Sermons from St. Martin-in-the-Fields

Genesis 2:18-24
Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost...

---

It’s Not Good That We Should Read Alone

The Rev. Dr. Reed Carlson, October 3, 2021

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Please be seated.

In my freshman year of college I was randomly assigned to share a dorm room with three other guys and one of them, I’ll be honest, when I first met him I wasn't sure whether he and I would get along. I'll call him Jesse to protect his privacy even though his real name was Jack. When I first met Jesse it was clear to me that he and I had different interests. Jesse wore a lot of black clothes, the music he preferred was the type where people screamed a lot, and worst of all he was kind of ambivalent towards my Xbox. I mean, how can you trust someone who doesn't like to play Xbox, am I right?

So as the weeks went on it turned out that I was right in part, it was true Jesse and I did not spend, you know, a lot of our free time together, but he and I did share something very important in common. We liked our dorm room to be clean. Not spotless necessarily, you know, but livable. In this Jesse and I were unlikely allies because as it turns out our other two roommates were not human beings but filthy trash monsters.

The trash monsters' names were Nick and Brian and I'm not going to protect their privacy. You see, Brian would throw his dirty clothes everywhere when he was done with them and he didn't do laundry until midterms. And Nick would leave his dirty dishes in my bed because that was where he ate all of his meals because he said it had the best view of the TV. After a few weeks of this thankfully Jesse had an idea. It was called building a fire.

Once per week at some point while the trash monsters were away Jesse and I would walk around the room and take everything that we considered to be out of place and put it in a big pile in the entryway and it was understood that our roommates would then have 24 hours to clean up the pile before we burned it. Was this extreme? Absolutely. Were we serious? You know, probably not, but it did kind of work. Things did improve although not really enough and after that first semester, Jesse and I we ditched the trash monsters and we got a different room together, and so even though Jesse never played Xbox with me and I never went in for the screamo music he ended up being the best roommate that I ever had.

Okay so why am I telling you this story? Because my sermon this evening is about unlikely allies and the perspectives that they can bring. You see, I think churches are a bit like freshman college dorm rooms. Often they smell a bit funny and we don't always get to choose who is there even, so we do need to learn to live together and we need to learn how to solve problems together. Some of our roommates do and say things that can make our shared space unlivable while others can do just the opposite, and it's not always the roommates that you expect.

Two of the texts that we read this evening, Genesis 2 and Mark 10, are texts that maybe many of you have heard before in addition to them being read regularly in kind of the church calendar. Portions of them show up in various liturgies, especially wedding liturgies. For centuries they've been used to form a kind of theological framework for understanding love and partnership especially in the home.

However, many of us probably also know that some of our roommates in the church have used these texts in profoundly oppressive ways, especially the story of the Garden of Eden that we find in Genesis 2 and 3. That's my focus for this evening. This text has been used to prescribe restrictive normative notions of gender and sexuality which have resulted in systematic inequality and violence, especially towards women and queer people, and as a result, for many people both in and outside of the church, these stories are sources of trauma, not of hope. Thankfully in the church we have other roommates as well and they know how to build a fire.

I teach at the seminary in Mount Airy about a mile away from here on Germantown Avenue and I offer most of the Old Testament classes there. This is the part of the Bible that was written before Jesus came along and one of the skills that I teach my students (most of them are preparing for ministry), is how to separate out what the Bible says from what people say the Bible says. One of the ways we do this is we read texts together. We read them in class, they read them at home and then they post about it in our class forum. They also read or listen to the interpretations of scholars and other ministers who have unique perspectives on scripture, and in cultivating these different readings of scripture not only do we notice the things we've missed, we also become more aware of our own particularities and intersecting identities.

Now, I teach the Hebrew language too and ancient Near Eastern cultural facts and that sort of thing, but the most important skill that we practice in my classes is learning to read scripture together within the Body of Christ. And it is here where we hear the Holy Spirit speaking to us of liberation and hope and love in the Bible.

So let me give you just a few examples from our genesis reading this this evening. Okay, so you may have heard that this is a story about how women are to blame for sinning and wrecking God's perfect creation for the rest of us, but when you read this story together with the Body of Christ you might see that both the man and the woman are present during that whole exchange with the snake, it's just that the woman does all of the talking while the man is silent. You see, whenever that snake speaks he addresses them in the second person plural form - that is, he's saying “y’all” (but you know, like, in Hebrew), so I believe that whatever the nature of that disobedience is with the fruits and the Tree, whatever its consequences, both the man and the woman are equally responsible.

For centuries the predominantly male interpreters of the Bible have been all too ready to believe the man at his word when he tells God in chapter 3, “Hey, she made me do it. It's not my fault.” But thankfully not everybody who reads the Bible is a man. You may have heard that this story teaches that women must submit to their husbands but when you read this story together with the Body of Christ you might see that this is not how God intended to create the world.

Now it's true that there is a verse in chapter three where God says to the woman, “Your husband shall rule over you.” That's in there, but what too many fail to acknowledge is that this speech from God happens after the snake and the tree and the fruits and all that stuff, thus God is not prescribing the way things ought to be, God is describing the tragic consequences of what has resulted from that first sin. Women submitting to men was not an order that God imposed on creation, it's a sign that things are going wrong.

Now, that may seem like a kind of minor rhetorical distinction but consider this: in the same speech God also tells the man that the ground itself is now cursed and that it will be difficult and back-breaking work to farm food. So does that mean it's wrong to, I don't know, buy a tractor? Is it going against the very nature of Creation to spread a little weed killer or to find some other way to ameliorate this curse that is on the ground? Just because gender inequality was a consequence of sin, that does not mean we have to live our lives maintaining it, thankfully. Thankfully not everybody who reads the Bible is willing to believe that God baked gender inequality into creation.

You may have heard that because this story depicts a man and a woman in a committed sexual relationship that it thereby forbids any other kind of sexual contact between human beings. But when you read this story together with the Body of Christ you might see that God's imperative to those first human beings is to create and raise children, and that is not at all the same thing as a prohibition against other expressions of love and generosity and commitments, including those that develop between same-sex partners.

The fact is, the very first problem, before the tree, the very first problem that we see in the Garden of Eden is that the very first human being is lonely. That's what's in our reading this evening. The very first verse, this is what God says: “It is not good that man should be alone.” Companionship and partnership is what God creates in this story and it's what God intends for all of us, however and with whomever we might find it. Thankfully not everybody who reads the Bible has such a narrow understanding of human relationships.

Let's do one more. You may have heard that this story teaches that every human being is naturally one of two genders but when you read this story together with the Body of Christ you might notice that God originally created just one person, and within that single person are the substances that will eventually become the first man and woman. The first human being is called Adam, which is the Hebrew word for mortal. It's also the root of the name that we use today, Adam. The word Adam is actually a pun because God forms Adam from the adama - that is, from the ground. As one Bible scholar puts it, God takes some of the ground and creates a groundling. The words man and woman -that is, ish and isha in Hebrew - do not even appear in the narrative until there are two people split apart from that original mortal Adam.

What could it possibly mean to be male or female when you are literally the only member of your species? What does it mean that the very first human being that God created was sexually ambiguous? Thankfully there are people in the Body of Christ asking these important questions because I'll be honest, as interesting and as necessary as they are, I would have never thought of them. And I'm a Bible scholar right?

So let me close with one more thought. There's this idea out there that I sometimes encounter in progressive, inclusive churches that the Bible and especially the Old Testament, is not really on our side. “Yeah there are some nice bits here and there but overall the Bible is old, it's outdated and it's non-essential for a kind of modern, you know, progressive Christian faith.” I think when folks say this most of the time I think they mean well. They might be thinking of passages like the Garden of Eden and how some branches of the church have used this text to control and to injure and to violate, but when we bracket off the Bible so uncritically I don't think we realize that we are making the same mistake that those other Christian branches are making. Neither of us is reading scripture with the church.

Today, we're reading it only with the church of the past. It's just that some of us like those past interpretations and some of us reject them, but both perspectives are impoverished, both are short-sighted and both are exclusive. Reading scripture together is one of the most important ways that we as the Body of Christ hear what God is speaking to us today, and in those settings the voice of the Holy Spirit comes as much from the people around us as it does from our own individual readings or hearings of the text. It is not good that we should read alone. Therefore let us cling to the Body of Christ, our community of interpreters, and become one flesh. Amen.

Access a recording of this and other sermons at StMartinEC.org/podcasts/sermons/

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

Genesis 2:18-24
Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost...

---

It’s Complicated

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel, October 3, 2021

Please join me in the spirit of prayer.

Creator God, we give you humble thanks and we express our amazement that you are mindful of us and that you care for each of us. Such extraordinary love points only to your greatness. Lord God keep us in your grace so that we may grow into your love and learn to live in that space just below the angels. In Christ’s Name we pray. Amen.

So my mother always describes “that day” as the worst day of her life. “That day” was the day that my mother's mother moved back in with my mother's father and took her home. My mother had been enjoying life with just her mother. I understand why, because her mother, whose actual name I don't know, was always called by the grandchildren “Other Mama” and that's her name as far as I’m concerned. Other Mama, one of the most nurturing, kind, generous, loving people I've ever met, was taking care of my mom as a solo child in a small bungalow in Amarillo, Texas while Other Mama taught school, and mom enjoyed the undivided attention of her mother. But then she got taken back to her dad.

Now her dad, known to me as Daddy D (known to people more locally as Dr. D. Foster) was a legend in the small town in the Texas Panhandle called Hale Center. He was the town doctor. The one town doctor. Every baby that was born, he delivered. Every bone that broke, he set. Every surgery, he did it. Everyone passing on, he walked them through. He did house calls. He got paid in chickens by broke farmers. He was a legendary small town country god. Now, this public appearance was in contradiction with his domestic life because at home he was retired, he was cruel, he was a drinker, a smoker, and a serial philanderer in a Southern Baptist town.

My grandmother, Other Mama, stood six foot two in flat shoes. She could look Daddy D right in the eyes, but Daddy D had the gift of making her feel small and making her feel bad about herself and he made it a miserable house to live in. So that was the worst day of my mom's life, and even when I was a young child and we visited that little ranch house in Hale Center, Texas, I could feel my beloved grandmother's misery - the heaviness of her hurt on her broad shoulders - vividly, as I worked with her in the kitchen to make breakfast or dinner.

So this is all a way to say that I have some problems with our gospel today, and I'm going to trouble this story a little bit, and it's going to trouble me, and we're going to get someplace with it, and it's going to be complicated so I ask to bear with me. It's really my observation (and I think it's a valid one) that the Episcopal Church has come to a place today where we are able to embrace divorce in a way that Jesus did not.

We can see that when a marriage covenant breaks down so severely that against all efforts, it can't be recovered, we can see that the loving response may be the end of that marriage bond in divorce, that that might be the right loving care of everyone concerned. And so pastorally we wrap couples up in care as they make that journey. We don't judge them, we assist them. This is where we are pastorally today in relationship to divorce. We can see that it demands respect. We can see that it is often a blessing that displays God's liberating and life-giving love in a way that perhaps Jesus could not see according to this passage.

Now, this passage has been worked with by a lot of people and I spent a lot of time evolving arguments this week, and I can teach an adult forum about an hour long on all the ways to worm around what this passage says. There's a whole school that tries to make Jesus a first century feminist who somehow was making men and women equal in this story even though under Roman law they were already such.

I don't really buy all these work-arounds. I think we have to face it head on. Jesus is approached with the question of the legality of divorce and with the Mosaic law he does not contest it, he just says it's given to you for your wholeness and heart. Then he changes the frame in a very Rabbinical argument move and says well that's the Mosaic covenant about the covenant of Creation, and according to Jesus and the covenant of Creation, we’re meant for lifelong marriage or bonding together. And then he goes into the adultery discussion in private with the disciples where yes, men and women are treated equally, but the results aren't so good because if you remarry you’re an adulterer.

So this leads us to the very uncomfortable passage, and as someone once said (the great preacher David Gloss) a woman who had been divorced, well, every time she heard this passage she felt like a garbage can had been dumped on her at church. She came all ready to be renewed and revived and to worship and here comes this gospel like a bunch of garbage to make her feel ashamed and bad about herself. That's why I feel like we have to depart from it to some degree, and be the pastors who recognize that divorce demands respect and blessing and care and may be the right way to go for someone's flourishing and for the health of the whole family.

Now, saying that, -and this is where it gets a little more complicated - I also want to, as I respect divorce, also celebrate life in a union. Now, I trust that this congregation can do complex things in your hearts and your minds so stick with it. While we respect that some marriages are better ended, we still can alongside that celebrate God's intention that we have companionship in the long term, and that's the whole move that Jesus makes back to the Genesis story. The only time in the Genesis story that God says something is not good, it's not good that the first human is alone. So that's how profoundly God believes that we need companionship. We need someone to express that delight and love in us, that is part and parcel of God's delight and love with us.

And another bit of trouble I'm going to throw out in this passage is that that same Genesis passage has been used oppressively to exclude gay and lesbian and transgender people from the benefits of married life and lifelong companionship blessed by the church. Once again I think we’re in a new place in the Episcopal Church where those unions are as blessed as heterosexual unions. Whether it's male and male, female and female, or female and male we can see God's love in these relationships and celebrate them and wish them the same flourishing over time.

Really, indeed when I sit down and do premarital counseling of any couple whatsoever I always move from the assumption that they are heading towards lifelong union. I don't do premarital counseling with an escape clause. You know, saying “these values are from God but you can bail out anytime” is not what I teach. I try to hold out to them the promise of this long-term commitment of time.

These people in their 20s being married right now - actuarially, they might be married for 60 or 70 years. They've got a really good chance at that, so i say to them “think about how your mind, body and spirit will change in 70 years.” And I don't do that lightly. I'm trying to get them to reflect on this gift of love that they share. Does it have the oomph, does it have the depth to stay devoted, stay adoring, stay committed through all of those ups and downs, the for better, the for worse, the richer, the poorer, the sickness, the health? Are your wedding vows very realistic? Do you have the gift of love that's going to see you through that journey? Because for me this whole “to death do us part” thing is not a legal trap, which is how it's sometimes used, that you’ve got to stick together no matter how miserable and bitter you are, how hateful and hurtful a marriage is, you’ve got to stick together til death do you part. That’s the legal reading. For me, the spiritual reading is, do you have the love in your relationship to contemplate on your happiest day the worst thing you can imagine?

Can you imagine losing your beloved, and having the love to go through that horrible experience. That's taking a spiritual sounding. That's looking at the spiritual promise of love, not the legalism of marriage. And marriages can and do do that. They can do that so beautifully. They can express the faithfulness of God for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, for sickness and health till death do us part, and be that gift of a loving presence that we all are so yearning for.

My greatest example of this has been my own parents. They always taught me and my sisters “Jarrett, Dallas, Kelly: marriage is hard work. You’ve got to work at everything.” And boy they did, and they’ve been married 60 years and I celebrate that. At the present time my mom is drifting away with dementia and she's staying in a nursing home room and my dad is staying in their old apartment, but every day my dad at 7:30 am is in her room, and he is in her room until 7:30 p.m. He is supervising her care. He is holding elaborate conversations that are pretty much one-sided. He is showing her pictures of their life together. He is planning the music that she loves. He's defending her against bad medical care. He is loving her in the worst time. This could be the final and the worst time, but this is the time that she's being loved so faithfully, so generously, so sacrificially, that all I can see is God's presence.

So let us hold out that love as a promising gift that God offers us in so many states of life: through friendship, through companionship, through partnership, through community, and yes, through marriage as well. That is how deeply we are loved and I fundamentally believe that God believes that we deserve that level of love and need that level of love to flower into the human beings God created us to be. Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29
Psalm 19:7-14
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp21_RCL.html

---

Stay Salty

The Rev. Barbara Ballenger, September 26, 2021

Let us Pray.

When my kids, who are in their 20s, are annoyed with something or disappointed or are feeling a little bitter they say they are feeling salty. If they know there’s something that’s upsetting me they say, “Mom, you’re a little salty today aren’t you?”

I’m a little salty. It’s a pretty good word to use with today’s Gospel, which will ultimately bring us around to the topic of salt. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Everybody is a little salty in today’s Gospel. They’re also a little salty in the book of Numbers, but in today’s gospel, Jarrett was calling it “Harsh Mark”. I think we’ll call it “Salty Mark.”

For Jesus it started last Sunday on that walk to Capernaum with his followers, and Jesus had to listen to his 12 right-hand men arguing over which of them would be first in the Kingdom of God – as though he can’t hear them, as though he can’t hear everything. And when he asks them about it, they go all silent, like disciples do. And that makes Jesus a little salty.

So as you might remember from last Sunday, he gathered the 12 together in the house where they were staying and said, “if you want to be first, you must be last of all and servant of all.”

Then He placed a child among them and said “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me… whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

He introduced the child not because they are particularly insightful or humble, but because in the socio-familial relationships of the Roman empire, children were dead last. If they were born with deformities they could be left out to die by exposure. So if you’re going to serve the least ones, like this child in Jesus arms, you’ve got to be willing to be less than least.

This week, that child is still in Jesus’ lap and the 12 Apostles are still struggling with what Jesus is telling them.

You know, so much has been made about the 12 apostles, about how they were the church’s first leaders, the representatives of the 12 tribes of Israel, the predecessors of bishops and priests. I just wonder if Jesus wanted 12 handy examples of what not to do to get into the kingdom of God. “You’ll do. Let’s have John today, it’s John’s turn.”

So today John steps up. ”Hey speaking of doing things in your name, Jesus, there was this guy casting out demons in your name, but he wasn’t following us, so we tried to stop him.” That was John. I wonder if he was feeling a little salty about the competition coming from outside the group.

It’s as though John is saying, “well if I can’t cut out the least ones, who can I cut out? How about him?”

If Jesus wasn’t salty before, he is now. And he not so gently turns the apostles’ attention away from the finger pointing they were sighting down and to the three pointing back at them. They need a lesson on how to be “least of all, and servant of all.”

“You want to know what to cut out? I’ll tell you what to cut out”, says Jesus.

“If you are looking to be first in line by excluding, judging or because you’re jealous of what they’ve got, cut it out.”

“If you are causing someone who is struggling with their faith to stumble and fall because of what you say or do around them, cut it out.”

“And if you have things in your life that are causing you to put yourself in solidarity with anyone or anything other than God, cut them out.”

Then Jesus goes on this big exaggerated litany of all the body parts they should be willing to lose, if they are causing his followers to sin. And at first I thought he was going back to the lesson he taught in Mark 7, where he told his followers that evil doesn’t come from the outside, but from the inside with things like greed, wickedness, deceit, arrogance, and foolishness. That would apply pretty well here. So of course your eye and your hand and your foot aren’t making you sin, but the much deeper agendas are.

But then I remembered that this particular list that Jesus refers to with a good measure of hyperbole had a particular meaning in Jesus’ day. These were the ways that prisoners of conquest were maimed by Rome so they wouldn’t escape their servitude. So prisoners were sometimes blinded and then given manual labor to do that they could never find their way free of. Or their hands or feet were cut off so they couldn’t run away. And that’s how Rome built its great empire. That’s one of the things that came to mind when people talked about the blind and the lame.

So Jesus may also be saying to the arrogant 12 – “how willing are you really to be the kind of servant that God has called you to be? Are you willing to sacrifice your body to keep yourself bound to your service to me? Because that’s what it means to be first in the kingdom.” Like I said – Jesus is salty.

But it’s important that his followers, especially those chosen to spread the gospel, get this right. Because as soon as church membership and discipleship becomes a contest, as soon as some are considered more important than others by their proximity to Jesus, or their status, or their gifts or their apparent blessings, then the fragile unity of the Jesus movement will stumble and fall. There is no room for factions or triumphalism in it. It hurt the church then and it harms it now.

So what does that mean for us today, in this assembly? I think it means that if we find ourselves continually pointing to others as the source of blame for our dissatisfaction, we might need to examine who the rest of our fingers are pointing. We might need to look at whether we are the disciples that God requires for God’s work. When we’re feeling like blaming, it might be an invitation to self-reflection.

So we might ask: what do we do that causes others to stumble in their faith, or in their belief? What do we do as members of the Jesus movement that impedes its work, the growth of others? I could turn it around and make it nicer and ask “what do we do to help people to grow?” But sometimes we have to look at what we do that causes people to wilt, to walk away, to visit and not come back, or to wonder if Christians truly believe what we say we do.

So I’ll just talk about me. Here are some things that I have been guilty of in my life as a Christian:

Failing to welcome,failing to include, or appreciate and offer hospitality. Maybe making sure that I have my spot in a new group and being oblivious that others want to come in too.

In times of church strife, stirring up dissension and inhibiting healing by gossiping, by undermining, holding grudges, or carefully tending my personal agendas.

Expressing my disappointment in tones that would make it very difficult to engage with me on the issue at hand because I so fanned the flames around me,

Acting out of my prejudices and privileges before I even know they’re out of the box– of race, class, and age – as soon as my power gets challenged.

I could go on of course. These are the fingers that tend to point back at me. How about for you?

“Whoever is not against us is for us,” Jesus says of the unnamed exorcist that John has in his crosshairs. But the question for John and for us, instead is, how are you “for God.” In what ways are you that servant, that offering to God, that sacrifice that Jesus calls his followers to be?

This is where salt enters the story in a slightly different way than I‘ve been using it.

“For everyone will be salted with fire,” Jesus says. Sacrifices to God in Jesus’ day were purified with salt and with fire. An animal sacrifice, in the experience of Israel, was an act of prayer and worship, and praise, humility and intercession to God. You prepared a sacrifice carefully.

How have we prepared ourselves to be “for God?” How are we fashioning our lives so that they serve God, and God’s love, and God’s will? What are we salting our lives with, so that they build up rather than tear down, so they are fit for the work that God Is doing in the world?

Here I want to give a brief shout out today’s reading from James, who encourages us to salt our lives with prayer. In all things. We are not to just use God as some divine help desk; but rather, to fully season our lives in joy and pain, in illness and soul-sickness and wellness and whole-heartedness with the kind of prayer that fully surrenders to God in our lives. If we see people who have fallen, we are to help them to rise. If we see people who have wandered, we help them to return. That’s what you do when your life is fully seasoned with prayer and relationship with God. Dorothy Day called it making it easier for people to be good. We make it easier for people to be good. We make the church community a place people can come home to; where people can find peace.

“Salt is good,” Jesus reminds his followers. “But if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

Be at peace with one another. This is what Jesus was getting at in the first place, even before he set that child on his lap. Be at peace with one another. Jesus implores us to set aside our arguing, and our egos, and our arrogance, and our blame, and walk together in love.

In other words, Jesus might say, “Stay Salty.”

Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

Jeremiah 11:18-20
Psalm 54
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost...

Please join me in the spirit of prayer.

Lord God, draw near to us as we draw near to you. Lord God, grant us the gift of your saving wisdom once again, so that we may know the gentleness and kindness of your word in our hearts. In Christ’s Name we pray, Amen.

Please be seated.

We have been in a stretch of the Gospel of Mark that’s raw and hard. Two weeks ago we had the Syrophoenician woman and the horrible words Jesus exchanged with her, and her subtle words that cracked open the good news for all gentiles. Last week we had the ferocious exchange between Jesus and Peter. Jesus revealed who he was: the messiah who would suffer, die, and rise, and there was all that rebuking back and forth in the community, which helps us understand why we are scared to ask questions. This week we have this next raw passage where the disciples, the founding generation of our faith, are caught out looking embarrassed, looking and actually missing the point. And I always ask myself when I’m in this raw section of work “what’s going on?”

One thing that’s going on is the cross has been revealed, and when the cross is revealed, the tension goes up. The story becomes unsettling: this is life and death now. The other thing that’s so interesting to me is where’s the editor? You would think that someone would edit this story. What movement leaves in these kinds of stories about the founding generation? You would think there would be an editor with a public relations point of view. There is none, and all the embarrassing stuff stay in. The embarrassing stories stay in. The struggle stays in the story. And we can imagine that in all these decades when the stories were passed around in the budding community of the early church, the subjects of those stories were there. Peter, John and Andrew got to hear these stories about themselves, and their relatives and friends got to hear them. “Oh, there’s Uncle Peter being dense again.” “There goes Cousin Andrew, boy did he get that wrong.” I think in this lies the hint in why these stories are included.

Remember in the beginning of the gospel Jesus is only teaching his disciples. He’s only in a community with his disciples when he teaches. What does that tell you? It tells you that this embarrassing story was passed on by the disciples. They told this story among themselves, and that fact is crucial. That means that these disciples understood finally what Jesus was teaching at some point, because they were able to accept the sacrifice of embarrassment, the sacrifice of a little humility, for the good of the community, who needed to hear these stories. Because the struggle of the early church is the same struggle of our discipleship now. The struggle to understand what is hard to understand. The struggle to enter this way of Jesus that’s hard to understand in the actual practice of our lives. So the disciples gave us a gift in their sacrifice. “Yes, tell these embarrassing stories about me, because it will help the community. It’s going to help the community that’s learning to sacrifice and learning to struggle.”

We continue down that path of struggle and sacrifice, learning how to live this path that Jesus has offered us as the path of life, and we see both points in this gospel. They didn’t ask Jesus after his second revelation of his death and resurrection because they were scared to bring up their ignorance. And then, as if proving that they aren’t getting what Jesus is teaching by arguing on the way about who will be greatest, and who is going to be the top of the heap in the new kingdom, Jesus very gently calls them out and corrects them. He calls them to lives of service first. – “where the first be the last and the last be the first” - and then pushes them even further by picking up a child, and showing the child as a lesson to them about how to be in the community.

See, the disciples are struggling to take an order, fully knowing that that’s the mystery from death to life: that there is a demotion involved here; that we are called to lives out of glory of service; not of status but of dependence. And I want to be clear with this point that for Jesus, service is not servility. Service is not servility, and sacrifice is not self-hatred. These are common misconceptions promoted oftentimes by the church, but service is not servility and sacrifice is not self-hate. Quite the opposite: both are participation in the goodness of Christ. Both are participation in the way of Jesus and they bring out the good in us that is good for others, and the awareness that what’s good for others is what’s good for us. It’s only when we drop our ego-centric notion of ourselves as the center and begin to live for others that we fully understand that what is good is shared; what is good for me is what is good for you. And so in that understanding servility and self-hatred are not part of the story, rather a liberation is part of the story. A liberation into the story of Christ himself, who gives all in service, to reveal the goodness in the love of God for us.

I believe this teaching is utterly crucial to us. The simple act of asking people to sacrifice by putting on a mask, the simple act of asking people to sacrifice to take the vaccine, has proven so challenging to so many people that we are living with Covid long past when perhaps we should have, and many tens of thousands of people have died, because of a deep unwillingness to sacrifice and to serve the other. This is a humbling and sobering moment in our National life where many of us are standing back and saying “what is missing, that we can’t take such simple measures for the common good?”

Just as an aside I want to say that I’m so proud of St. Martin because our community has shown that willingness to make those small sacrifices for the common good, and that inspired me as a Christ-like work by everyone here during the last 18 months, and you need to be given thanks for that. But the larger issue still remains. Why can’t we understand sacrifice? Why have we lost that virtue? And it haunts me even more because more sacrifice is to be required. It is the calling of communities like us to witness and lead and teach that sacrifice, because the world will need more.

When we think about climate change, we can think and hope that technology will bail us out. There’s one scenario where if we have enough Teslas, we can take the superhighways and we’ll all be happy. I would love that to be true. I really hope that’s how it goes. But all indications are to me that we will need some level of sacrifice to save the planet and save humanity, and our communities have a special role to tell that story, because that story that Jesus told about being betrayed, handed over, killed and risen is not just an alternative story. It’s not just another way of thinking. It’s not just a counter-narrative. It is the event that changed reality itself, and set us free to be a different kind of person, to be a different kind of community, that can make startling choices to serve and to sacrifice and to struggle together because we know through faith that we are part of this new world that Christ is creating, and that that world serves the good of all. Amen.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp19_RCL.htmlTranscript:

---

Transcript:

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

---

Transcript:

Gracious God, we give you thanks for the example of the syrophoenician woman who cracked open the covenant to include all gentiles thereafter. We thank you for her persistence and her faith that in your abundance there was enough for all. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

So, in the early 1990s I was just starting out as a priest as a youth minister. What do you do with a priest in his twenties? Youth Minister. Luckily I loved it and had a lot of fun with it. This is also the time when in youth ministry there was this great outburst of bracelets: friendship bracelets and cross bracelets, and one of the most popular ones with my group was the one that said “WWJD?”

“What Would Jesus Do?”

And I wore one to go along with the group, and it was a lot of fun, but when I read the story of the syrophoenician woman I wanted a second bracelet to put on top of it, and that one would say “DDWJJD.”

“Don’t Do What Jesus Just Did.”

Because here we have in this wonderful Gospel of Mark, a very uncomfortable reading. Very uncomfortable for anyone who loves Jesus to see him acting as crabby and nasty and bigoted as can be. I could apply other words but we’re in church. It's a very upsetting passage. He refers to the syrophoenician woman as a small female dog. We know there's another translation for that in English. That's how shocking this is.

What is going on with this reading and how do we approach it? Well, I approach it in two ways. One, I celebrate the syrophoenician woman. That's my focus. Her wonderful persistence, her wonderful insistence that there was room enough at the table for her and her daughter, to me is the voice of prayer and faith in the story. She's the example of what faith is, and I believe she is the gate opening moment for all gentiles who come into the covenant. She breaks open the covenant by agitating Jesus. She agitates Jesus in the most clever and subtle of ways, which to me feels like she had heard about this feeding of the five thousand, which had happened in chapter six in the Gospel of Mark (we're now in chapter seven) and she took that message to heart, that in the abundance of God's mercy there was room for her to be fed and healed as well.

The second thing I do with the story is I read it from the perspective of the gentile outsider. I read it from the perspective of the gentile outsider, which I am a gentile outsider. And from that perspective it opens up in a different way because Jesus's behavior to me looks like a gentile's fears of how the God of Israel would behave. It feels to me there's a message here to the new gentiles in the church, who are trying to understand how accessible God is, and this story gives them hope.

So for example, it's a very strange story. Jesus goes all the way outside of Israel to Tyre and the first thing he does is goes into a house and tries not to be disturbed. I picture him going in, shutting the door, and seeking privacy. Jesus, as the story goes on, as I said, is crabby, judgmental, aloof, inaccessible, and favoring one group of people over another, showing favoritism, partiality - and these are all the things that the gentile audience feared were true.

But the gentile audience gets the syrophoenician woman who challenges Jesus. Really challenges him and holds him accountable to his true character and nature, and she pushes him to do this other thing that the God of Israel does. This other thing that is characteristic of the God of Israel. Jesus repents.

Jesus repents from drawing his line too harshly, and allows for the healing, and allows ultimately for the extension of the promise of life in God, past the original covenant, with room enough for all. So first let's give thanks to the syrophoenician woman. She persisted and she opened up the covenant that includes us now. I speak as a gentile in that sense.

And what we have after this revelation in the Gospel is its application in the letter of James. Now take a step back, use your imagination. Remember that these letters to early church communities were read out loud to the community. These are not private correspondence. This letter was read out loud to that community. Imagine a gathering of the poor and the rich - the oppressed and the oppressor - who heard the letter of James together.

That is a shocking confrontation. The struggle going on in their midst is named. They are acting like the unredeemed world when they gather in their assembly for worship. When they gather around the table of Christ they're bringing in the practices of the world to this place where they don't apply anymore. The wealthy are being treated with more regard and being allowed to treat the poor with disregard. “Sit at my feet”...the kind of things you can't say at the Lord's table. And James is confronting them with this very difficult but true word, that in the Kingdom of God all the citizens of that kingdom are equal. And this is a shocking word just said right out there in the open, because for those with more status that's going to feel like a demotion, and for people in the unredeemed world with less status that's going to feel like a promotion. So they can meet as equals in Christ.

How does that play out? What is that spiritual struggle like? To sit in that early community and hear those words, depending on what side of the spectrum you're on, it's a wonderful gift of liberation no matter which side of the spectrum you're on.

I know this conundrum firsthand and practically speaking. When I worked in Chicago I did trainings with the Industrial Areas Foundation where we trained leaders from all over Chicagoland (South, North, West, Eastside) to do delegations to meet with elected leaders to advocate on the basis of our faith for certain changes like universal health care, for example, or school funding, and one of our big training agendas was always helping our members not to give away their power. Not to give away their power.



They had been trained over the years that when they met with an elected official they should defer and just be grateful to be in the powerful person's presence. They should be indirect and careful and meek. And I saw it happen over again and over again, and I participated. I'm from a military family - “yes sir,” “ no sir,” “yes ma'am,” “no ma'am.” I can defer with the best of them. And we had to work together on this notion taught in James that we are equals in the citizenship we have in the Kingdom of Christ, and in that dignity we can speak the truth we need to speak to the powerful.

It only took a few times when we got shunted off to the congressional aide who just got out of college, while we watched the pharma executive or the big donor go into the senator's office, for my people to get the message and sit down and say, “We'll wait for the senator, thank you very much.”

This is the strange world of the Gospel where we are called into this equal dignity in Christ and depending on where we find ourselves in the status hierarchies of the world around us, this may induce a journey either of humility and humbling, or a journey of growth and claiming dignity, so we can meet together in that equality of children of God. Amen.

---

---

Transcript:

Please pray with me, and with that wonderful music.

Holy One, You gave us birth by the word of truth. Help us be doers of the word, and not merely hearers. Help us look at ourselves in the true mirror of your love for us, so that we may be blessed in our doing. Amen. So you all know what to do now, everybody sit down.

In the car, on the way to my family’s summer birthday gathering, I read today’s gospel out loud. It’s a tough interaction with Jesus, and I wanted my daughter Christie’s reaction to it. She is a deeply faithful Quaker with a close but occasionally disputatious relationship with God. They argue a little bit. My 19-year-old grandson was in the back seat helping his mom connect to Google maps on Bluetooth, so his ears were uncharacteristically available. He heard the part about purity rules and said, “You should preach about washing your hands all the time, and probably about wearing your mask too.” Christie wondered how many sermons today would be based on that counseling. This one will not, although it is good advice. This sermon will consider the hazardous activity of building faithful communities among competing viewpoints and note that even Jesus struggled with it.

In today’s gospel, the Pharisees have assembled to hear Jesus. They are checking out the crowds that formed because Jesus fed 5,000 and cured untold numbers. So here are two communities of faith, the traditional teachers on one side and the shepherdless curious crowd on the other, all seeking clarity. We at St. Martin’s typically root for Jesus and the crowd, because we have inherited their dominant status. Today, I want to give the Pharisees’ side a brief listen.

The Pharisees began at the time of the Maccabean revolt in 160 BCE as a renewal movement. They advocated for restoration of the true observance of the law, and they espoused national independence. They believed in the twofold Law, the written and the oral Torah, and they considered the deep study of Torah to be true worship. They refined the purity rules of Leviticus to apply beyond the Temple, they applied to bring it to the people. Pharisees urgently reminded the Israelite community that it had been given different rules from the more powerful surrounding nations. Those laws are what preserved them as a people, and their God they knew as the true creator, ruler and judge of the world. Pharisees, unlike other sects, believed in eternal life and the resurrection of the body. They expected a future age in which God would act decisively to establish his rule of justice on earth. They thus originated elements of faith that Jesus also taught. Pharisees became a primary force that sustained the Jewish faith after Rome destroyed Jerusalem. They evolved into Rabbis and they changed Judaism from concentrating on animal sacrifice in the Temple to a religion centered in the home and the community synagogue. Through them, God is known in a large part of the world.

The two opposing sides face each other with a lot at stake. Pharisees competed with Jesus for social and political control. As Mark tells it, Jesus responded acerbically toward the Pharisees’ standards of cleanliness. Mark piles up examples of pharisaic practices in an exaggerated manner, as you heard, stacking one on top of the other. This Jesus makes me uncomfortable. Could he have been sleep-deprived and not thinking clearly? First, he calls the Pharisees hypocrites, a damning title. Then, he snubs their oral tradition by citing the unimpeachable Isaiah a little bit out of context. Isaiah had condemned Judah’s leaders but ultimately, Isaiah revealed that God promised to restore them. Following this insult, Jesus addressed his own followers with an unfriendly and hostile list of sins, a belittling shortcut to summarize the law. The same law that the Pharisees try so hard to follow, the law that Moses gave in the first lesson. I mean, that’s God’s law.

This is a family argument. Both sides worship and love the same holy God. Family disagreements are always painful to hear and to be part of.

The Pharisees and Jesus both think that their side has the true version of building beloved community. Community is not simple or easy. Especially when you step back to take the God’s eye view. The tendency that Jesus criticizes in the Pharisees and scribes appears in most religious groups. People attempt to hold on to merely human traditions as if they were divinely revealed. At the same time, the very basic virtues of love, reconciliation and the good news that God has come among us as savior get lost. We find it harder to think about the very real challenge posed to us by the gospel. It is easier to follow the familiar than to transform our hearts. This includes outward behaviors and the inner feelings that give rise to the behaviors such as slander, pride, folly.

So here we are at St. Martin’s right in the middle of this story. We too love God and want what is best for our community. We too may be thrown out of our best selves at times. Sleep deprivation gets to us, stress of the pandemic, immersion in different versions of our history, passion for our friends and our way of being. The question is, can we take a step back? What is the God’s eye view of our current situation?

I urge us to consider the way forward at today’s parish meeting, which I hope you will all come to after this service. I hope we can consider the way forward using the tools provided by James in the Epistle. As he says, “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. Welcome with meekness the word that has the power to save our souls. I hope we can each think slowly before we speak our heart.

I pray that we may humbly invoke the God who holds God’s children in our pain, God that mourns alongside all who love and suffer the anguish of being human, the God who became human and experienced the confusing pangs of building God’s beloved community. Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

---

Transcript:

Let us pray. Lord Jesus, who knew what it was to be chosen and not chosen, help us to choose in spirit and in truth. Amen. Please be seated.

Good morning. Welcome to church. What kind of god can I get for you?

I mean, there is an endless selection of gods out there. And in today’s world you really can’t be too choosy.

As Joshua tells the people of Israel in today’s first reading, you gotta choose. Even if you think you don’t have to believe in any god at all, that’s the same as choosing.

Because there are so many forces out there that are bigger than we are individually. So many higher powers. So many gods out there -- that if you don’t choose, they’ll still choose you. And you will end up serving them eventually.

So it’s best to be proactive. What kind of god do you want?

We have the standard models – like the god that will make you feel good no matter what – it just requires a higher and higher dosage over time, and there are side effects. There’s the god of the intellect – this one’s mostly in your head. And there’s the one comes with a work ethic – the harder you strive, the more blessings you get.

Mammon, the love of money – always a popular choice. And there’s always Caesar, the god of empire.

There are several new models that come with your internet plan – like the one that allows you to have the followers as long as you never leave the screen, and the one that knows your deepest appetites even before you do.

And then there’s always the God of Israel, AKA the One True God. Though I have to warn you that I have personally heard several complaints about this One lately. I have been told (and I am not being tongue-in-cheek—this is from one of our youth) this God is bossy and mean. And I have also been told that this God is jealous, vengeful, judgmental, misogynist, and angry—and as a result is very hard to market to current audiences. Often mis-labeled The God of the Old Testament, this God does get better reviews in the Christian scriptures, though it must be said that the God of Joshua was also the Father of Jesus. Same same.

So what will it be? What kind of god do you want to covenant with? Which is to say, what kind of god will you ultimately serve with your life choices and your relationships, with your time and your other investments? Because if you look at those things, you may discover that you’ve already made your choice.

This is the question that Joshua asks of his people so many years after they’ve reached the promised land – and it’s a fair one. Joshua, you may recall, took Moses’ place and led Israel out of the wilderness after its long sojourn there. And today’s passage comes at the end of the book of Joshua, whose namesake is at this point over 100 years old.

Now, we have today a rather edited version, so we don’t hear Joshua’s own detailed description of the God that Israel knows, who delivered them from slavery, guided them through the wilderness, won battle after battle for them as they took military control of the land of promise.

But Israel understands that this is all God’s doing on their behalf. Not their doing. Not the work of their former gods or their neighbors’ gods. And given that, Joshua asks his people to be clear, because he know they have issues with fidelity. What god do they want: the God they know or the god they don’t know?

And the people answered: “We want to serve the God who delivered us.”

“Are you sure?” asks Joshua. “Do you know what you are getting into? Do you recall that this is a jealous God? This God will not let you go so easily. This God will ask all of you. This God does not like it if you see other gods on the side. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

And the people insist: this is the God we want. We choose to serve this God.

And so Joshua ultimately sets up a new covenant between God and Israel that day at Shechem, one of several we find in the Hebrew Scriptures.

So it may be that every once in a while we should revisit our commitments, and ask ourselves when we are gathered in assembly before our God, as we are today: have we really chosen this God? I mean, in every liturgy we have the opportunity to do that. We renew our baptismal promises, as we did last week when Gavin was baptized. We repeat those promises in the creed. But do we stop to ask ourselves, “is this god the one I am covenanted to?” What kind of god do we want? Is it the God of Israel, who revealed Godself in Jesus, or some other? Is the god we want, the god we have covenanted ourselves to? And what does it mean for us to serve that god?

I asked myself this question. I thought it was only fair. Here’s what I want:

I want a God who delivers.

And by that I don’t mean a god who shows up at the door with my order half an hour after I’ve made it, still hot and steamy. I want a God who delivers me. I want a God who delivers us, from the life that kills us to the life that sustains us.

When I think of that word, delivery, I think of being brought to the proper destination, to the place that I’d been sent from, to the place I was meant to go. I think of the Amazon trucks that visit my street probably 30 times a day. But I also think of birthing, when a woman delivers her child from its temporary home within her to the one where it will spend the rest of its life. The day my mother delivered me, was the day life as I know it really started. It was also the day her life as a mother really began.

So given that, I want a God who wants me, and who is with me all along the way, in the life that I’ve been delivered to. I want a God who knows who I am, and where I am. I want a God who will miss me if I’m gone, who wants me back, who has my back.

I don’t want a God who stands by and judges and judges and judges and only applauds on those rare instances where I get things completely right. We have people for that. Many of them coach in the Olympics. People make terrible gods. And maybe that’s why the human qualities we always place on God don’t seem to fit very well.

And I do not want a designer bespoke God that is mine alone – like a personal trainer, or coach, or fixer. Because I’m weary, friends, of the isolation that our worship of individualism has fostered. And I long to be knit back into a larger interconnected and appreciative body, one that doesn’t split apart so easily when it is disappointed or disillusioned.

“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” Joshua tells the people of Israel. When I was a kid we had a little plaque on a side table with that phrase on it. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And I grew up in such a house, which is largely responsible for the faith that puts me here today. Though, I think my Catholic mother still believes I chose another God when I became an Episcopalian.

Which is say that we who choose the God of Israel still have many different experiences and understandings of that One, True God – understandings that shift from one book of the Bible to the next, that change over time from ancient to modern, and vary across faith traditions and divisions and distinctions, that develop throughout our own personal journeys from birth to death.

The work of faith is to be able to discern that One True God over time, as our own understanding deepens and changes. It is to acknowledge the shrouding nature of mystery, the limits of our human interpretations.

But the work of faith begins by acknowledging our own need for deliverance. We often have a clearer picture of what we hope to be delivered from than what we might be delivered to.

For Jesus, in today’s Gospel, that delivery destination is very clear. It is the heart of his entire ministry, it is what lies at the end of the way of his cross, and it is what we receive when we consume his flesh and blood, his whole self, in our communion bread – that destination is the very life of God.

Life that delivers and sustains.

Life that connects and reconnects and unifies.

Life that does not end.

That is the life that we have on offer here. Now, what can I get you?

Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

Sermon by Anne Alexis Harra for the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15.

Today's readings are:

Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 34:9-14
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp15_RCL.html

---

Transcript:

At this time, I’m going to invite the young and the young at heart up to the front while I fix my mic, so my friends who were in VBS this week, if you want to come and sit, please join me so I’m not alone up here. Otherwise it’s just Anne Alexis preaching in the middle of the altar.

It is so wonderful to see all of you here this morning! Did we have a fantastic week?

[applause from the congregation]

I’m going to thank all of you for a wonderful week at VBS, to the staff, to the volunteers, but probably most importantly, to all of our children who “Came to the Table” this week with us. You have nourished and sustained me and you truly feasted on the living bread that came down from heaven. And to Gavin, thank you for sharing your baptism with us today.

I’m going to tell you a story, I think God likes to hear our stories. I think He does. While I was at my parents’ house last week, I got really bored. Even though they have a puppy, I was still bored. The puppy was biting, I had had enough. And I was digging through my old baby stuff and some of their old photo albums, and I found this ancient artifact.

[Holding up a booklet] Does anyone want to guess what this is? It is a bulletin. It’s very 90s. That’s because this bulletin is from July 13, 1997. THat is the day that I was baptized. Oddly enough, the readings were from Track 2, Year B. We heard them in July, so I got to reflect a little bit. It was pretty cool to see. And it got me thinking about baptism. This leaflet, and this member of Christ’s flock, are officially 24 years, 1 month, and 2 days old. God’s sustaining love for us has lasted more than 24 years, lucky for us, but for me, it’s lasted 24 years, 1 month, and 2 days.

What I love so much about today is that we saw someone welcomed into Christ’s flock. Gavin asked to join Christ’s pasture, and he was baptized. I always get a little weepy at baptisms, always, always, always. I cried today. That’s why I wore waterproof mascara. I get weepy because I am reminded of this unbelievable, crazy, unending love that God has for us. In baptism, we are reminded of the Covenant, or the promise that we make with God. Through Jesus, God’s love was so powerful that noting, nothing, could separate God from us. Isn’t that amazing? If your mom gets mad at you because you broke the vase that she loves so much, God still loves you. Your mom might be mad, your mom might be really mad, but God still loves you. And it all begins with baptism. But then, today, we get to make a connection from baptism to the scriptures. In the Gospel, Jesus makes a really special promise to us: if we feast on him, if we welcome Jesus into our lives, we will never, ever be alone. We will always feel loved, we will always feel connected to God. We will live forever. If we take communion, if we invite Jesus into our lives, if we pray, we will be connected to God forever. Isn’t that so cool? That is Jesus showing us that he really is love. We are welcomed into the Body of Christ through Baptism, which is God’s unbounding love, and then we stay in it through Eucharist, and prayer. And I learned that nobody seems to understand that more than children. They are the heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven, as you may see here [gesturing to altar with cloth that reads ‘let the little children come to me, do not stop them. For it is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs’]

On Tuesday, Rev. Carol fantastically told the story of the Feeding of the 5,000. Now, friends, I gave Rev. Carol the challenge of telling this story to three audiences: our 4-5 year olds, our 6-8 year olds, and our 9-11 year olds. And why Carol didn’t just walk away from me right on the spot is actually quite beyond me, but I’m so glad she didn’t. It worked out beautifully in the end. Our youngest bunch took the story to heart. One of the activities with the story was a relay race with cheerios to demonstrate feeding of the 5,000. And now, 4 year olds, being who they are, wanted to have a snack after the story. And frankly, I would too, I like cheerios. So, when they were done, they wanted to have a snack, and Rev. Carol gave them each some cheerios, but instead of feeding themselves first, they began to feed each other. The living bread that came down from heaven was clear with our 4 and 5 year olds. They listened, they participated well, but the Spirit took over.

And you’ll notice on the pulpit behind me, we have a very colorful, not-Pentecostal-green pulpit frontal. Do you friends remember what that was? [speaking to a VBS camper] Pierce, what was it? It was a prayer chain! I like to think this is how God sees our prayers. Colorful, polka dotted, stripey. And this is how God responds to our prayers. God absorbs them, God thinks about them, and God just holds them so close to God’s heart. Can I share with you guys some of the prayers that our children…[the audience responds affirmatively]... Okay!

One of our friends prayed, “I want everyone to know that Black lives matter.” One of our friends prayed, “God, help me to be a better person.” Ane one prayer in big, scratchy preschool handwriting in purple crayon just said, “GOD.” Straightforward, it gets to the point. The context for this activity was in response to John 14:27, Jesus saying to his followers “peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you.” We told our kids that things are a little scary right now with the pandemic, and it’s okay to be afraid. But God’s love and God’s peace are so much stronger than our fears. So our kids wrote down their fears, their love, everything they wanted God to know. And clearly, everything they had learned through the week resonated with them. I don’t know, I think you guys made some important connections to God, and that fills my heart.

Jesus’ love through God’s peace brings up the most pure, deeply rooted needs in all of us. But the thing is, children are honest about these needs. I think we learned that this week. Connecting to God with no reservations, children feast on the bread of heaven and live into their baptisms. There is a reason that we hear Jesus say in three gospels, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom belongs to them.” Jesus offers his love for us unconditionally, with complete grace. The people who most willingly accept this love are children: open, curious, accepting, gentle, and so free with their own love.

Today, we watched Gavin receive the Sacrament of Baptism. Jarrett asked a series of questions, called the Baptismal Covenant. And The Covenant calls on us to be the most faithful versions of ourselves. “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbors as yourself?” This is the second to last question in the Covenant. And it’s just a fancy, church-y way of saying, “Will you look for and accept the love of Jesus in everyone no matter what, and love that person no matter what?” And it can be hard to do. You get in a fight with your best friend. Your best friend stole your favorite pencil. That makes me mad. Rev. Barb, she stole my favorite pen, I’m so mad at Barb, where did my pen go? I’m not interested in speaking to Barb for the rest of the day. The thing is, we get so caught up in our own “stuff” that sometimes we look into someone’s eyes and fail to see Jesus looking back at us. This week, though, I have witnessed our most vulnerable population see Jesus in everyone, they did, they saw Christ in everybody and loved everybody. Gavin chose to receive the Sacrament of Baptism, and through the pure love and light of children, they are seeking and serving Christ in all persons.

Jesus is the living bread which came down from heaven. The most nourishing, sustaining meals which connects us to God. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some nourishing meals in my day. My mom’s spaghetti is something to die for. But nothing comes close to Jesus. We must learn from our children, we have to learn from all of you guys (because I think you’re a heck of a lot smarter than I am) if we truly seek to truly feast on this heavenly banquet. But as we say in the Covenant, “I will, with God’s help.” And that’s the beauty in all of it, we are never alone.

Now this is normally where I would drop the, “Amen,” but I know if I do that I’ll lose all of you. So I need to acknowledge all of the people who made this week so great, so bear with me for a moment. Adam, who was filling in for James, our Sexton, has been marvelous. He lugged water, he cleaned up, he filled paper towels, he ran around. To all of our youth guides who shepherded our youth from activity to activity, and it was hot. To all the volunteers who shepherded kids, led activities, or helped in the kitchen, especially to Debby Schaaf who led bread baking, and again, it was hot. To Kelly and Jason Martin, fantastic, fantastic people. To Cathy Glazer, who miraculously ran the kitchen from afar. That was unbelievable. To Rev. Carol Duncan, who filled in for Bible story time, and who made the feeding of the 5,000 happen in 2021. To Tyrone Whiting, who is a fantastic colleague and a great friend, and who made Choir Camp happen and it was just fabulous. To Rev. Jarrett, who hired me and has given me quiet confidence in ministry again. To Barb, who is a living saint, a minister, a mentor. To Gavin who allowed us to share his day with you, thank you. And last but certainly not least, to Elliot, to Emerson, to Pierce, to Anna, to Lucy, to Lily, to Sam, and to every single child who came this week and reminded me that the living bread of heaven is right in front of us. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am so blessed to know you. And now I will say, Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

Sermon by the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 14.

Today's readings are:

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

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp14_RCL.html

---

Transcript coming soon.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

Sermon by Eugenie Dieck for the tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 13.

Today's readings are:

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

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost...

---

Transcript:

[Eugenie Dieck]: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

[The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel]: Please be seated.

[Eugenie Dieck]: Today is the tenth Sunday of Pentecost. Being deep into a liturgical season reminds me of being in school, in the middle of the semester and a bit bored with the content. Then, when writing a term paper, suddenly realizing the content had become very complex. It’s time to pay attention.

While writing this sermon, or honestly multiple drafts of this sermon, this student of the Pentecost course called “Building the Church” realized the content is quite challenging. My recognition of the complexity began with the first review of this Sunday’s lessons. They confounded me. The lessons seem to be a jumble. The Old Testament is about David’s lustful sinfulness, the Psalm is a robust confession, the Epistle is about how the Church is formed through its members working together, and the Gospel has Jesus saying “I am the bread of life.”

Yes, a jumble of readings, unless one probes them for the lessons they contain. These readings lay out two tensions to be resolved by us to build God’s Church. First Tension: I vs We. Second Tension: Want vs Need.

Think about most of life’s dilemmas. They can be reduced to addressing these tensions: I vs. we, want vs. need. Let’s go back to the lessons to see how these tensions surface.

In the Old Testament, we encounter David’s horrible act of murdering Uriah and then bringing Uriah’s widow to his house, to bear him a son. David was the king for a nation, he put himself before others, disregarding the leadership role given to him by God. David wanted this woman. He had multiple wives who had been given to him, and he did not need another wife.

In the Psalm, we hear David’s penitential confession and his request for forgiveness. Here, David is sublimating his ego to God. David is letting go of the “I.” What David wants is the same as what David needs: to be purged of his sins.

The Epistle speaks to leading a life worthy of the calling to which one has been given. We have to read carefully about being called. We do not determine our call, God calls us. A calling is not what an individual wants. Instead, a calling is what the Church needs from the individual.

Following these three readings, we hear the Gospel. We should, at this point, be primed for the nuances of John. This reading is a riddle about want vs need, about the individual’s will vs God’s will. The crowd wants signs from Jesus so badly they get into boats to look for Jesus. When they find Jesus, he is frustrated and responds to them, saying, essentially, “enough signs.” Jesus urges the crowd to do what is needed: to believe.

As members of the Church, we are caught in the challenges of I vs. We and
Needs vs. Want. Moving from “I Want” to “the Church Needs” is hard work;
we must both discern and accept God’s call.

Here’s how I learned the difference between “I want” and “the Church Needs.”

When our son, Brendan, was in elementary school, he had significant learning differences. These differences made it very challenging for Brendan to be comfortable in groups. He could not follow multi-step directions or adapt to quick social interactions. Brendan refused to go to Sunday school, because it all moved too fast for him. He wanted me to go with him.

However, when our sons were young, I really loved Adult Class. I got to be with adults, and talk about God, and not be with children. While I very much loved our sons, I really did not like groups of children.

Guess what happened. I became a Sunday school teacher…for 8 years. That is a long time to do something that you do not want to do. Through the sad and tearful eyes of a 5 year old, God called me to be a Sunday school teacher.

To be honest, I felt no differently about teaching Sunday school at the end of the 8 years, than I did when I started. I did not like it. The lesson I learned was that the Church was not about me. What mattered was that a little boy happily went to Sunday school, he belonged, and he grew in God’s teachings. Brendan, now 30, is a generous, patient man who teaches middle schoolers with learning differences.

Over the waning days of summer, let’s take time to consider the coming year at St Martin’s. Let’s reflect on the tension between “I want” and “the Church needs.” In our careerist world, and our American sense of personal fulfillment, how are we called to do the work of the Church? Responding to God’s call may require us to be uncomfortable and stay with the discomfort, even for 8 years. It is right for the 10th Sunday of Pentecost for us to resolve the tensions between “I want” and “the Church needs” to work hard at building the Church.

Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

Sermon by the Rev. Carol Duncan for the ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 12.

Today's readings are:
2 Kings 4:42-44
Psalm 145:10-19
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6:1-21

Readings may be found at https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost...

---

Transcript:

This morning let us rejoice and pray using Paul’s words: May we be rooted and grounded in love. May we comprehend, in the company of all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth of holy joy. May we know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. May we be filled with all the fullness of God. Amen.

I am still so delighted to be together with you in person. Only a few weeks ago we came back to the altar to receive communion after a long bitter year without it. As I put the wafer in your hands, I saw tears in many eyes. My own eyes blurred, and my throat tightened. I had to stop a minute and breathe. The joy in your faces I’m sure was mirrored in my own.

At about that time Stephen ministers, our one-on-one ministry of pastoral listening and care for people going through difficult times, learned about collective effervescence. This concept describes the sense of energy and harmony people feel when they come together in a group around a shared purpose. … That joy had been missing during the pandemic. It came back at Easter on the football field as we praised God, celebrated Eucharist, and reveled in the company of our beloved St. Martin’s. Eucharist brings me collective effervescence every week with you all. Today’s lessons are all about Eucharist.

Eucharist is old, older than the church. Eucharist is the sign that God feeds us and sustains us unceasingly. I love today’s story from the Elisha cycle. Gehazi, Elisha’s servant, derided the possibility of feeding a hundred people with 20 loaves. But Elisha prophesied “thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’” He set it before them, they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the Lord.” Elisha prophesied that God wants people to be fed, and through faith it happened. Jesus was intimately aware of Elisha’s act of faith. Jesus told and lived the stories of the ancestors. So, just like Elisha, but greater than Elisha, with five loaves Jesus fed 5,000 and had 12 basketfuls left over.

Jesus feeds us as surely as he fed his followers on the mountain. He feeds us with the ancient sacrament of the Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving”. You know this of course. But I want to share with you what enthralls me every time I experience it.

The original last supper was a Passover meal. In the Passover meal, participants pray saying “In every generation we must look upon ourselves as if we personally had come out from Egypt”. When Jesus took bread and wine he said “This is My Body; this is My Blood” as part of the Passover prayer. In the original Greek texts, Jesus went on to say, “Do this is in Anamnesis of Me.” Anamnesis is translated as remembrance. But it is more than remembering. Anamnesis means to actively participate in the power and presence of that past event here and now in our own lives. It means that the salvation provided for us in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection changes us and makes us holy. When we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we do it in eternal time. We do it with Jesus’ disciples, at Jesus’ eternal table. We become the Body of Christ in this world.

I like Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Friar, priest and author. He describes Eucharist in this powerful meditation. “Mutual desiring and indwelling is the intended impact of the Eucharist… The Eucharist is an encounter of the heart, knowing Jesus’ Presence through our own offered presence. In the Eucharist, we move beyond mere words or rational thought and go to that place where we don’t talk about the Mystery anymore; we begin to chew on it. Jesus did not say, “Think about this” or “Stare at this” or even “Worship this.” Instead he said, “Eat this!” We must move our knowing to the bodily, cellular, participative level. We must keep eating and drinking the Mystery, until one day it dawns on us, in an undefended moment, “My God, I really am what I eat! I also am the Body of Christ.” A body awareness of this sort is enough to steer and empower our entire faith life. Merely assenting to or saying the words will never give us the jolt we need to absorb the divine desire for us.”

I remember receiving my own jolt when I truly realized the immensity of the act of Eucharist. I was about to distribute the Eucharistic wafers on a Sunday to people I knew well. I knew everyone’s name at St. Paul’s in Canton OH where I had attended for decades and had served as Deacon for several years. Suddenly as I looked into the face of the person to whom I handed the wafer, it became the face of Jesus. It didn’t physically change, exactly. My comprehension of what Jesus looks like changed. Radically. Here was now a holy face, a portrait of potential. I began smiling, and the person – a man who worked for Jet Blue, younger than me, slightly overweight, with a shaved head - smiled back. A bit dazed, I moved to the next person. A woman my age, a nurse, reddish hair losing its fire, lovely complexion – returned my smile of recognition. She also showed me the face of Jesus. Each face that day metamorphosed into a glimpse of the divine countenance. Like the sun appearing from behind a cloud.

Now it doesn’t always happen. But when someone feels the mystery, looks up and smiles, it may happen between us. You have become Jesus for me. We are immersed together in the wonder of the indwelling of Christ. I am grateful to worship with you. We are invited and accepted into the eternal supper at Jesus’ table. It is happening now, always, in the mystical core of eternal presence. I’ll meet you there.

Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

---

You know that part of the play between scenes when curtains close and the lights go dark, and you can just make out the stage crew moving the set around, or see their feet running back and forth behind the curtain in that space where it doesn’t quite touch the floor?

I feel that is where our Gospel takes us today –to the scene changes only, without the high drama that occurs in between.

That’s because these excerpts from the 6th chapter of Mark’s Gospel cut out about 20 verses that include some of our favorite stories about the power of Jesus. So we do not hear about how Jesus uses five loaves and two fish to feed 5,000 hungry men and their families. And we do not hear about Jesus walking out upon the waves of the Sea of Galilee later that night, getting into the boat with his terrified disciples, and calming the winds.

Instead, we have Jesus and his disciples on either side of these big events, exhausted and famished from the non-stop need of Israel for teaching and feeding and healing. When his disciples gather to tell him all they have done at the start of today’s Gospel, it’s because he had sent them out two by two several verses earlier “with no bread, no bag, nor money in their belts” to try their hand at preaching repentance, casting out unclean spirits and healing the sick. And Jesus knows what they need next – a vacation, a retreat to some deserted places where most folks don’t go. But as soon as they get there, it’s only to have a voice in the wings shout, “There they are, we’ve found them” – enter the 5,000, stage right.

I have this picture of Jesus and his followers huddled in the dark, scarfing down some bottled water and a hummus plate, trying to get some sleep, hoping no one recognizes them. And in the dimness, you can just make out the gathering of a crowd, you can hear the sliding of mats across the stage floor, the carrying in of stretchers. So when the lights go up, Jesus and his followers will wake up startled in the middle of an expectant and waiting crowd.

But then the scene in today’s Gospel jumps to our heroes pulling their boats up on the beach, after a terrifying night-time crossing of the Sea of Galilee, embarked upon once the crowd had been fed and sent on their way. I can just see them staggering on to the beach and collapsing. And then that voice again, “Hey, is that who I think it is?”

It makes for strange theater, these moments with Jesus between the scenes. They probably far outnumbered the big spotlight events of the Gospels. Here we catch a glimpse of an exhausted messiah, if not a reluctant one. And we see the fragility of God’s servants, the weaknesses of the shepherds, their limits, their own need for food and healing and rest.

But we also see the need that drives the sheep right to them. And that is Israel’s need for God. It is the background noise of all the stories of the Scriptures, the feet moving behind the curtain. We think the star of the show is Jesus, but really it may just be the crowd. Because that is who God wants to save, and not just Israel, everyone.

And in these two little quotidian moments in the saga we learn something about that crowd as well: it is determined. It is fueled by hope. These people expect God to respond to their need because they have no recourse other than to get themselves to a place where they believe God will hear their cry. Israel didn’t really have professional healers, the way they did in Egypt. That’s where you had to go if you wanted sutures, or splints or cauterizations. For the members of Israel, you went to the temple, or to a prophet, because healing was from God and the hope of future healing was with God.

So when the crowds gather, dragging mats and carrying stretchers with their sick friends and family members on them, they are bringing them to the place where they believe God will hear them. They are expressing the age old faith of Israel in her God to bring restoration and repair. And that is precisely Jesus’ role in the Gospel of Mark. As a former pastor of mine used to say: Jesus would melt in the presence of faith. Find where Jesus is, that is the place where God will hear their cry.

And I think it’s this faith, the crowd’s expectation that God is in control when they are not, that prompts Jesus to end his break early, roust up his followers, and begin preaching, and teaching, feeding and healing all over again.

Because what Jesus says yes to, God will not say no to. The crowd knows this.

I mean, just stop for a minute and think about the faith of the crowd. It can look grasping at times. I can only imagine what it must have been like for Jesus to wade through that crowd where everyone wanted to just grasp the hem of his cloak. But just think about the press of people, that much need. And that much determination.

It might be hard for us to put ourselves in a group that desperate when we consider these crowd scenes. After all, in this day and age we could generate and pay for treatment, vaccines, medicines for every sick person in the world, if we wanted to. The fact that as a species, we don’t, says more about our lack of mercy than about God’s.

Still, our little gathering here at church probably does not need to rely on Jesus alone for our healing, or our next meal, or our liberation from an oppressive regime. We have non-divine sources for these things, for the most part. Don’t we?

But the story is not ultimately about extracting healing, or food or weather control from Jesus. It’s about handing over our control to God, voicing our constant need for God. It’s about admitting that our solutions, as genius as they are, don’t really fix most things, not completely. Despite all that we have, and expect, and succeed at, what does it mean to admit that in the end we are really powerless over the big picture?

Take a moment. Just call to mind the things that you do not have control over in your life right now. What would it take to bring those things to the place where Jesus and his followers are? Where is the place where you are most confident that God will hear your cry?

Might our liturgy, our act of worship, also be the place where we drag our mats, drop our stretchers, and bring our pain before Jesus? Is this where we might come searching for a shepherd that won’t disappoint, or stumble or get the answer wrong, in the one who beckons us around his table of communion?

What the crowd found time and again was a bedraggled and somewhat misfit crew of tired, hungry disciples following a leader who could not say no to faith. They probably wouldn’t have lived up to Jeremiah’s expectations of shepherds either, as we heard in our first reading. And in the next chapter of Mark, these healers and wonder workers will be admonished by Israel’s leaders for not washing their hands properly.

Still, the crowd came anyway. And I think, some days, that’s the best we can do: get ourselves to the place where we believe God will hear our cry, find our way to the spot where Jesus was last seen, drop our mat and wait for him to arrive. Because our Gospel reminds us that it takes two for a divine healing to happen: the divine one who brings the repair, the reconciliation, and the ones who wait, throwing their hearts open to receive it when it arrives. Amen.

---

Sermon by Tanya Regli for the seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10.

Today's readings are:
Amos 7:7-15
Psalm 85:8-13
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29

Readings may be found at https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp10_RCL.html

---

Transcript:

When I was 14 I learned how to lay brick. The most important part wasn’t sliding the mortar off my trowel onto the brick, it was the plumb line. It’s string with a weight at the bottom that uses gravity to get an accurate vertical line so you can keep level. If I didn’t stay level it would impact the integrity of the entire house. I constantly had to check the plumb line and redo a brick if it was not level. So, the plumb line in today’s reading from Amos, set in the middle of God’s people, the nation of Israel, showed that they had turned away from justice and righteousness. Instead living lavishly while oppressing the poor and crushing the needy. I can’t help but imagine a plumb line set in the middle of our nation. How would we fare? Would our house be level?

Amos knows the house of Israel was not level. In the chapters before this one, Amos clearly communicates God’s anger at Israel, for not being righteous. And, remember, this isn’t Amos saying what he thinks – this is God speaking through him. And he clearly made the priests and others in his community very, very upset.

The Israelites didn’t listen – but they must have recognized some truth in what he said, or else he would have been cast out or succumbed to the same fate as John the Baptist. Later on in the Old Testament, we learn that Amos actually sets a precedent that saves Jeremiah’s life almost 150 years later when Jeremiah also prophesies the destruction of Israel. The priests are reminded “hey,remember that guy Amos that said the same thing? We didn’t kill him so we should spare Jeremiah too.”

The message of Amos and Jeremiah was preserved and got written down because the destruction of the nation of Israel did happen, and the destruction resulted in the Babylonian Exile. A great trauma taught the Israelites the value of the words of the prophets, bequeathing to us a plumb line of moral and ethical guidance that we, as Christians, can also use in our lives.

That is not to say we should think of Biblical prophecy as something akin to telling the future. Prophecy is more vital; it is God communicating a difficult truth in order to give us an opportunity to change. Sometimes we are able to grasp that difficult truth and make that change. Perhaps it happens over time, or maybe we never hear it and we never change.

After Amos prophesies that God will destroy Israel, the priest Amaziah tells him to go earn a living as a prophet somewhere else. But Amos isn’t a prophet, he’s a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees. Which got me wondering, what exactly is “a dresser of sycamore trees?” It certainly isn’t the tree, with dappled trunk, that lines my neighborhood street. Turns out it’s a small tree, related to the fig, that requires pinching the stalks to help the fruit ripen. We have lots of measurements and data, like the plumb line. But perhaps along with that plumb line we also need “dressers of sycamores,” those that pinch and guide us in our critical thinking so that we can grow and produce fruits of change that yield a more just society driven by the care and love of our neighbor.

That change may entail giving up your power in order that we may share with others.

Amos and John the Baptist certainly provide us with lessons in laying down one's life for God. What if King Herod had sacrificed some of his political power to say no, and defend John the Baptist? What if Amaziah the priest had advocated that King Jeroboam listen to Amos? Or if King Jeroboam had asked to understand and critically reflect on how things could change instead of viewing Amos as a threat?

In the book Holy Resilience: The Bible’s Traumatic Origins, David Carr writes that the Babylonian Exile inadvertently “created an unusually highly literate exiled Judean community.” One capable of being an “incubator for a set of scriptures that would long outlast” Babylon. Their struggle with the trauma of such a tremendous loss led them to transformation and an ability to finally learn from the words of the prophets. To come to a deeper understanding of righteousness and God’s will.

And here we are, hearing those same words of prophets both old and new with an opportunity before us for transformation. We have certainly heard uncomfortable truths during the pandemic and during our recent social crises. Are we listening? Who are the prophets God is sending to us in this moment? What are the uncomfortable truths we need to learn from? Where is that plumb line to guide us? What are the forces that are pinching us and guiding us to grow? And how do we begin the transformation God is calling us to make? Amen.

Sermon by the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 9.

Today's readings are:
Ezekiel 2:1-5
Psalm 123
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13

Readings may be found at https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp9_RCL.html

---

Transcript:

Please join me in a spirit of prayer.

Oh God, we thank you for that amazing grace that brings us home. We give you thanks that your grace makes us whole, and finds us when we most need to be found. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

Good morning! Later in the service we're going to sing the hymn “America the Beautiful.” I know, not everyone is comfortable with singing a national hymn in church. I respect that discomfort. I have felt it myself. But this hymn was actually written in an Episcopal church. In fact, the church where Tyrone used to work in Newark, New Jersey, Grace Church Newark. Was it the music director who wrote it?

[Director of Music, Tyrone Whiting]: Correct.

[The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel]: All right, so Tyrone should know this hymn well. And a close look at the words may address some concerns. The whole hymn is a plea for God's grace to be bestowed on our nation, and we know that the grace is God's free gift to us, and it's unearned undeserved, and not something we're entitled to by special exceptional status or achievement. And then in verse 2, we sing this really moving line that I'm not sure everybody knows is in the hymn “America, America.”

“God mend thine every flaw.” This really sells the hymn to me, “God mend thine every flaw.” The hymn is confessional. It contains a confession. It contains an awareness of our own imperfections.

I don't know about you, but I can feel safe and I can feel more comfortable in a world of ideas, or a system that contains the seeds of its own self-correction and repentance, that has confession as part of its method, a tradition that contains the resources for its own accountability and critique. Our scripture, in fact the whole history of Israel leading up to and including Jesus, contains its own system of self-correction, as evidenced in Ezekiel, the Gospel, and Paul this morning, and it's one reason I trust our faith tradition.

To balance out “America the Beautiful” at the end of the service, we're also going to sing one of my favorite hymns from the UCC hymnal, and I thank my wife for this. I'm pointing up. She's alive, don't worry, she's in Maine. That means she's in Maine. Um, this great hymn by Sibelius, “this is my song, O God of all the nations, this is my song, O God of all the nations.” And it reminds us of how people everywhere love their country just like we love ours. They love the blue sky of their countries just as much as we love the blue sky like we have today in ours. And that's how I see this day for me. Our love of country is simply an extension of Jesus's command to love all of our neighbors near and far. It's just when we love a country, it's loving our neighbors in the collective or in the aggregate sense. The question of singing a national hymn or not, balancing it with another hymn or not, reveals a telling ambivalence that we struggle with on this day. I know some won't use the language of love in reference to our country.

By these lights, it seems to me our country, as it is and has been, is not seen as worthy of love. Some others are eager to profess love of country, and believe that no nation is worthy of love because it is without spot or blemish. You might think of the phrase, “America, love it or leave it,” or some such. Both, however, in my opinion, share a common and dangerous assumption: to be worthy of love, we must be perfect. To be worthy of love, we must be perfect. And for that reason, I think both sides need a dose of Jesus and Saint Paul, and we have just the right dosage in the scripture that happens to fall on this Fourth of July, we have on display in the Gospel a weak, rejected Jesus, and in the Epistle we have Paul reminding us that power is perfected in weakness. Why is a story of failure and weakness and rejection included in a book meant to nurture our trust in Jesus as our Lord and God? Why did the editors leave this in? Because Jesus lives to display God's grace, that is to say God's unconditional love that embraces the flawed and imperfect and the rejected in all of us. Remember what I said about a self-correcting tradition? The Gospel makes sure we are not tempted into a Jesus of power and glory, understood in the world's terms, but subtly reminds us that this is the Jesus of the cross, the Jesus of defeat, the Jesus of rejection and humiliation. He's even humiliated in the story. Notice that his neighbors never mentioned their father. They are noticing he's illegitimate

God is not looking for perfect servants. Rather, God delights in servants who, by doing God's work and telling God's story, in our weakness and despite our weakness, are made able by grace to glorify God through God working in us.

Kierkegaard, to drop a Danish philosopher on you. As you may know, he was a clumsy and lame man, also very grumpy, who was a great fan of the ballet. When he talked about this leap of faith, the ballet was in mind. He was gesturing at something he could not ever hope to achieve on his own with his own abilities in his own merits, but could only do if God's grace worked with his weakness to create a state of gracefulness in him. Believe it or not, I mentioned the Danish philosopher because I had a conversation about him this week with a young man who works at a local climbing gym.This young man is also finishing a Masters in Theology at Villanova. The young climbing instructor talked about how people often achieve a high when they climb the climbing walls. When they're being successful and powerful and graceful and creative, they get this high feeling, an elated, hyper-focused, heightened experience that many call spiritual. We might think of this climbing experience as related to what St. Paul experienced up there in the third heaven.

The young man and I agreed that these were great experiences to have, really fun ones, but also spiritually ambiguous in our achievement and in our sense of powerfulness. We might center on ourselves and center on the experience in itself, and leave no room for relationship, for gratitude, for a community who helped you get to this place, for a sense of blessing from beyond our abilities and our self. The climbing instructor reflected to me that it is when we fall, it's when we falter and reach the limits of our power, that we open ourselves to our need for help from beyond. It is in that relational moment that God's power interacts with our weakness, as Jesus and Paul teach us in the readings today.

We don't have to be perfect to serve God. We don't have to be perfect to serve God and proclaim God's Goodness. God is not waiting for us to get perfect before God loves us. In fact, it's simply the opposite. It's God's love of us as we are that slowly improves us over time and never gives up on us. We don't have to be perfect to be loved by God and by each other.

And we may examine ourselves to ask how that desire for perfection in ourselves and others is an obstacle to our loving. Perhaps a system we use to perfect ourselves, protect ourselves from the vulnerability of loving, our collective life as a nation, does not need to be perfect to be loved. And in fact, in that shared weakness, we may know more clearly how much we need to be redeemed and loved into our better angels. I do believe that acknowledging our flaws and failures in admitting our weakness, “God mend our every flaw,” when that comes from a place of love and acceptance, it brings the healing presence of God's grace in tow, and opens us up to the healing we so desperately need and we push away when we constantly come from a place of negativity.

We need to proceed from this love we are given if healing is our goal. Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

“What is the kingdom of God like, to what can I compare it? It can be likened to a priest on retreat who hears an unfamiliar bird call in a tree while on a walk and wants to discover its source.”

Listen in to the Rev. Barbara Ballenger's sermon for the fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 8.

Today's readings are:
Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15; 2-23-24
Psalm 30
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net for Proper 8, Year B.

---

Transcript:

[The Rev. Barbara Ballenger]I was on retreat this past week at Holy Cross Monastery in New York. They’re only just beginning to open up for a few guests, so I had this tiny monk’s cell and most of the monastery to myself. From my window, I could see the meadow that slopes down to the Hudson River, the mown paths that cut through it and the trees that ring it. The weather was perfect. The food was great. The chanting of the brothers at prayer was sublime.

I get the attraction. I could be a monk – for a week. But I also kind of missed all of you. In fact I wanted to bring you a souvenir. Unfortunately, the gift shop hasn’t yet reopened and my suitcase was only so big. So I brought you a parable, collected in the meadow on my first full day at the monastery. It goes like this:

What is the kingdom of God like, to what can I compare it? It can be likened to a priest on retreat who hears an unfamiliar bird call in a tree while on a walk and wants to discover its source. Sweet sweet, chew chew, Sweet sweet sweet. So she consulted the bird finding app on her phone and discovered that it belonged to an indigo bunting – a bird of great price, in the priest’s eyes at least. Dark blue head, cerulean wings. It was a bird she dearly wanted to see up close in all its glory.

But first she sat on a bench at the edge of the meadow to read Isaiah 55, which Br. Robert, her spiritual director for the week, suggested she start her retreat with. You can’t beat Isaiah 55. Let all who thirst come to the water…. Seek the Lord while he may be found … call upon him while he is still near.

Sweet sweet, chew chew, sweet sweet sweet, called the bunting. The priest decided to set aside her bible, and get some seeking practice. She followed the bird call back to the nut tree where she first heard it. But now the call was coming from across the meadow in the willow. So she headed to the willow. Only to find when she arrived that the call was coming from the oaks near the river. So she followed the path through the meadow to the oaks near the river, and she got her feet wet along the way. But when she got to the oaks along the river, the bird was back in the nut tree where she heard it the first time. And so on.

Sometimes she heard the bird. Sometimes she saw it flying at a distance. One time it burst out of the grass 10 feet in front of her – a flash of blue was all she could see. And she began to wonder if the bird had a thing against priests.

Finally the indigo bunting led the priest all the way around the meadow back to the bench where she started. She sat down to catch her breath and re-read Isaiah 55, in case there was some advice in there on making birds appear so you can see them up close in all their glory, and maybe take a picture to put on Facebook. Instead Isaiah announced: For you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song.

Sweet sweet, chew chew, sweet sweet sweet.

What Isaiah meant to say was: Let those of you who have ears to hear listen, because you’re not gonna get a close look at this bird today. Or the next. Or the one after that.

Somewhere in the middle of her many treks across the field, the priest – who was me – got the feeling that maybe God was playing with her, and she began to laugh too: at herself, at her belief that the indigo bunting might land right in front of her, and at the bird’s uncanny ability to take off again every time she got near.

God was indeed giving her a lesson on seeking, that morning. But God was also giving her a lesson on finding. Because there never was a moment when she wasn’t with that bird. She could hear its song. She could see its flight. Her desire for more kept her after it; she wasn’t just seeking and seeking and seeking, she was finding and finding and finding, more and more about that bird as the day wore on. She got particularly good at recognizing its call.

The lesson made her realize something about faith: it’s not the thing you seek, it’s the thing that makes you start seeking in the first place. It’s the desire that jump-starts the curiosity; that makes one take off after that wonder. If you have any desire for God at all, it’s because faith is already at work within you.

It’s the practice of faith, the ongoing attention to its pull and its push that truly helps us to recognize God in our midst, to get used to the places where the divine draws near. That’s why the monks gather five times a day to pray. We need that faith, honed in the everyday acts of morning prayer or the deep dive of retreat, that helps us to navigate the really challenging waters, to follow the signs of God’s presence when there is much to distract us, especially fear, which is the greatest adversary of faith.

This is the kind of life and death seeking and finding that is going on in Mark’s Gospel today, in the stories of two people driven to Jesus’ feet by the faith in them.

Mark tucks the story of the healing of the woman with the hemorrhage right in the middle of the story of the raising of Jairus’s daughter. This is the do-or-die kind of faith, which busts right through religious laws, pushing crowds and doubting neighbors to get to its destination.

Jairus gets to Jesus first to plead for the life of his 12-year-old. I wonder if the crowds sort of parted for him, given that he was a leader of the synagogue and all. But when Jairus reaches Jesus, Jairus hits the dirt and tells him his story of need. “Come lay hands on my daughter who is dying, so she will be healed,” he begs. No bargains, no power plays, just 100 percent need and the insistence that Jesus can meet it. Jesus can’t resist faith like that. He heads off to Jairus’s with the whole crowd in tow.

And that’s when the woman with the hemorrhage catches up to Jesus. She had no advocate. She has been alone for 12 years. There are a few things to keep in mind about her condition. It involves blood, and that makes her ritually impure according to Leviticus. The purity laws governed people’s access to worship, to the holy, to God, and to one another. Which means that as long as she has this condition, 12 years at this point, she was someone to avoid. Because if someone who is ritually impure touches you, you become ritually impure as well, and it’s not a small matter to undo that. It’s not impossible, but it’s not easy either. So imagine a woman who has likely been cut off from her community and from worship for 12 years, and she’s dying from her ailment. But she has a very strong desire for life.

I wonder if the crowds sort of parted for her, given that no one wanted to risk making contact with her. When she reaches Jesus she can only bring herself to touch his hem, because she is violating all sorts of laws here – a woman touching a man, a ritually impure person touching someone else. So it makes sense that when Jesus asked “who touched me?” she was filled with fear and she hit the dirt and poured out her story of need.

Now, if she had been merely extracting healing from Jesus, I think she would have denied she was involved at all, just disappeared back into the crowd. But she knew she had been driven to an encounter with the divine – and there is only room for truth in that moment, not only God’s truth but her truth as well. And Jesus can’t resist faith like that. “It’s what healed you,” he tells her and sends her off with her access to her community and her God and her future restored.

But the story doesn’t end there. Because Jairus’s faith is about to take a beating. Family members report that his daughter has died. Their doubt of Jesus and of Jairus is palpable – why trouble the teacher any further, they reason with Jairus, as though it was a bad idea in the first place. They laugh at Jesus when he insists there’s still hope. Jairus realizes that he has a lot to lose here, his daughter, his family, his reputation, his stance in the community, and he becomes afraid.

This is where Jesus takes charge, and teaches a lesson about how to keep faith alive in adverse conditions. Jesus meets the source of fear and faithlessness head on. Just as Jesus rebuked the storm in the previous chapter of Mark to calm the fears of his disciples when they were crossing the sea, Jesus rebukes the taunting crowd, casts them out and creates a space of calm that allows Jairus’s faith to resurface. Sometimes to keep the faith, we have to ask Jesus to do that for us, to remove the source of our fear when we can’t do it ourselves.

After that it was just a matter of trusting Jesus to do what Jairus asked him to do in the first place. Only now it’s not his daughter’s health, but her very life that Jesus restores. Much more than Jairus bargained for, when faith sent him out looking for the Lord.

“Seek the Lord while he may be found,” Isaiah 55 tells us, “call upon him while he is near.” In Jesus, God places the divine self where it can be found. In Jesus, God draws near enough for us to know we can be heard. Faith prompts us to seek and cry out in the first place. Sometimes, it just gets us as far as the hem of Jesus’ cloak, or the dust at his feet, and Jesus takes care of the rest.

And other times, faith hears the beguiling call of God, catches a flash of the image of God’s own eternity, and wanting a better view of all that glory, gives chase.

Let those of us who have ears to hear, listen.

Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

A young girl's laughter. A strong, calm voice. What calms you, reassures you that all will be well, when the storms in life are raging around you? Can you open wide your heart to trust in God?

Sermon for Sunday, June 20, 2021 - The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 7.

Today's readings are:
Job 38:1-11
Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net

---

Transcript:

[Introductory Music]

[Anne Alexis Harra] Almighty and eternal God, you created the winds, the waters, and the beaches. Through your grace your Son Jesus Christ calmed the storm which wreaked havoc in the disciples’ lives, though only momentarily. Bestow upon us the knowledge that your presence is with us from age to age, and that Christ Jesus will calm any storm we must face. Amen.

When I was about eight years old, my parents and I took a cruise around the Caribbean. One day, we were scheduled to take an excursion to the tiny island of Anguilla to swim with dolphins. The morning of the excursion, a staff member informed all of us that the waters were a bit rocky. Anybody who wanted to opt out of the tour would receive a refund. My parents looked at each other, uncertain, but decided to press on. They had an eight-year old daughter chomping at the bit to swim with dolphins. Besides, how bad could the waters really be?

When we got into the little [boat] which took us from the sturdy cruise ship to the island, it was immediately clear that the waters were not only turbulent, they were dangerous. Ocean swells fifteen-feet high almost sent this little boat airborne. Had I known then what I know now, I probably would have told Mom and Dad to opt out. Take the refund. It’s not worth the photo op. At the tender age of eight, though, I had the childlike innocence of the disciples in the early years of Christ’s ministry.

While my parents and the other people on the boat began to turn green with a combination of fear and seasickness, a beautiful thing happened: the little girl sandwiched in between her parents began to giggle. Giggles turned into shrieks of laughter. This boat ride was not dangerous. On the contrary, to my younger self, this was an adventure. A carnival ride, simply part of the fun on the way to meet the dolphins. To this day my parents say it was a gift from God. The sounds of a little girl laughing broke the tension and fear felt by just about everyone else on the boat. Suddenly, the other children were laughing, and then their parents were laughing. We arrived on the island safely, albeit shaken up. Looking back, I believe firmly that this was a gift from the Holy Spirit. Not only did the Spirit grace me with joy and laughter to get through a treacherous situation, but through me the Spirit intervened and we arrived safely.

That harrowing, joyful, Spirit-filled boat ride reminds me of this brief but powerful story in Mark. Jesus was tired after ministering and doing the unending work of herding the disciples. I imagine that Jesus and the disciples boarded the boat and Jesus, like an exhausted parent, promptly fell asleep. While trying to catch up on some sleep, a storm overtook the sea and the boat. It is important to note that at least one-third of the twelve were experienced fishermen. So when Peter, Andrew, John, and James were scared and unsure, let alone Nathanel the bumbling shepherd or Matthew the tax collector, things were looking grim. The disciples sought Jesus’ protection, woke him up and asked what is a rather painful question: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

Mark twice writes that Jesus woke up. The first time Jesus woke up one can assume that it was the physical act of being roused awake. We hear “He woke up” immediately after the disciples asked “Do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus then figuratively wakes up to the fact that the disciples, his adopted family, were in a dangerous situation. As far as we know, there was no little girl on this ship to giggle and dissipate the fear in the air. Instead, there were at least 12 terrified people looking at him while water poured into a boat, faster than they could control. Do you not care that we are perishing? Now aware of the reality that things were going downhill fast, Jesus protected his people.

Mark writes that Jesus rebuked the wind, and he disciplined the sea. “Peace! Be still!” He rebuked the wind. Jesus beat back the winds that were threatening his disciples, his beloved, his children. He put himself in between the life-threatening storm and his children, like a parent will often put himself in between danger and his family. To answer the disciples’ prior question, I imagine Jesus’ answer was quite simple: “I DO care that you are perishing.” Channeling the redeeming and protective love from God the Father, Jesus performed a miracle.

The disciples were terrified of the slow, painful death that is drowning. The antidote to this, obviously, was the calming of the storm. Mark portrays the miracles of Christ as serving a unique purpose: fulfilling human need in order to make disciples and create a sturdy foundation for the future church. In Mark chapter 1, a man is possessed by an impure spirit. Jesus, having none of this, expels the demon from the man. News of this event quickly spreads around Galilee. Just a few verses later, Simon Peter’s mother is ill, so she is healed. Jesus was responding to the needs of people around him and creating a following. Establishing trust amongst his followers and the people of Israel to recreate bonds with God was vital to him. Trust, faithfulness, and response to need are all innately Godly. Jesus responds to human need because he is a human. Living among us as one of us, Jesus knew exactly what it was like to suffer and to have need.

After Jesus beat back the storm that threatened his people, there was “a dead calm.” We are all familiar with the calm after the storm. Having spent my summers in Rehoboth Beach, I can assure you that there is nothing more eerie than the dead calm on the water after a particularly treacherous storm. Is it safe to go back? There is also nothing more beautiful than that dead calm. Usually the morning after a storm the air is clean and the sun is shining so brightly it looks like diamonds dance on the water.

Picture Jesus and the disciples after the storm and imagine the dead calm around them. What do you see? What do you hear? I can envision the transition from black skies and rough seas to a sunny sky and cool, sweet air. Birds may be chirping tentatively, the disciples may be shaking with residual trauma. Still in this calmness, in an almost pithy tone, Jesus asks them a question: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” He expresses frustration after performing miracles in response to need for the people of Israel, for the gentiles, and for his own friends. They still weren’t getting it. At this point, Jesus probably wants to go back to bed.

That is the thing about discipleship and living fully into our lives as baptised Christians. God is here to pull us out of storms, even when our faith is shaken to the core. We all have faced storms in our lives. As I stand here, some of us are in the eye of the storm, some are looking at the storm approaching, and some are coming out of it. How has God been there to beat back the winds which feel like they are going to overtake the boat? This story may be chronologically thousands of years old but it has aged like fine wine. Jesus is here to put himself between the storm and us, today, tomorrow, and always.

In the last sentence of the passage for today, Mark writes that the disciples were filled with “great awe.” I have to take a pause, though, and think of all the miraculous times that God has pulled me out of storms, not least of which was the great storm of ‘05 when I wanted to swim with the dolphins. When I hear that the disciples were filled with “great awe,” it dawns on me that I should not scowl. Take heed of St. Paul’s closing words to us and to the church in Corinth today: “Open wide your hearts also.”

Open wide your hearts for the miracles God bestows upon you. Open wide your hearts for all the times God in Christ will beat back the winds and scream at the waves to be still. Allow yourselves to be embraced by the warm, sometimes tough love of Christ that reminds us that faith connects us to God. Remember that Christ makes us disciples through responding to human need—our human need, our neighbors’ needs, the needs of others. We are not alone. We will not drown. Sometimes we find Jesus in the mundane. Sometimes Jesus shows up as an eight-year old girl on a boat to Anguilla who laughs and reminds us that we will weather the storm. Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

God provides abundant life - more than we expect, and more than we could hope for - if only we'll acknowledge and water the seed already planted within us.

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel's sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 13, 2021.

Today's readings are:
Ezekiel 17:22-24
Psalm 92:1-4,11-14
2 Corinthians 5:6-10,14-17
Mark 4:26-34

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net for Proper 6, Year B.

---

Transcript:

Please join me in a spirit of prayer.

Gracious God, we give you thanks that you have begun in us a new creation. Help us by your grace to grow, continually leaving behind what must be left behind, and growing into that newness of life that you promise. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

In my perennial garden there's a thriving strawberry patch that I did not plant. For years, as we sampled lovely wild strawberries, my wife and I, we wondered where did this unexpected gift come from? Over time, I observed that above the volunteer strawberries, there is a patch of coneflowers. And on the coneflowers sit birds, feeding on the seeds of the flowers, and it seems over the years, some of these birds had feasted in strawberry patches before visiting my garden. And while on the flowers, they made deposits. We shall call them deposits. And in those deposits were undigested strawberry seeds. Voila! A thriving, unwanted, accidental, and delicious patch of strawberries.

Life's abundance is absolutely awe-inspiring. We're having a cicada outbreak in New Jersey, and it is intense to say the least. Today in scripture we have metaphors of propagation, metaphors from nature, meant to turn our hearts to God's surprising, persistent, prevailing, life-giving project. Barb Ballenger preached a great sermon on this mustard seed stuff a few years ago, look it up and do see a big footnote in the next section here. Jesus is at his bizarre and ironic best in the mustard seed parable. He depicts God's tree of life as a mustard shrub. Mustard was an invasive, unwelcome by farmers, and devilish to uproot. Yet Jesus chose this tiny seed and lowly plant to teach us something about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard shrub, even imagined here as the tree of life itself, where all the birds have room to roost. So what does that mean about the Kingdom of God, what is it like? Well it's like an intrusive, hard to detect, unwanted weed tree, that disrupts the well-planned garden and makes room for birds who will add their own...deposits...to the mess. The Kingdom of God will disrupt the established order, the well-planned garden, and make room for the unwelcomed.

A mission to give hope is in this Gospel, and a mission to give hope to the oppressed is shared by the Gospel and by Ezekiel. The Gospel, in the face of the Roman Empire, and Ezekiel in the face of the Babylonian exile. God's abundant life prevails in surprising ways, in both situations, like grass finding its way through a crack in a cement sidewalk.

In the case of Ezekiel, the prophet gives us a good description of how to propagate a cedar tree. You can actually do what he says in the prophecy and get a new cedar tree, so go home, climb a cedar tree, cut a young bough, and bring it down and plant it, and you will have, if you want, a new cedar tree. The prophet offers this image as a word of hope, to the Jews held in exile in Babylon, at the time of the telling, 17 years in exile, long enough for the first children to be adults with no memory of independence, no memory of a cohesive culture, and no memory of the holy city of Jerusalem. This generation is growing up in a hostile culture, surrounded daily by a set of stories and practices and habits guaranteed to horrify and offend and undermine everything the Jews hold dear.

And in fact, the Babylonians had their own story about cedar trees. In their story, their mythic hero Gilgamesh kills the steward who looked after all the cedar trees, and then Gilgamesh chops down every tree in the forest. The cedar was considered the tallest and most majestic tree in the ancient world, and nothing could be greater than Gilgamesh, so they had to go. The mythic hero prevails by marking and despoiling the earth in service of his grandeur. Ezekiel, a captive in Babylon, tells a different story about cedar trees, a subversive counter-narrative of the God who gives life, who plants and who propagates, the God of a good creation, the God of abundance in the midst of myths about despoiling, exploiting, and extracting.

Two quotes I heard this week led me off in this direction with these texts. Both were in a movie we screened here at the church, 8 Billion Angels, a movie about the climate crisis. One quote in the movie came from Mahatma Gandhi, who said, “the world is able to support our need, but not our greed.” The world is able to support our need, but not our greed. And the second from someone interviewed in the movie, who said, “We have an economy premised on the notion that growth is continual in a world of finite resources.” We have an economy premised on continuous growth in a world of finite resources. How does that make sense? We are called, like Ezekiel, to tell a story of life, and to live a life in balance with creation, under a tree of abundance rooted in trust in God's goodness, rooted in God's providence, working to rebalance and restore the harmony God intended in God's good world.

I take my personal inspiration from the oak tree. In Maine last summer, I was daydreaming in my hiking hammock down by the bay. I was pretending to read some weighty book or the other while gawking at the trees. The tide was out, and only the trickle of a stream from the salt marsh snaked through the wide mud flat. From the corner of my eye, I caught a movement, and there to my surprise was a doe, a deer…[muttering] a female deer, yeah. [To the crowd] I heard you start it. Well now you're singing, great, yeah. Is this church after COVID? This is really it? Yeah.

So the female deer is walking gingerly in the mud by the far shore. I see her stop under a tree with low-hanging branches and I see her stay there for 30 minutes or so with her nose up in the leaves. This made me so curious to see a deer on a mudflat, that the next day, I put on my boots, and walked to the tree through the mud. It was a lovely red oak, a natural tree in that region, that leaned out over the saltwater bay. And there were animal footprints of every type under the tree, a scattering of paws and claws roaming around in the mud under the tree, coming for acorns and caterpillars and other bugs, and all the abundance held in that gorgeous tree. I learned later that an oak tree can host 897 caterpillar species, so go home and plant an oak. It can spread three million acorns in its lifetime, a great source of protein. And a mature tree can drop seven hundred thousand leaves per year. The oak tree is a tree of life. It's beneficent, it is life-giving, it is an anchor rooting the whole ecosystem it inhabits, giving balance and life well beyond the stretch of its branches, from worm, to slug, to caterpillar, to blue jay, to deer, to human, life is given, life is sustained, life is propagated.

God has made this world abundant, and I feel like my message is very simple, but one I want to reaffirm because we are challenged by its simplicity. God has made this world abundant, not so we can abuse it, not so we can exploit it, or despoil it, but so we can live in balance with it, and join in the life-supporting, life-giving ways of our God, who loves us, and who loves all God has created in equal measure. God made the goodness of this world finite, just like us. And to me, it's as if God is saying to us, “in your finitude, my humans, try walking humbly. Try walking humbly on the earth, and you might discover a joy I have hidden there for you, a joy of living within enough.”

You might discover another joy I've hidden there for you, this notion that limits, finitude itself, enhances the preciousness, the goodness, of all finite things. And you might even discover through the gift of grace, the sweet spot where your needs are met, and there is no need for greed at all. Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

In her sermon, the Rev. Barbara Ballenger describes how Eden is the first house divided. Our history as a people of faith is rife with division, violence, and separation from God. But in Jesus we are offered a chance to reunite, to rebuild the house divided. Are you ready to accept the invitation into a house united?

Sermon by the Rev. Barbara Ballenger for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 5, Sunday, June 6, 2021.

Today's readings are:
Genesis 3:8-15
Psalm 130
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
Mark 3:20-35
Readings (track 2) may be found on LectionaryPage.net

---

Sermon Text:

Where are you? Comes the cry from Genesis today. And it’s not humanity calling out to a hidden God who seems to have abandoned us. No in the third chapter of Genesis it is God crying out to God’s people, who aren’t where they should be

I wonder if that question followed Adam and Eve wherever they went from that point forward? I wonder if every prayer we send out to God is actually prompted by this silent prelude: God crying out to us, Where are you?

The human couple’s answer is– We’re hiding. We’re ashamed. We’re naked. Because we know things now that we never knew before. And it’s his fault, it’s her fault, the devil made us do it. Do you notice that they never once apologize? They’re honest, but they don’t seem to be sorry.

We should take a moment to consider that forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That tree is not there when God fashions Adam. And then God plants a garden for Adam to tend, and in the center of that garden God plants a choice, a rule that can be broken, a way out of the garden called delight. You shall not eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or you’ll die.

Then God fashions a partner for Adam and the first couple get on with their lives for a while. Who knows for how long they got up each morning, and chose not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How long did they consciously choose to stay in that garden, where work was a pleasure, labor was easy and everyone was a vegetarian, as long as you didn’t take from that one tree?

It’s just that one day they choose the tree. They had some help for sure. But really it was their own decision to make and they made it. The fruit was good to eat; it was a source of wisdom that they didn’t have before. And once they tasted it, once they knew it, they couldn’t un-know it. The consequence was that they’d be making their own decisions from now on. And the first thing they decided to do was hide from God.

Eden became the first house divided. There wasn’t room for more than one God. So Adam and Eve had to move out. The labor that once was a delight, now became toil. The earth they once stewarded became their enemy. The animals they once named became their prey. The first murder of an innocent man happens a chapter later, an act born of an envious brother. And their new house is divided.

That’s Israel’s origin story, and it’s ours as well. In the rest of the saga God follows humanity out of the garden and keeps calling “Where are you?” And houses rise and fall, form and divide. Until in Jesus, God provides a new way of return.

And that involves seeing the household of God in an entirely new way, by looking beyond the way people usually set things up, to the alternative world that God is forming through Christ.

Not even Jesus’ own family can see it at first, we discover in Mark’s gospel today. The crowds have gone wild with desire for the Good News and healing that Jesus has been providing; Jesus has just named 12 apostles to share the load with, and things are so busy that there’s not even time to eat.

But Jesus’ family, his mother and his brothers and his sisters, are embarrassed. They come in person to fetch him away; they just want him to come home so things can go back to how they should be. They fear that he is out of his mind. And Jesus disobeys. He challenges one of the key components of Israel’s identity -- loyalty to family, stick with your own, obey your parents.

“Who are my mother and my brothers?” Jesus asks. And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

Theologian NT Wright puts it this way: “God is doing the unthinkable: he is starting a new family, a new holy people, and is doing so without regard for ordinary human family bonds. Unless you read verses 34 and 35 as deeply shocking, you haven’t got the message.” (Mark for Everyone, p 38).

It is shocking to Jesus’ family. It should shock us still today, in a society where protecting one’s own family is often a good enough reason to deny other families the resources they need.

In Jesus’ day such a defiance meant you were either insane or evil. And if evil, Jesus points out, he would make for a pretty ineffective demon, since he’s undermining the powers of sin at every turn.

Through the Good News that God is at hand, through the strength of his healing and his inclusion, through his table fellowship, through the life he will lay down and the forgiveness that he will offer, Jesus binds the strong man. Jesus subverts the divisive forces of evil, of empire, of kinship bonds, of exceptionalism, and throws open the doors to a new house.

The Apostle Paul understood that recognizing what God had done in Christ required a new way of seeing. It shows up in his second letter to the Corinthians, whom he urged to look to the invisible work of God, rather than what they were used to focusing on.

The Christians in Corinth had this tendency to confuse their wealth and their prosperity and their egos with God’s favor, as though these were the visible signs of their salvation. They were becoming a house divided by their own arrogance and their class divisions. All the things they treasured about themselves just made up the outside of the tent, Paul insisted. They needed to keep their eyes on what God was doing within.

“Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day,” Paul reminds them. “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

To look at what is not seen, to look to eternal things, requires belief, the eyes of faith, the inner yes to the divine offer, not just for the Corinthians, but for us as well.

Fast forward to today. Flip through the newspaper, or read twitter. Scan your email. Can you show me a house that is not divided? Can you show me a church that’s not divided? It’s perhaps the easiest thing to spot about our relationships these days.

And yet, in these scriptures and in this act of worship, we are invited to believe that God has been remaking the tent from the inside out. This is how God heals the breach. In Christ, God makes the divine self something that can be chosen, taken, received, over and over again, visible to eyes that want to see him.

It’s as though, in Christ, God has reverse engineered the garden from the old story. Eden featured a tree whose fruit had to be continuously denied in order for humanity to remain with God. One taste and the deal was over, the tale goes.

In this new way home there is also a tree, in the form of a cross. The repair before us also involves a tasting and a seeing with new eyes, it involves a death that results in eternal life. It is Jesus himself who is on offer, who is the food on the plate, who is the choice we can make, our invitation into a house united in God.

Keep this choice before you as you reach for the Bread of Life today, whether you come to the table here or respond to Jesus’ invitation to receive him in spiritual communion. In both cases we look beyond what we can see before us. And at that moment when we pause in prayer to receive him, make your choice. What is on offer is a house united, a breach that is healed, new life with the one who has been calling and calling: “where are you?”

Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel's sermon for Trinity Sunday.

Today's readings are:

• Isaiah 6:1-8
• Romans 8:12-17
• John 3:1-17
• Psalm 29

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net for Trinity Sunday, Year B.

---

Transcript

A Child of God

Sermon by the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2021

[Introductory music]

[The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel] Please join me in a spirit of prayer.

Gracious God, we give you thanks that we are born from above in our baptism and that your Holy Spirit continues to move in us and through us leading us into new life. May your holy wind blow us where it will, and may we be, by your grace, receptive to your movements within us. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

Please be seated.

“Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.”

I find Saint Patrick's Breastplate, these lines in particular, to be one of the most comforting hymns for me. I find in them the heartfelt center of Trinity Sunday, and a reminder that doctrines like the Trinity are faithful guides to where the healing and the love is. This is why we insist on them, because our souls need guides to find our source, to find our salvation and to find our strength.

When I sing those lines, “Christ be with me, Christ within me,” it's almost impossible for me to refrain from crying. So if you've been around me for a while, you know I sing them as loudly as I possibly can, some may say obnoxiously so. Yet this is just my grateful heart coming out, because I am and you are embraced, surrounded, saturated, adopted and possessed by God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The overwhelming Good News of the Trinity is that we are children of God, adopted heirs of the eternal, loving inner life shared by the triune God. Saint Paul writes in the eighth chapter of Romans, we heard it earlier, it's worth hearing again, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God, for you did not receive a spirit of enslavement to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry “Abba, father!” it is that very spirit bearing witness with our Spirit that we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.

My first observation is the obvious one: we are adopted children of God. We know who we, are more importantly, we know who we belong to, and what we will inherit from our divine parent. We are invited to cry out to God, and to use the most intimate terms, the term that Jesus used himself. “Abba, daddy!”

Daddy, an intimate word, a vulnerable word, one we might feel childish and silly to use, but it's offered here in the Aramaic, and not in Greek, because the author wanted to preserve a word that belonged to Jesus to signify that we are invited into the same relationship that Jesus has with God, who Jesus calls Abba, daddy.

When I think of “daddy” I think of all the times I skinned my knee or fell off my bike or had a nightmare late at night and yelled for my daddy. That's how deep our cry to God is, and it's an invitation to ask what is crying out in you, what is afraid, what feels small and threatened or vulnerable, what is neglected or beaten down or walled off by shame or embarrassment. Listen closely, and let that part of you cry out, and let that crying out be your prayer, and let that crying out find the loving parent, the source, the savior, our strength, the strength of our souls, the creating father, the saving son, the emboldening Holy Spirit that adopts and possesses our souls, and understand and see how all of that comes in three. The trinity is the grammar of our Christian faith, it's how we know we are speaking the language of Christ. We speak in the grammar of the Trinity. We are children of God.

In Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman relates how his grandmother taught him this great truth, that he was a child of God. She told the story of listening when she was a child to an enslaved preacher preaching to an enslaved congregation. He recounts his experience of listening to his grandmother like this. He says how “Everything in me quivered with the pulsing tremor of raw energy, when in her secret recital, she would come to the triumphant climax of the minister.” Quoting the minister, he continues, “You, you my congregation, are not the horrible slurs the master slings at you. You are not slaves. You are God's children.”

This, Thurman writes, established for them the ground of personal dignity, so that a profound sense of personal worth could absorb the fear reaction that threatened to consume them. And Thurman goes on in this wonderful book, Jesus and the Disinherited, about how the psychological effect on the individual of the conviction that he or she is a child of God, stabilizes the ego and gives a note of integrity to whatever he does. Indeed, Thurman finds in this notion of being a child of God everything we need to resist everything that would overwhelm us.

My second observation is more challenging than the first, but intimately related, not only are we adopted, we are possessed. This is very difficult for the modern mind to accept. We do not possess God. God possesses us. God is in us, not as our possession, but as a beachhead in a relationship that swirls us up into the Trinity like Dorothy and Toto into the tornado.

Once again, in Romans 8, Saint Paul writes, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit.” We groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Here we hear it. God and God's creation groan in us. The Holy Spirit intercedes within us with sighs too deep for words the Holy Spirit is the mind and the will of God moving through us, moving us and returning us to God. We are permeable to God's inner life, God's inner life poured out in us and through us, which is just another way of saying “possessed.” The modern mind shuts the door on God because we deify autonomy and seek our salvation in solipsism, unremitting focus on ourself as if our salvation is something to figure out, while we abhor at the same time interdependence and mutuality as a result. We modern people are desperately lonely behind the tightly locked doors of identity, afraid that connection might change us, move us, convict us, convert us, and indeed it will. We are accurately afraid the Holy Spirit will move us, will convict us, will convert us, will change us. That's what the Holy Spirit does as it loops us into the inner loving life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and leads us into our salvation. And, my friends, although we avoid this word here at Saint Martin’s, we do need some saving.

Read the world around us. Suicide, despair, premature death, chronic anxiety, apathy, emptiness, addiction, authoritarianism, are the modern soul crying out, groaning, sighing for a source of life and love beyond self. What we long for is soul, that place in us where God has bound God's life to us forever and made us children of God.

Now, in conclusion, I want you to close your eyes and rest easy in your pew, and say to yourself God's message to you: “I am a child of God. I am a child of God.” Now in your imagination, as you keep your eyes closed and sit securely, say to someone you love in your imagination “you, you are a child of God. You are a child of God.” You have given them the greatest gift.

Now trust me on this, but I learned it at the feet of the Reverend Doctor Otis Moss Jr. I'm going to invite you to turn to someone near you and say, “you are a beloved child of God.” And here's the example, here I go, “Barbara, you are a beloved child of God.”

[The Rev. Barbara Ballenger] “Thank you, Jarrett. You are a beloved child of God.”

Your turn, turn to someone. You might know them or not. “You are a beloved child of God. Well done, oh I love you guys so much, thank you for trusting and going with that. What a good group we have. Oh I love this church!

Well this might be a tradition that we keep here at Saint Martins, this is good. And when the Reverend Dr. Otis Moss does it, he says “my neighbor, my neighbor you are a child of God.” Well, that's next time. You have given each other the greatest gift of grace. You are a child of God, we are adopted children of God in God's cherished possession

Amen.

---

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. 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