, antagonism and agitation around.
Sadly enough John would probably be on social media. It's his style too, so permit me to reframe the scene not as a meme but as an icon, an icon that includes Jesus, Judas and Mary as an image of God's loving work. Let's start with Mary. Here's Mary, her admiration at the feet of Jesus says love the Lord your God with all your soul, all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength. This is the first commandment. She embodies the first commandment. Mary is, in this icon, the first commandment, and the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as herself. Judas plays the part of the second and co-equal commandment. Love of God and love of neighbor. Mary and Judas go together.
In Christ, those forms of caritas, both forms of charity and love coexist and support each other. They cannot have their full power without each other. Adore God, serve God in nature, serve God and neighbor, adore God. It's all one piece. They are not in opposition. They're not opposed to each other.
But that extravagant adoration of merit, anointing Jesus with perfume worth a year's worth of wages, takes us deeper into the greater than of this icon that I'm imagining. Mary is preparing Jesus for his death. This icon is not only an illustration of our highest callings, this icon is a prelude to the final showdown, the final battle where Jesus confronts and defeats the powers that prevent our faithfulness.
Mary is preparing Jesus for that final conflict that will make faithfulness possible. In her loving sorrow, in her mourning, she's loving him. She knows what comes next for a prophet. She knows that he is marked for death. The authorities have already met and he must die. Why? Because he raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. Why? Because challenging the power of death rattles the empire to its core. If we cannot terrorize the masses with death how will we control them? How will we retain domination?
And so in following Mary, what is revealed is that death in general is not the ultimate source of our fear and anxiety. It's when death is used to erode the faith and courage we need to resist the forces that manipulate death, that is when death is an enemy needing to be overcome. Death can be a friend to suffer, a gentle release at the end of life, and in all my experience with dying people very rarely are they afraid. Rather they are mourning, saying goodbye to people they love, and they're mostly concerned with causing them distress.
Jesus will overcome the tool of death. Death as execution. And this is the greater than. This is the greater love we cannot give ourselves but it must be done for us by God in Christ. This is the greater than that opens a greater life to us, greater than we can even begin to imagine, a peace greater than we can understand. God is greater than us so I praise God. In Christ God means to be greater than and equal to us so we may surpass our former lives and be found in Christ. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
