Sermons from St. Martin-in-the-Fields

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Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. James H. Littrell for the Memorial of William Newbold, May 28, 2022.

Today's readings are:
Lamentations 3:22-26,31-33
Romans 8:14-19,34-35,37-39
John 14:1-6

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New Every Morning
Fr. Jim Littrell
May 28, 2022

The writer of the Book of Lamentations, a little bit of which we just heard, says to us:

“The steadfast love of God never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness!”

And then Paul, writing to the first Christians in Rome, that great imperial capital, from jail, from his cell facing a terrible death, writes that nothing in all creation will be able to separate all those early Christians and himself from that same steadfast love of God. And John, in that Gospel I just read, assures us that God’s domain, God’s dominion, the space of God, is more spacious and open and welcoming than any of us can begin to imagine. Using the metaphor of a house, he speaks to us of its endless, endless capacity to take us in. It’s endless capaciousness. The steadfast love of God is as vast and nurturing and loving and hugging and warm and safe as anything any of us can imagine, and then so much more than that.

So I am here to tell you this terrible morning, when every heart in this room is fractured, is in so much pain, that your son, your brother, your grandson, your cousin, your nephew, your friend William Connor Newbold is right now, in this very heartbroken time, saying to us, with Jesus, “do not let your hearts be troubled. I am fine. God is holding me close. And you would not believe how wonderful that is.” But, he begs us with God, “please do believe it!”

Heartbreak is a real thing, Leslie mused to me in one of our conversations this week. It’s a real thing. It actually hurts. And she’s right. Hearts break, and hearts in this holy place this morning are broken. And I believe that into that fracture, that brokenness, God’s steadfast love and God’s infinite Light is pouring right now. I want to tell you two things about that.

First, heartbreak is like any other human fracture. It hurts. And it will heal, in time, and especially - and this is really important - especially if it is nurtured by your love and care for one another in the days and months and years ahead. And second, also like a broken bone, your broken hearts will heal, but they will never be the same. There will always be a space in them where William was.

What I want you to believe with me is that he is, right now, right here, in this room, working with God to mend your hearts. He and God want you to laugh again. They want you to play again. They want you to see the colors of the world bright again. And they want you to love and care for one another in this moment and in the time ahead.

And, also, they know you will weep. And weep. And weep. They know how sad you are, and will be. And they love you and all your tears so much. And they say, God and William, that even your pain cannot separate you from God’s endless love. God loves you always and in every condition, and God will wipe away the tears from your eyes.

“And how do I know that?” William says to us. How do we know that William is now held in God’s love? “Well, here’s how,” William says to you: “I know because all my tears and my sadness and my pain are gone. Gone. All my pain is gone.”

The steadfast love of God never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning! They are new this morning.

There is a hymn I like a lot and I want to share a little bit of it with you. It’s by a composer of contemporary hymns named Brian Wren. It’s a prayer hymn, of sorts, inviting us to bring the many names of God into our hearts: he invokes in the hymn the God of all the stories we tell,the parables we tell of our God, the God who is a mother to us, nurturing, ordering, and piloting and caring, the God who is a loving father to us, hugging every child, a God he calls (and I resonate with this a lot!), “old aching God, gray with endless care, glad of good surprises, wiser than despair.” And then Wren names this God, who I think he means to be Jesus, but which brings me back to William: “Young, growing God, eager, on the move, saying no to falsehood and unkindness,...giving all you have.” The hymn ends with a kind of summary of God’s names: “Great loving God,” Wren writes, “never fully known, joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, everlasting home.”

And that is exactly where William is: far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, he is right there in the everlasting home which is God’s steadfast love, from which nothing, nothing in all creation can separate us. Nothing at all, not now, not ever.

Now how do I know that all those names, that William’s very self, is wrapped up in all the names of God, in God’s compassionate arms? Well, I guess my 79 years have taught me that. But, also, as Leslie likes to say, and as I heard this morning, there are signs.

I am, theologically, most of all a Christian mystic. And so yesterday, as I was getting ready to come up here to the church and meet with Leslie and Will, I was listening, as I often do, to the BBC’s afternoon concert, which in the morning when I’m getting ready for the day is happening in the evening there, which is morning our time. And there I am brushing my teeth when I hear coming out of the speaker the most beautiful music I’ve heard in a really, really long time.

It was so amazing it made me stop brushing my teeth and just stop and listen to this music. It’s some kind of organ music. I listen and I think, “What is this?” I think I hear in it a little Bach, but then the music moves into this kind of deep, powerful minor key, a kind of lament. It sounds to me like a kind of cry, almost. The chord just deepens and deepens in this minor key and then, gradually, that cry resolves in music that I can only describe as pure splendor. “What is this???” The music ends. I listen and an announcer tells me that what I have just heard is a transcription and augmentation for organ of a chorale, sure enough, by Bach, from his Easter Cantata. And this chorale, and this piece, is called: “Weigen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen,” which means pretty much, Weeping, Lament, Worry, Fear. And this glorious music in which all of that is contained, all of what we are in the middle of right now, all of our Wagen and our Klagen and our Sorgen and our Zagen, all our weeping and all our lamenting and all our worrying and all our fear - all of that music was composed by Franz Lizst in 1862 right after the tragic death of his daughter. And that music is about the deepest sorrow a human being can experience, your sorrow, and it’s based on and set smack in the middle of an Easter chorale, a cantada about the Resurrection.

Well. I did this thing, I stood there, struck, with a toothbrush in my hand. And then I took my finger and put it on the little red dot to push the stream back, and then I listened to this music all over again, and I thought this: that music came to me directly from the great God who lifts us out of death back into life, over and over and over and over again until we are healed, and who at the last, takes us into God’s endless life and light. And that amazing music arrived in my life, kindness of a courier, a heavenly courier whose name is William Connor Newbold. I am certain of it.

He is joined with God’s merciful love. He knows our weeping and lamentation and our worry and our fear in exactly the same way as God does, because they are joined together. And together, because they are joined, they are with Jesus, who is all compassion, and they say together to us,

“The steadfast love of God never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness!”

Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. James H. Littrell for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 22, 2022.

Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:
Acts 16:9-15
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 5:1-9
Psalm 67

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

River

Fr. Jim Littrell

May 22, 2022

Listen again and pray with me God’s Word to and for us this morning:

On the sabbath day, we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there a was a place of prayer. And women were there, talking and praying....And Lydia said, Come home and stay with us. And they said, No.no. We would not trouble you. But Lydia insisted, and so they went with her, to her home.

Then the angel of God showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city...where there will be no more night; no need for light of lamp or sun, where God will be their light forever and ever.

Now in Jerusalem by the Gate of the Sheep, there is a pool, called Bethesda, which means place of healing, which has five porticoes or entrances. In these lay many invalids: blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man, we are told, had been there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he went over to him and said, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am crawling to the water, someone else gets ahead of me, and I just never get to the pool.” Jesus said, “Come. Stand up. Take up your mat and walk.” At once, we are told, the man was made well, took up his mat, and, haltingly we must imagine, began to walk. Now that day was the sabbath.

I come to you this morning in the name of almighty God, whose insistent love wills us into being in every moment of our lives and in our deaths: in our endings, in our heartbreak and mourning, in our grief and sorrow, and, when the morning comes again for us, in our joy and in our gladness. May it be so. Amen.

Good morning, friends.

I am, as most of you know by now, Jim Littrell. I am a priest in the Episcopal church and I am really glad to be with St. Martin’s this morning, to have been with you this last week, and, God and my new friend and boss and your Rector’s Warden, Barbara Thomson willing, glad to be with you for the next few weeks, eight, to be exact. We’re not quite sure what title I might have. “Supply priest” always sounds to me like something you order from Amazon to replenish the broom closet or restock the plates and cups in the kitchen.

So I thought, no, that’s not it. I thought I might call myself a bridge priest, albeit the very first bridge after a bridge goes out, a one-way, very temporary bridge where the light takes forever to change. And then after a while they lay down a second sturdier two-way temporary bridge and that bridge suffices for the time it takes for the parish to build a lasting bridge, and that bridge is built and it’s a good solid bridge and it lasts for a long time. That doesn’t quite do the naming job, but what I am titled is not very important, to me or to you. What’s important is what I will try to be and do while I am with you in this limited time that really matters. And I think a large part of my job is to spend time with you as we are nurtured in the river of Light, as we gather and pray by the river of Life, and when either necessary or just desirable, to take a dip in the healing waters of the Bethesda pool.

I love a good clean country river. I do. My partner, Louis and I seek them out. We have hiked for miles to get to a great swimming hole.

And when I get to those swimming pools, I just plunge in and feel every single time like I’ve been washed in the blood of the everlasting Lamb that John the Visioner tells us about in the Book of Revelation, flowing from the place that Jarrett preached about last week, the new Jerusalem, the City of God—Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, and end and beginning, and beginning and end, and end and beginning.

And, friends, it is exactly there, in that cool refreshing river, that all of us are gathered and held by God’s love, made manifest in our love - our love for one another and our love for our community - held in place, John tells us, by the healing currents of the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. Right down St. Martin’s Lane all the way to Broad Street. And there will be no more night.

They—that is to say we, if do well the job of loving one another and the city of humanity through which that river flows, if we do that, then, John says, we will find ourselves all together, swimming in the water of life bright as crystal, where we need no light of lamp or sun, where God is and will be our light, forever and ever, Amen.

What a vision! And especially what a vision in a hard human time, in a time in which endings are everywhere and often soul harrowing, in a world, as always, torn asunder by our amazing ability as humans to squander our capacity, our enormous capacity, to flow God’s river, to flow God’s light, to flow God’s love into the world. We squander that gift—and sometimes suddenly, but more often, little by little, drip by drip—we turn our lives to those things that captivate us and that steal our souls, until all that’s left us is a dry riverbed, a dead pool, and at the last, a dusty death.

In times of uncertainty, in times of trauma, in times of flux, that danger lurks, like some medieval Satan waiting to light on our shoulder, whisper sweet nothings in our ear, and lead us, the beloved community, right smack into some kind of temptation.

So today, the Word of God, the Love of God, the Light of God, does something else, says something else to all the creatures of darkness and despair and death, of confusion and uncertainty (and just as surely to our overconfidence and our subtle arrogance that we cannot be tempted because, after all, we know the way)—to all that, the Light of God says... well, says a couple of things I think.

Says, I am in the midst of you, and that right early, and that right late, and that in all the time and space of all creation and all eternity: I, the God who am Light and Love, am in the midst of you. I AM. I have got you!

Says, let’s go down, let’s go down to the river, to pray, and to frolic, and to be washed over and over again in crystal water, to have our tears and our sorrow and our grieving, and our broken hearts accepted as the gifts they are and taken into the great river of God’s Love and Light. God says, Come on in! The water’s fine!

Says, take all the time you need, but stay with me, for in me is Time beyond Time, Light beyond Light, Life beyond Life. Stay with me. And I, you may be sure, will stay with you, always.

Says, there will come a time, and even now may be, probably is for some of you, that time, when washed in my Light and held in my Love, you gather yourself, lie a while in this brilliant sun, dry off, and return to the paths that lead to the river and the pool. And there, there you will see, as Jesus, who is God, who is I AM, sees: the benighted, the poor, and the suffering, the halt, the lame, the invalids, the invalid, the don’t matters, the never matters, they that live with despair in their hearts, and they that struggle through fields of all kinds of war and terror, bearing their children in their arms and their paralyzed ancients on their backs.

And seeing them, you will speak my powerful word of Love and do my powerful work of Love, and with your hands and your hearts, and with all that you have, reach out to one trampled human being, and give them your hand, and space in your capacious heart, and you will raise them up, and carry their mat, and as they lean on you, you will lead them, at first haltingly and then ever more surely, and bear them with you back into the healing pool, into the crystal river of Light, into Being Well.

For that, says God, I have called you to be my disciples.

Now, I think, is the time, for a time, for all of us to go down to the river, to plunge ourselves, as individuals and perhaps more important, as a community beloved of God, to plunge ourselves into its healing pools, to pray and wash and wash and pray, and play and heal. And then, in God’s infinite patient Time, embraced and held by God’s passionate Love, and bathed in the crystal water of Life, then to say to just one other, for that is sufficient, to say with Lydia, come home, come stay with me. To say with Jesus, be well. Let me help you to the water of Life, the river of Light that flows through the middle of the city.

And all will be well.

Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 15, 2022.

Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

• Acts 11:1-18
• Revelation 21:1-6
• John 13:31-35
• Psalm 148

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

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Alpha and Omega

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

May 15, 2022

Please join me in the spirit of prayer.

Ever loving, ever faithful God, our alpha and omega, I give you thanks that in you we always have a new beginning, whatever our endings may be, that you are with us as we come and as we go. Lord God, continue to feed our souls from the wellspring of life so that we may serve you in courageous witness to the new Jerusalem to come. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

We gather around an ending today and my favorite story about endings concerns my own father. The last flight of my father (my father, as some of you know, was an airline pilot) - the last flight of a pilot is a very big deal. Dad worked, speaking of endings, for Trans World Airlines for 30 years and even as it crumbled beneath him his last flight was a celebration. In the airline industry this last flight is called a fini-flight and the capstone of it is the final landing.

Pilots take great pride in landing (as opposed to the opposite). They take great pride in what they call painting a landing: getting just perfect that delicate balance of momentum, trajectory and gravity, to get that heavy plane to slide onto that runway. That shows the art and skill of a pilot. So, dad's last flight went from San Diego to St. Louis, then to New York LaGuardia.

Air traffic control, under the influence of my sister who is an air traffic controller, gave him the best approach possible into LaGuardia right up the Hudson River. The night was cloudless, the dome of the sky was full of stars reflected in the inky dark of the Hudson River. Yes, the big 757 took a graceful left turn and there was the statue of liberty on the left and lower Manhattan on the right, the World Trade Center, then the Chrysler building, then the empire state building and the tartan plaid of white headlights and red taillights on the grid of the city. Then, riverside church on the right and then a big graceful right turn over the Bronx, and there was Yankee stadium, beautiful glowing under the lights straight ahead and beyond that the welcoming runway of LaGuardia all lined up, cockpit focused and quiet as they hummed through their procedures, dad in command in the left seat, the gear going down with that familiar foot, the runway fills the windshield right over the threshold onto the landing and BAM.


Bam. Bounce. Bam. Waddle. Bam Shake. Luckily the masks didn't come down in front of us. And there I heard come from my dad's mouth the name of our Lord. The name of God came to his lips not as a prayer but as a swear, characteristic of him but then knowing him as well he chuckled, sighed deeply, and said “oh well.”

I hope I can land this last sermon. I hope I can land this fini-sermon with God on my lips as a prayer and not a swear.

We gather around an ending today and in God's grace we know that God is as present in endings as God is in beginnings. God is just as present in endings as beginnings. God is alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. St. John the divine teaches us endings with God are full of promise, generativity, creativity, grace redemption, new life. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end.

Genesis begins our sacred story and Revelation ends it, not with a hard stop but with a new beginning. The New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, joining heaven and earth, finally healing that gap we've created with God, and oddly enough affirming human life in its most complex, diverse, battle-scarred, corruptible, historically burdened location in a city, and not just any city. Jerusalem. The city that kills the prophets all the day long, the city where Jesus was condemned and died, the great wounded city of God's heart, for me reappearing here much like Jesus appears with his wounds intact in the resurrection.

God's project continues not in a new garden of innocence, naivete and childlikeness, but in an old battle-scarred city burdened with history. That is where God chooses to meld heaven and earth at the end. Now, St. John the divine was a pastor, and I resonate with him as a pastor. I connect with him as someone who loves and pastors a flock, we both live the commitment of loving our people every step of the way, through better, for worse, richer, for poor, and sickness and health. John's people are facing unexpected endings. They are facing martyrdom. They're facing persecution, punishment for their intolerable non-conformity to the world as it is. John himself writes from prison. His faith is uncertain.

What does he offer his suffering flock? What John offers is that God is alpha and omega, that God is as present in endings as in beginnings and God is present in the form of the lamb upon the throne, the lamb upon the throne, the one who knows all of our suffering having met his end in the same way as the martyrs. And having passed through that ending to new life he has made a way for us through all of our endings to new life. The lamb on the throne is the paschal mystery of resurrection revealed as God's nature at endings.

John's people and our people here are not beyond the intimacy and promise of God, In our losses, in our endings instead we are in the paschal heart of God's presence. John is just giving good pastoral care to his persecuted people. He is encouraging them to faithfulness, to witness to courageous non-conformity in a hostile world, and if I may be allowed to say so, we need such pastoral guidance in this moment and we need Christians formed this way. Our world is desperate and despairing, in need of witnesses to another way of life. Our world is in need of followers of Jesus who bring hope and healing and creativity to the unredeemed world, despair, futility, and vanity.

Our world needs us, intolerably non-conforming Christians whose lives point to the lamb upon the throne, non-violently, lovingly, liberating the good in life in all and pointing only to him, to no other Lord, no other idol, no other end of this life. We are here and wherever we are to be found - the depository of God's promise for this world - every time we moan about the direction of our country or the world we need to ask ourselves, “how am I moving into that space as a representative of Christ? Do I have the gospel on my lips? Do I have the name of Jesus and his good news to share? Am I a pathway to new life and hope for the despairing world around me that cannot make it on its own?

So many have come this morning to say goodbye and I am so grateful we are here together to share an ending and I am grateful. What is equally important to me however is that just as many people show up here next Sunday, that just as many or more people show up here at St. Martin's next Sunday for each other, to live the new commandment and love each other in this place as I know you love to do. That is the heart of this place - not rectors who come and go. Show up next week with love for one another, with love for the mission you share, with love for this community and most of all with love of the God who sustained you, for today may be an omega but next week God will be your alpha. A new beginning of love and life and mission for you, and that is my prayer for you. That is the prayer I want to end on, and not a swear.

In fact, I have two prayers: One I wrote, and one that's better than that.

My prayer for you is just this: thank you God for the people of St. Martin’s. Thank you God for the body of Jesus Christ in this place. By your holy spirit make them strong witnesses full of hope, promise and Godliness, living for the end of the world as it is and for the coming of the new Jerusalem where all may live the new commandment to love one another in complexity and diversity, and we pray it all in the name of the lamb on the throne. Amen.

And the second prayer, better than my own: Christ be with you, Christ within you, Christ behind you, Christ before you, Christ beside you, Christ to win you, Christ to comfort and restore you, Christ beneath you, Christ above you, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all who love you, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. Carol Duncan for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 8, 2022.

Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:
Acts 9:36-43
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
Psalm 23

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

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The Good Shepherd

The Rev. Carol Duncan

May 8, 2022

Jesus Good Shepherd, as you call us each by name, open our minds, hearts, souls and inner being to respond to you in all your guises, visible and invisible. I make this prayer in your holy name of love. Amen.

Dear flock, please be seated in this fruitful pasture.

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday and you are all in the pasture. It is also the next to last Sunday we will have Jarrett with us.

I want to consider what it means to be Jesus’ flock, Jesus’ people, at St Martin’s when we are about to be without an appointed shepherd for quite a while. I find it a challenging and a bracing prospect. And I want to pay tribute to a faithful shepherd who has guided us for 11 years, very much by Jesus’ compass leading him.

Today’s readings are meant to give us a sense of the rod and staff of our heritage. Four different settings, four versions of shepherd and flock. How do we find ourselves in these passages?

I love the first scene of shepherding from Acts. A group of women disciples doing good works and acts of charity. So much like us: Tabitha and her friends would surely recognize Blessed Baking, Women Connecting, Stephen Ministry, Biblical Study groups and all the rest. We have been in their shoes, doing what we can to ease the suffering of our loved ones. When one of us is sick or dies, we call our pastor, our shepherd, just as the women of Joppa did. And we have known that Jarrett will be there instantly. I am not crediting him with raising the dead. But Jarrett does the next best thing. He conducts the most deeply moving funerals, consistently, of any priest I have ever known. The work of a good shepherd is to comfort, to discern and convey the deep abiding meaning of our lives. We honor and embrace this work. We are a church that values and practices being community in pain and in joy. Even when it is difficult. We have learned that. We follow the pattern set in Joppa. I think we can count on ourselves for that.

The second scene of shepherdship: the 23rd Psalm – so moving and so comforting, it follows us all our lives. Its water and oil are redolent of baptism. Jarrett was so thrilled when he got to baptize a teenager by full immersion. He figured out the logistics of how to do it by obtaining a moveable trough big enough to submerge a sizeable body. We did it on the front patio. A space, by the way, that Jarrett envisioned as a way to enlarge our worship space so we could share the surrounding community with our worship. St. Martin’s more typical baptisms are celebrated inside the church at the beginning of a Sunday service so the whole congregation can welcome and incorporate the newly baptized. After the baptism, Jarrett processes up the aisle joyfully, extravagantly sprinkling us all with baptismal water. The freshly baptized settle down with their families to bask in the newly recognized holiness of their members. The rest of us recall again that the Baptismal Covenant as Jarrett has come to help us understand is the source and root of all we are about at St. Martin’s. Everything that we do. Everything.

Now the hard example of how shepherds work, from Revelation. This is perhaps most Jarrettlike and most us. We do not take the easy just-go-to-church-on-Sunday version of Christianity. Under Jarrett’s leadership, we have some sense of who it is who comes first in God’s care. Those who hunger and thirst, who are kept from learning and thriving, who are refugees. These are the ones who come out of the great ordeal of our present world. We have learned to hear them guided by Jarrett through the work of POWER, of Beloved Community, of Supper, through St. James School, through Beyond Borders. We have changed how we respond. Now, rather than donating money toward scattered programs, we invest major funds and our energy to respond covenantally to the suffering we’ve learned to see in our world. We are learning to listen, rather than to assume we know how to fix the problem. When someone asks us “Who are these and where do they come from?” We say “Please tell us. We are listening.” The church in these increasingly secular years needs a shepherd like those of the early church. We can’t take faith for granted. We live in a world that engenders martyrs. We will need a shepherd like Jarrett who considers and acts to counter systemic injustice in the name of Jesus.

The fourth scene of shepherding from the Gospel reminds me very much of Jarrett and how he has led us over these eleven years. In today’s Gospel, Jesus answered his antagonists, “I have told you and you do not believe.” So many times, most often in Community Engagement meetings, but other times too, Jarrett will say “I have said it, I have told you.” Finally, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh year, Jarrett marshaled us to collect some of his shepherding guidance in a handbook. We wrote it down. The Community Engagement Committee has worked for years on the ideas and structure of this handbook. Community Engagement is the coordinating body of all the various outreach ministries of St. Martin’s. The vision statement of the handbook says that we “engage as agents of Christ’s love in the world by developing mutual relationships at the local, regional, national, and international levels that advance the mission and values of St. Martin’s as we discern God’s will as a Church, together.’ This vision of doing Christ’s loving work in the world together will serve us as a firm foundation from which to grow and thrive and we will thank Jarrett for it for years. Find it on our website in the Community Engagement tab. You should read it. There’s beautiful writing in it. When you read it, you will recognize our voices in it, and Jesus’ shepherding voice behind ours, long into the future. I know I speak for many when I say we are grateful. Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Third Sunday of Easter, May 1, 2022.

Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

• Acts 9:1-20
• Revelation 5:11-14
• John 21:1-19
• Psalm 30

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

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Please join me in the spirit of prayer.

Have you ever given your whole heart? Have you ever given your whole heart to someone and had your love rejected? Have you ever given your whole love to someone you adored or to a cause you cared about deeply or an institution that was beloved to you and had your love unreciprocated, had your love rejected, had your love attacked, even disdained? Do you have in your body that memory of the pain that comes from unrequited love, from entering that space of vulnerability where we risk so much and are available for so much damage to be loving and not to be loved in?

Return if like me you can feel that in your body, you can know you're not alone. You can know that this is an experience that God shares with us, for Jesus was and is the whole heart of God. Jesus was and is the whole heart of God shared with the world to include us in God's unbreakable love. And we know how the story goes that God took this risk, God made the ultimate offering to us of God's whole heart and Jesus was rejected, was disdained, was attacked and was killed, so God knows what it's like to offer love and have it refused, have it rejected.

And thanks be to God we know that the story doesn't end with that painful horrifying rejection but the story goes on. In fact God will not let this story end, God continues the story of love by raising Jesus from the dead. By raising Jesus from the dead God says, “this love is always on offer to you. My offer of love is alive forever for those who respond to it. My offer is there for you. Enter into this incredible transformation that is offered when you are loved this much.” And so we respond to that love and we grow in that love. Sometimes we reject it, sometimes we balk, sometimes we walk the other way. And whenever this love is rejected or attacked we know the cross is among us, but we also know that the resurrection is among us and that we can turn back to this new life that is alive for us and always on offer for the redemption of our souls.

We see the power of this paschal mystery in these stories we are offered today in the gospel and in the acts of the apostles. We see it in this story of a fisherman turned into a shepherd - a fisherman turned into a shepherd and someone who ran away in fear turned into someone willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.

We see this good news story playing out in all of its power today in the story of Paul as well, a persecutor of the church who becomes one with the persecuted. The persecutor of the church who becomes one with those that he had persecuted, one who had breathed threats and murder who now breathes good news and new life. This is the transforming power of the Risen Christ still at work, and we know it so powerfully because it's the same Jesus we knew in his ministry doing all the same things. It's the in the continuity that we know there is in Christ, the one who healed, the one who loved, the one who included, the one who preached peace, the one who reconciled us to God and our enemies, is still adding in his risen life with Peter and with Paul and with all of us here today. The offering of new life is always alive for us, thanks be to God.

Let's start with Peter. My beloved, beloved, beloved Peter, how I love you. Peter, I want to be as bumbly and beloved as you are.

Peter is met by the Risen Christ on the beach in John in a situation of nurture. There is Jesus feeding his disciples, also instructing his disciples, he tells them where to find the fish, but this nurturing setting of breakfast on the beach is so much what Jesus taught his disciples to expect in his resurrected life, they will know he is there because he is nurturing them, he is feeding them. And more than that, Jesus is restoring Peter, restoring him to his purpose. Jesus wants Peter back. Jesus wants Peter restored so Peter can live out his purpose in the kingdom of God to spread the good news. Jesus needs to recover Peter from his betrayal.

There Peter is dripping wet on the beach in his clothes and Jesus has this dialogue with Peter, this uncomfortable dialogue with Peter where he is holding him accountable and pushing him deeper. Jesus wants Peter back and this is not going to be a forgiving or reconciliation that includes forgetting, this will not be forgiving and forgetting this will be remembering and forgiving.

Jesus leads Peter through those three questions, those tender painful difficult questions: Peter do you love me? Peter do you love me? Peter do you love me? And we know that these questions, they recapitulate the three betrayals when Peter said, “I don't know this man” and betrayed his Lord three times. These three questions are shepherding Peter back into this relationship and ministering to him by drawing him back into that essential love of his Lord that is core to his life.

“Do you love me?” It's painful. It is painful. We hear it right in the passage. It hurts Peter's feelings to be questioned this way but we know with Jesus in his ministry he is always drawing us deeper into this love that we have for him.


And why is Jesus drawing Peter deeper? Why? Because he has a mission for Peter, he has a purpose for Peter, a ministry for Peter. Like in his ministry Jesus is always looking for partners to send out to share the good news and he knows if Peter is going to do that to his full potential he must be fundamentally grounded in his love for Jesus. He must grow in his courage to love Jesus if he's going to become a good shepherd. A good shepherd who lays his life down for the sheep, a good shepherd who will pay the ultimate price for faithfulness and devotion when Peter is crucified for being an apostle.

This is Jesus doing tough love. This is Jesus caring for his friend and preparing him to have that depth of love he will need to give his life away for his friends. Do you love me? Feed my sheep. A life is restored, a vocation is restored. The church finds an advocate. This is the Risen Christ at work.

We have Paul as well. We have Paul in a slightly different story, Paul breathing threats and murder. Paul the persecutor of the earlier followers of Jesus. He is knocked down. The context is not breakfast on the beach. The context is a slap down on the road to Damascus. Notice there's no horse, by the way, every picture you've seen of Paul getting knocked off a horse - there's no horse in the story. I would love to know how many people saw a horse when we read the story.

Paul, being intense and zealous and hard-headed, is one of those folks a little bit like me who needs a good knock from God to get it together. God has multiple approaches. Paul knocked down is enfeebled, he's blinded, he's made dependent. He is humbled in every way and made to depend on exactly the same people he was persecuting. He is taken in by Judas, he is prayed for by Ananias, all under the direction of the Risen Christ. He is turned over into the hands of those he called enemies and those early followers of Jesus were challenged to live up to the teaching - love your enemies. Love the guy who's breathing threats and murder. Love the guy who stood by when Stephen was stoned to death. Love this deadly enemy and bring him in.

And here in Paul we have another testimony of how the Risen Christ works to change a life, to transform a life from threats and murder to good news and new life, rom persecutor to persecuted, in a way that would teach us all how to accept transformation, to be humbled, to be blinded, which is to say to no longer be so sure about what we thought we knew. To be dependent on others, on community, to pray for us and to lead us into what love means. Paul is transformed by this power of the Risen Christ that was available to him and is equally available to us.

If we risk it, if we so dare, this Risen Christ offers us transformation of life. How will we be changed from fisherman to shepherd? How will we be changed from persecutor to persecuted? How will we make ourselves available to the Risen Christ who is working in us to change us forever? I really sincerely believe that people are right to be wary of this relationship with Christ because deep inside we know it will change us. For those of us who have faith in this process and know that Christ leads us only deeper into love, we must be escorts on this journey. We must be people who remind our brothers and sisters, our siblings in christ, that this is a journey deeper into love from death into life, from despair into hope, from fear into courage, and most of all that it's a journey that enlists us to be part of the healing of the world, the healing of the world we know in Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.


Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Listen in to the sermon from Anne Alexis Harra for the Second Sunday in Easter, April 24, 2022.

Support the worship and ministry of St. Martin’s by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

• Acts 5:27-32
• Revelation 1:4-8
• John 20:19-31
• Psalm 150

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

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Community

Anne Alexis Harra

April 24, 2022

Let everything that has breath praise you, O God of Salvation.

Please be seated.

Today is a day to be joyful in the Lord, and in the Resurrection indeed. Spring seems spring-ier than ever. My house smells like hyacinths and I couldn’t be happier. It seems that nature itself is rejoicing in the Good News this morning. We welcomed a new beloved child of God into the Body of Christ as we are gathered to bask in the beautiful forgiveness and glow of the Easter Season. Alleluia!

When, friends, has the Resurrected Christ appeared to you? When has Jesus dwelt among you and said “Peace be with you.” Were you alone in prayer? Or perhaps, were you accomplishing a major life moment? Were you supported and raised up in a community? For me, life in this community continues to shape my faith and inform my questions. Only in community have I grown so profoundly in faith and received the courage to say, “The Lord is risen indeed, and I see that Resurrection everywhere around me and within me.”

Friends, life in the Resurrection is beautiful. Luckily for us, the promise of the Resurrection is the very essence of our passage from the Book of Acts today. Luke tells us in Acts that the disciples were publicly teaching in Jerusalem, which was a risky feat for them, and perhaps more importantly, they were doing so because they said, “we are witnesses to the events of the Resurrection.” These are the same disciples who we encountered as bereaved, doubtful and full of fear in the Gospel of John– until they encountered Jesus. Life in the Holy Spirit and the peace of the Risen Christ triggered a death to fear and a Resurrection to joy in the Lord in the disciples and in all of us. That same joy was what enabled the disciples to respond to the jealousy and criticism of the high priest and council with nothing but love and devotion to God.

Our Lessons today emphasized the importance of community in recognizing the Risen Christ. Community is fundamentally at the heart of ministry, and it is foundational to our lives as followers of Christ. I have found that we are far more likely to encounter the Resurrection when we are around people who love us, who hold us and who uplift us. I consider myself deeply blessed to be in a community of people who lovingly sow the seeds of ministry, together, who open the door for me to ask questions. So as I prepared for this sermon, I couldn’t help but give thanks for the community of St. Martin’s.

As I look at my most beloved St. Martin’s, I see a community full of disciples with the same zealous energy of the Holy Spirit and love of Christ that I do in the apostles from our passage in Acts this morning. It is this same community that just moments ago witnessed baby Kai’s baptism into the Body of Christ, that assured Kai’s family in our faithful support of Kai’s faith journey, and that boldly proclaimed that we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. We first meet the Risen Christ in Baptism, which is entry into the community of faith, and this underscores the need for community as we grow in faith and questions.

Community is essential in helping us recognize the Resurrected Christ. We cannot do it on our own. And God doesn’t want us to do it on our own. It is not lost on me that Thomas recognizes the Risen Christ while amongst his friends, the fact the disciples are in their formation together when Christ appears to them the first and second time, is significant. Thomas has his moment of vulnerability and of faith when he is amongst friends, the people he loves and the people who love him. Similarly, Luke emphasizes our need for community in the passage from Acts. The apostles are brought together as a group to the Temple council and the high priest. It is Peter and the apostles who spoke to the high priest and declared that they answer not to man, but to God. They proclaimed Jesus’ death and resurrection. And, they inform the high priest that they were witnesses to these things. It is brave of the apostles to be so audacious before the high priest, but that is the strength of the community, especially one that has witnessed and experienced the Risen Christ in our midst.

When we are in a community that uplifts us and empowers us to recognize and embrace the power of the Risen Christ, we are given a beautiful opportunity to grow in faithfulness, like the apostles. When we are in a community that allows us to ask questions and think critically, we encounter the Christ in new ways which only serves to strengthen our relationship with him. How deeply reassuring it is to know that when we are in community, we do not need to have all the answers. How freeing that is.

I believe that Thomas and Jesus’ encounter this morning functioned as a catalyst to vital questions of faith and what the resurrection means for us, as Christ’s disciples in 2022. Thomas sadly has received a bad rap over the years but the truth is, his skepticism opened a door to fruitful discussions of faith, theology, and Christology. It is important that he expressed both his doubt and his faith in a community where he felt safe and comfortable enough to do so. It’s also significant that we see Thomas proclaim one of the essential Christological statements - “My Lord and My God” - while he is in his community. I would much rather see a disciple like Thomas, who earnestly is grasping with huge questions, but doing so faithfully, than one who simply parrots messages in the hopes of gaining more glory.

Friends, this week and beyond I encourage you to consider your communities, both in and out of St. Martin’s. Your communities of families, of friends, of St. Martin’s, of Women Connecting, or wherever you find yourself. What about your community draws you nearer to Christ? How do you see yourself fulfilling the Baptismal Covenant which connects us to the entire Christian community? How do you serve your community to the Glory of God, and how does your community help you encounter the Risen Christ?

The strength of the community here is something that inspires me and anchors my belief in the Resurrection. Many people in my family can tell you I was not the same person before I came to St. Martin’s and it is amazing what joy and life in the Holy Spirit does to a very weary soul. As we look toward the future and the inevitable transition that will come with it, we have opportunities to grow, to learn, to ask questions, and to be bold. We will be in the presence of the Almighty God, who was and who is and who is to come. We will be in the presence of the Risen Christ who before all else offers us peace. We will grow in faith and rejoice in the promise of salvation. We will continue to grow members into the Body of Christ. And, friends, we will boldly proclaim the resurrection with the same zest and convictions that the apostles had. Alleluia, the Lord is Risen!

Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Listen to this week’s sermon from LIFT Worship from Anne Alexis Harra for Palm Sunday, April 10, 2022

Learn more about LIFT, Living in Faith Together, at stmartinec.org/lift

Today’s Readings:

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

Readings were taken from God’s Word, My Voice: A Children’s Lectionary
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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Who here likes to ride rollercoasters? I used to be really afraid of rollercoasters. I didn’t like that I wasn’t in control. When we ride rollercoasters, the experience is almost always entirely out of our control: how fast we’re going in the car, if we’re going up or down or even upside down, how many hills there are. I don’t feel so afraid of them anymore, though. Riding a rollercoaster usually means we have to be brave enough to let go of control for just a few moments so we can come off the ride feeling exhilarated, free, and maybe a little nauseous. :)

Holy Week is a special kind of rollercoaster: it is an emotional rollercoaster. In these days leading up to Jesus’ death and glorious resurrection, we will feel all the emotions. We will not be in a whole lot of control. We will truly feel like we’re on a rollercoaster!

Today is the first part of this ride: today is Palm Sunday. Today we are climbing up the big hill in the rollercoaster car. We are excited today because Jesus has made a triumphant entry into the big city of Jerusalem. We are excited with the disciples and the people who wave their palms to welcome Jesus. We feel Jesus with us.

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was crucial to completing God’s work for Jesus. Can someone refresh my memory – what kind of animal did Jesus ride into Jerusalem? A donkey, that’s right! Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey fulfilled a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible (Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, Zech. 9:9.). The people of Israel were excited to welcome Jesus! But sadly, that excitement didn’t last forever. Jesus knew that he was going to Jerusalem to die for our sins, and then God would raise him to new life.

Now friends, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but I need to be honest with you: we are climbing up the hill. We eventually will begin to descend, or come down, the hill, quite fast. We will feel sad when our friend Jesus dies on Good Friday. We will feel unsettled on Holy Saturday, as we wait with the disciples. We will feel safe, exhilarated, free, full of joy on Easter Sunday, when we come to the conclusion of our ride.

If you’re like me, and you need some reassurance before we really get going on our adventure, I have some good news. Throughout our Holy Week rollercoaster, we will always be safe and loved by God. We can bring all our feelings and prayers to our friend, Jesus. And lastly, nobody is ever alone on one of these rides. We have one another, and we have God. And we will remember that Jesus is our eternal king of peace. Thank you for joining me on our Holy Week ride, friends. Hosanna in the highest. Amen.

Tune into the sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for Palm Sunday, April 10, 2022.

Learn more about Easter at St. Martin’s: stmartinec.org/easter

Today's readings are:

• Mark 11:1-11
• Isaiah 50:4-9a
• Psalm 31:9-16
• Philippians 2:5-11
• Luke 23:1-49

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

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Talking About the Passion

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

April 10, 2022

Please join me in a spirit of prayer.

Lord God, we stand in awe and wonder before your cross. Help us know that your cross is the medicine of the world, the healing of the world, the return of the world to life in you. We give you thanks that you have taken on the consequences of our sin in the body of your love and that you have defeated those powers so we may have our lives in you.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

A brief meditation today as we head into Holy Week:

Every year as we approach Holy Week I ask myself, what shall I pray for this year? What shall I pray for as I give my prayerful attention to the passion of my savior Jesus Christ? How shall I open my heart to the gifts he is giving me and all of us through his passion, death and resurrection? And I encourage you all to set an intention this week. Set for yourself an intention. What will you pray for? What will you ask for? What gifts do you hope to receive when you give your full worshipful attention to these events we celebrate this week? For me it's going to be a focus on spiritual freedom, especially spiritual freedom available to us even when we feel powerless, even when we feel overpowered. How can I in some small way take on the freedom of Jesus Christ who is the ultimate example of spiritual freedom?

I see that spiritual freedom in Jesus throughout the passion - it's ironically in Luke in the fact that Pilate and Herod become friends. Jesus creates a reconciliation between his enemies in the course of his passion, showing us what his life is all about, even while he's under the power of the state. The freedom of Jesus for me is so beautifully present in Maundy Thursday, in the giving of the supper in his name the night before he dies. The night before he dies a death under torture he gives his disciples a way to understand what's about to happen. He has the spiritual freedom of love and grace in a moment of absolute terror to nurture and feed and love his friends and support them through the loss and terror they're about to experience. That is simply awe-inspiring freedom.

We heard it in the story of the cross just now, forgiving and loving while being tortured. Forgiving and loving while dying. That is that awe-inspiring spiritual freedom which to me says this Jesus Christ is so far beyond me, so far beyond me and living out harmony with God. In what might seem like total powerlessness he lives the power of love.

Now, crucifixion and torture are meant to destroy community. That's what torture does in a police state. It tears people apart from one another, it causes people to betray each other, it creates suspicion and fear. It's meant to terrorize the population, and maybe worst of all torture is meant at its worst to cause us to betray ourselves, to betray our highest values, our highest commitments for the sake of relief. And here we have Jesus in love under torture resisting all of those things, creating community, including people, forgiving enemies, bringing people together.

Once again: wonder, awe, praise. This Jesus Christ is beyond me in his spiritual freedom, yet this is the spiritual freedom my life depends on and it is the ultimate gift Christ gives us - the ability in our constraints, in our limitations, in our frustrations, in our powerlessness to have a source of integrity, to have a source of gentle loving presence in ourselves through Christ as the one who set us free by his cross to have that freedom.

This is my prayer during Holy Week: to grow in spiritual freedom, especially when I feel constrained or powerless, especially when there are greater powers acting than I can affect, to hang on to Christ who is with me, setting me free in each moment because he's defeated the powers so we may live with him. Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Tune into the sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 3, 2022.

Support St. Martin’s mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

• Isaiah 43:16-21
• Philippians 3:4b-14
• John 12:1-8
• Psalm 126

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

Please join me in a spirit of prayer.

Lord God by your grace help us join Mary in our worship today. Help us join her in her extravagant adoration and her loving sorrow, her profound awareness of the cost you will pay and the cost of following you. Lord God help all of us who go out weeping and come back rejoicing in song. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Back in elementary school I liked math. Math was fun. Each year began with fresh new workbooks fragrant with new paper and printer’s glue. The teacher passed out wonderful blue on white dittos. We pressed them up to our faces, inhaling that inky, oily, mimeograph musk. We learned fun mathematics like roman numerals. Who knew how helpful that was going to be? I can tell you what page I am on in a preface.

My favorite unit each year was “greater than, lesser than, and equals to”. I love those neat little rows of numbers and the horizontal carrot we would have to draw to indicate that 101 was greater than 99 and so on down the page.

In future years the teacher would add greater than or equal to, lesser than or equal to, adding a straight line under that horizontal carrot. What rich concepts they were giving us. Concepts that enchanted my mind and stayed with me: greater than and including, greater than and affirming what came before, greater than and surpassing all, in one simple sign.

That greater than sign, although not intended in my very secular public school, became for me a favorite symbol for God. I scribble it on notepads. I hold it in my imagination when I need to remember who my God is, a greater love than I could ever imagine. A greater healing than I could ever hope for. A greater goodness than I could ever generate on my own. A greater faithfulness, a greater steadfastness, a greater mercy, a greater hope, a greater creativity than my cramped heart and mind could ever approach under my own steam.

God's ways are greater than my ways and so I praise God, so I give thanks to God, so I place my trust in God. This greater than of God inspires extravagant praise, super abundant, repsonic, excessive, gushing love. It is the order of the day in both Paul to the Philippians and Mary in the gospel. In fair warning if you were raised to be repressed, reticent, reserved, such overflowing might trigger hot shame in your face, some embarrassment or at least some discomfort, but let us let Paul and Mary pull ourselves into adoration, pull ourselves into infatuation. These faithful souls were not afraid to pour out their souls and love of Jesus.

I want to start by re-reading Paul's letter to the Philippians as enraptured and repsonic rhetoric.

We know from his letter to the Romans that he affirms the goodness of the Torah and holds it as precious and not less than the new covenant in Christ. It's just that for Paul, Christ is equal to and more than. He has finally found full participation in the eternal life and goodness of God through his new life in Christ, and for him this affirms while surpassing his former righteousness under the Torah. And this is important for me to spell out because we're being offered the same gift as Paul. We're invited into the same rapturous life with God. It's also important to spell out because too many have read St. Paul through a northern European anti-semitic lens that reads Paul as in either/or between law and gospel.

What I recall is much more subtle on the topic and I need to affirm this because too often I hear folks mistakenly compare, quote, the “God of the old testament” and the “God of Jesus.” Same God.

The Torah, the law, is affirmed in the gospel. We must watch our tendency to demean it. The Torah is a good gift from God, the God given instructions and obligations to a priestly people set apart to live in covenant with a holy God. The Torah marked and continues to mark to this day the ultimate allegiance of Israel to God, so marked Israel represents God among hostile nations that create peril and cause to themselves then and now. Torah fidelity is risky. It's courageous identification with God and I so appreciate the risks it calls out by naming the sacred for what it is.

We need to bring a subtle reading to the Gospel of John as well. This is my day for subtle reasoning. The author of John likes to set up these either/or situations that heighten the drama through conflict. Do we follow Mary or do we follow Judas? I think John's not subtle about that one - he has an ax to grind, an agenda, and he shares this critical fault with social media algorithms that juice up conflict and polarization to maximize attention regardless of the terrible effects on our common life.

And I could, even as I read the story of Jesus, Mary and Judas, see the memes, see the social media treatment of the passage oozing the snark about virtue signaling on both sides. Oh isn't Mary so pious? Oh isn't Judas so righteous? All used to throw confusion, antagonism and agitation around.

Sadly enough John would probably be on social media. It's his style too, so permit me to reframe the scene not as a meme but as an icon, an icon that includes Jesus, Judas and Mary as an image of God's loving work. Let's start with Mary. Here's Mary, her admiration at the feet of Jesus says love the Lord your God with all your soul, all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength. This is the first commandment. She embodies the first commandment. Mary is, in this icon, the first commandment, and the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as herself. Judas plays the part of the second and co-equal commandment. Love of God and love of neighbor. Mary and Judas go together.

In Christ, those forms of caritas, both forms of charity and love coexist and support each other. They cannot have their full power without each other. Adore God, serve God in nature, serve God and neighbor, adore God. It's all one piece. They are not in opposition. They're not opposed to each other.

But that extravagant adoration of merit, anointing Jesus with perfume worth a year's worth of wages, takes us deeper into the greater than of this icon that I'm imagining. Mary is preparing Jesus for his death. This icon is not only an illustration of our highest callings, this icon is a prelude to the final showdown, the final battle where Jesus confronts and defeats the powers that prevent our faithfulness.

Mary is preparing Jesus for that final conflict that will make faithfulness possible. In her loving sorrow, in her mourning, she's loving him. She knows what comes next for a prophet. She knows that he is marked for death. The authorities have already met and he must die. Why? Because he raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. Why? Because challenging the power of death rattles the empire to its core. If we cannot terrorize the masses with death how will we control them? How will we retain domination?

And so in following Mary, what is revealed is that death in general is not the ultimate source of our fear and anxiety. It's when death is used to erode the faith and courage we need to resist the forces that manipulate death, that is when death is an enemy needing to be overcome. Death can be a friend to suffer, a gentle release at the end of life, and in all my experience with dying people very rarely are they afraid. Rather they are mourning, saying goodbye to people they love, and they're mostly concerned with causing them distress.

Jesus will overcome the tool of death. Death as execution. And this is the greater than. This is the greater love we cannot give ourselves but it must be done for us by God in Christ. This is the greater than that opens a greater life to us, greater than we can even begin to imagine, a peace greater than we can understand. God is greater than us so I praise God. In Christ God means to be greater than and equal to us so we may surpass our former lives and be found in Christ. Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Listen to this week’s sermon from LIFT Worship from Anne Alexis Harra for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 3, 2022

Learn more about LIFT, Living in Faith Together, at stmartinec.org/lift

Today’s Readings:

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

Readings were taken from God’s Word, My Voice: A Children’s Lectionary

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Good morning, my friends. Today, we heard about a dinner party. Who has ever been to a dinner party? Or a big family dinner? Raise your hand. Wonderful. What are some things you experience at a dinner party? What happens there?

That’s right. You can usually expect lots of food. Sometimes the tables are set really nicely with flowers or something fancy in the middle. You usually talk to a lot of people – sometimes you’re catching up with people you haven't seen in a while. On the count of three, I want all of you to share your favorite dinner party food with me, okay? *count* I’ll remember ALL of those! I promise!

So now that we’ve established the “norms” of a dinner party, let’s think about the dinner party that our good friend John told us about, shall we? In fact, just for a few moments, let’s pretend we’re at a dinner party with Jesus. Here are some things you all should know about this dinner party we are attending. ONE. It is occurring six days before Passover. Does anyone know what Passover is? (It’s a Jewish holiday that celebrates God freeing God’s people out of slavery in Egypt and into freedom.) Passover is a big deal for Jesus and his friends. TWO. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus are siblings who live in a big house. THREE. This is when we learn about Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ disciples who would later betray him. There is a lot going on just this one evening, folks!

This is a great story because it highlights hospitality: welcoming people into your home was a sign of deep respect and friendship in the ancient world. By throwing this dinner party, we know that Mary, Martha, and Lazarus have fond feelings for Jesus, and vice versa. We know that Martha will serve the food tonight. What do you think she’ll serve for dinner? Martha will probably serve a lovely dinner of fish, bread, figs, and wine, if I had to guess. Those are pretty much the staple foods of the ancient world.

Now, here’s where I need some help from you guys. We talked about the norms of a dinner party, right? But can you tell me what happens after you’re done eating at a dinner party? The evening is still young, you’re hanging out, right? What else? You probably help clean up, some people do the dishes, there might be dessert. Right. Okay, something we may not expect to see is someone wiping perfume on someone else’s feet, right? Especially not with her hair. I wouldn’t call that a dinner party norm, would you?

So, our sweet friend Mary has just wiped very expensive perfume with her hair onto Jesus’ feet. Does anyone want to guess how expensive the perfume was? It says it was worth a whole year’s salary, which is around $50,000 in today's dollars. It was worth a lot of money! Mary, our sweet, faithful Mary, did not view this interaction between Jesus and her as a transaction. The perfume suddenly lost its monetary value because Jesus’ love and ministry was worth everything. Mary knew and experienced how important Jesus is – remember, he raised her brother, Lazarus, from the dead. So even though Judas tried to reprimand Mary, she did the right thing. Jesus knew how much he meant to Mary. Jesus truly valued the people in his life. His love and respect of all of us – you and me and your mom and dad – is worth everything, just like Mary taught us.

Friends, thank you for coming to this dinner party with Jesus. It’s been lovely being with you. Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Tune into the sermon from Bonnie Hoffman-Adams for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 27, 2022.

Support St. Martin’s mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

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

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

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+ The Sermon +


Divine Reconciliation

Bonnie Hoffman-Adams

March 27, 2022

I came across a study about shopping. This study claimed that whenever we make a purchase, our brain releases endorphins and dopamine. We literally get high when we purchase something, when we open up that package and we find something new in our closets or elsewhere in our house, this thing - this new thing - literally gives us a buzz.

Newness is appealing. But I think that the newness of our hearts is a lot more complicated.

Do any of you remember what you did for New Years? Do you remember anything about perhaps making some goals? (And if you didn’t, that’s just fine.) I always feel terribly anxious at that time of year. It’s momentous, it’s artificial, I feel bullied into thinking about how I should change my life, and when I do make those goals, I feel kind of depressed knowing by mid January I have forgotten them. And yet, when I hear these first lines from our second lesson today my heart quickens with possibility.

Listen again to the first two sentences of our second reading.

From now on , therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation;

Everything old has passed away See everything has become new!

So what is the newness that you seek? I think it is really common among us. We all kind of really want the same things:

We want our regrets to be banished. We want our bad habits to disappear. We want our memories to be transformed. We want our sin to be forgiven and forgotten. We want a spring time of the heart.
I think that is why we’re in church.

Paul tells us we are to regard no one from a human point of view. I think this is kind of funny - what are our options? We are human after all. What other point of view do we have? Where is it? How do we obtain this?

We are told by Paul,

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

Reconciliation is at the heart of this new point of view and it is also our mission.

In Greek as well as in English the word “reconcile” has two ways that it can go. It can describe money, it can describe relationships. The older use of the Greek word is in fact money changer, and what did they work with? They worked with balances. They would put foreign currency on one side to figure out what local cash would be given in exchange. The balance had to be equal.

We still use this word of balance with our money. We balance books, we reconcile checkbooks. We still have that sense of fairness, but it is more often used in our relationships.

The ground between the two parties has been made uneven, is smoothed over by apologies and possibly even a gift. We say someone owes me an apology. It evens out that balance. Even our legal system has those words in it. Someone pays a debt to society by going to prison. We also can note that the Hebrew word for sin means debt, so it’s not very far from keeping that balance right that you put a tooth on one side and a tooth on the other.

This is all a search for justice. We all know it falls short. It’s not perfect. It’s the best we’ve got for the moment. But what I have described to you right now is a human point of view. This is not what “being in Christ “ is or having his perspective as ours is. This is not at all about a new creation. This is the same old system.

Divine reconciliation is not transactional.

When God brings about balance or healing and makes things right again is not a quid pro quo arrangement. It is not a this for a that.

I think sometimes we would prefer if it was that way. We would like to believe that what we’ve done - those good deeds - would be on one side of the balance, and then the love of God would surely follow on the other side. But as soon as we start thinking about that balance, we’re back into that human point of view.

There is no better parable than the Prodigal son to begin to see something different about reconciliation. We’ve had at least three stories before this story today that talk about loss. We heard last week about the tree of the lost cause, we’ve heard about the lost sheep and the lost coin, so today is the lost son. But I think this story goes a step further than describing that amazing search that God has for those on the edge. All of these stories tell us of God’s determined love of seeking us out but by this time we get to today's parable we are ready to hear the next part.

There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father - Give me the share of the property that will belong to me. So he divided the property.

This is a terrible story, and we can’t forget it. This is more than being rude. He is telling his father to think of his death. He is reminding his father that the things that his father has worked on are more important than he is. And his father does it. He splits his property. That is plan A. This son is a man of plans.

He gets the cash, he leaves, he spends it, it’s all gone, and then he discovers he has no means to feed himself. “Ah”, he says, “I will hire myself out!” But he discovers plan B is not so good either. There is no living wage to be available.

So as he is sitting in that pigsty he gets Plan C. He comes to himself and says, “Okay. I’ve messed up. I will offer an apology to my father. I will offer to work for him as a hired servant.”

So far at this point we have a great picture of human reconciliation, in both money and giving an apology.

I am going to give you an alternative parable at this point. These are my words, this is not scripture, but I want you to give it some thought.

So he set off and went to his father. He knocked on his old house door. His father answered. The son offered his apology and his plans of working . His father welcomes him back and takes up his offer for labor and then says your brother will be your manager. They join later for dinner.

So this is it: Is this story unjust? What’s wrong with this story? Or maybe I should ask you, would you want this story to be the parable that Jesus tells?

You welcome your child home after apologies were offered and apologies accepted. But there is something more going on in this story. This is not the story of forgiveness that is told to us by Jesus. So let us hurry back to scripture:

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.

This astonishing parent sees his child far off which means he has been looking out at the horizon. always waiting for his return. He runs, embraces him, kisses and totally ignores plan C. A good feast is to be had, the best clothes, shoes, everything to welcome back this lost child.

It is now at this point that the son receives his real inheritance. It’s not the stuff. It is being in the arms of such undeserved and unconditional Love.

In years past I used to think that this conversion started in the pig pen. But no, that is still a transactional understanding of love. You behave and I’ll love you. Apologize and I will forgive you. For this his son realizes that his riches are still there for him. He now knows something of that profound depth of love that his father has for him.

Now, we cannot ignore the older brother. He feels ignored. We’re not going to ignore him. He is a sympathetic character in many ways. He has been working hard. He’s been good. He has not spent his money on questionable activities. And he is upset. He’s not going to join the party. His father -not a servant- comes out and pleads directly with him. But he responds in this way

When this son of yours (not “my brother”) has come back and devoured your property (he mentions the prostitutes) property, what do you do Dad? You kill a fatted calf.

Now from the human point of view he is rightly upset. He’s no different though than the younger brother, before he returned home. He just had a different plan . He is just as interested and focused on assets and not his father.

For all these years I have been working like a slave for you. I have been good.

Yes, he has been working like a slave, but that’s self-designating, that’s his understanding, he’s missed the profound love right next to him.

Transactional relationships make us slaves and not children of God. They make us miss the Love.

You are always with me and all that is mine is yours.

This is the divine point of view. Jesus came to change how we look at things. Jesus loves us so much that he lived a life forgiving people even when they did not ask for it. In his tortured death he did not abandoned those who abandoned him. He didn’t replace his love with a balance. He wants us to know none of our actions, of abandonment, or misappropriated affections, none of them - not even death - could separate us from him or his love.

This love is not a love that waits at the top of the hill looking at the horizon, but it’s a love that descended to live among us and even sit with us in our suffering, in our sickness, in our misery, so he can tell us he is with us.

You are always with me and all that is mine is yours.

Treasure the presence of God that is merciful and loving beyond our imaginations.

Let us pray. Lord, help us become ambassadors of this absurd and abundant love that you give us. Help us to forgive others with every breath we take, even when they don’t ask us. Lord, strengthen us so that we reflect your grace and glory in all that we do. Never let us forget that you are always with us. Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Listen to this week’s sermon from LIFT Worship from Anne Alexis Harra for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 27, 2022

Learn more about LIFT, Living in Faith Together, at stmartinec.org/lift

Today’s Readings:

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

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.


Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Tune into the sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Third Sunday in Lent, March 20, 2022.

Support St. Martin’s mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

• Exodus 3:1-15
• 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
• Luke 13:1-9
• Psalm 63:1-8

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

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I’m preaching from a gospel this morning which was the first gospel I preached on as a priest. Talk about God’s sense of humor. 27 years ago I was at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Sunbury, Central PA, on the banks of the Susquehanna River, my first posting. St. Matthews was a high church, Anglo-Catholic parish, bells and spells. and as such the Gospel was not just spoken it was chanted. My first Sunday was the third Sunday in Lent and the Gospel we heard this morning was the Gospel for that day and it was my job to chant it. Which is to say that my first ever chanted Gospel included me intoning “Spread Manure On It,” and a young priest in his young twenties had to keep a straight face.

“Spread Manure On It.” We will get back to the manure later in the sermon. Hopefully it will not be a synonym for this sermon. We’ll get back to it because Jesus was not coprophobic and neither should we be. The manure I will propose is his mercy, his merciful answer his answer to the intense questions that begin this passage.

And oh, what a passage it is. So many people come up to me on this one and say, “What?” or “Huh?” or “Do we have to read this?” And indeed it has caused more than one preacher to preach a sermon directly contrary to what Jesus is suggesting in the passage. All over the nation this morning there will be theocracy sermons, trying to explain why a good God lets evil happen, which is exactly what Jesus is suggesting we not get into.

The disasters mentioned - the slaughter at the altar by Pilate and the mass death when the tower fell - it is very clear to Jesus that these are not the will of God - this is not God’s doing. These are the kinds of destruction and suffering caused by the malevolence and neglect of empire and domination. This is what happens under corrupt and oppressive power. Asking abstract theological questions about the slaughter and the collapse is dangerously beside the point - in fact - it distracts from the real work at hand and even worse - this faulty theology causes the people to look at themselves for blame instead of looking hard at the reality of occupation that surrounds them.

Jesus is clear. The sins of the victims did not cause their deaths. The evil of an occupying power did. Pilate murdered the Galileans. Remember that Jesus is Galilean. Remember Pilate’s role to come in the gospel of Luke. There is a foreshadowing here. Herod’s neglect of municipal maintenance caused the tower to fall while Herod meanwhile was building himself lavish palaces and monuments to his pride. Violence and neglect kill the people while the rulers benefit.

So when Jesus says “REPENT!” he is saying, “Wake Up! Change Your Thinking! Change your way of thinking! Adjust your perspective! Dump distracting, abstract theology and face the way things are.”

The frightful problems you name are not theological problems, they are problems of imperial domination. Innocent lives were lost to the powers that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.

Jesus is setting his listeners free from a faulty theology that cannot tell the difference between the ways of God and the ways of occupation. Jesus wants his listeners to look with fresh eyes at their dilemma. After all, how convenient for the empire have a theology that causes people to blame themselves and blame blame the victims for their own persecution and murder.

To repent, as Jesus is using it - to be transformed, to have our minds changed - changes how we look at ourselves and the world. It pushes us to ask questions much more challenging than the ones Jesus offers rhetorically.

A writer in the Atlantic Magazine this week recounted a phone conversation with his sister-in-law. The sister-in-law and her husband were avid anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers. They had their own version of reality and all attempts at correction had been fruitless, frustrating and had ended in tears. Now on this day of this phone call, this sister-in-law and her husband had gotten COVID and so had she, and the cases were bad. The husband had to be intubated and she was very distressed.. On the phone the sister-in-law was distraught and agitated and was asking the big questions; “How could God let this happen to us? How could this be happening?” The writer knew better than to challenge these questions in the moment. She needed comfort, not correction. But he goes on to reflect that these big questions, these abstract questions really had obvious answers. In fact these questions were a way of avoiding the obvious answers, because to really answer these questions would be to take a hard look at the choices made and the world-view adopted, the loyalties developed, the allegiances formed, the world that had got them into this predicament, the authorities they had listened to. Sometimes the big questions lead us astray and away from the harder questions where we could make progress.

And Jesus responds to distracting, abstract questions by inviting his listeners to change their point of view and then giving them a powerful alternative image of who God is and how God works. His intervention is brilliant as always. His intervention is this image of a fig tree that is not bearing fruit, this pastoral image. And I want us to approach this fig tree the same way we approach the parable of the lost sheep. Remember the parable where 99 sheep are saved with the shepherd and one is lost, and the shepherd runs out for that sheep. And that parable is meant to teach us how absurdly loving our God is. To leave the 99 for the sake of the one would be nonsensical in the ancient world, and I would like to suggest it is the same with this tree.

In an orchard full of fig trees, why pay attention to the one? It’s an illustration of God’s abundant forbearance and mercy even when we fall short, and we do. How does God respond to the fig tree? With mercy and mature and loving attention. Spread manure on it. God is faithful. God is good. God has a purpose for the fig tree and God invests in that purpose with love and nurture. Where empire brings deadly virus and neglect, Jesus counters with life-giving mercy and nurture towards a fruitful, flourishing existence. Spread manure.

Too many people I talk to in pastoral care are struggling, struggling in life, because they were taught destructive ideas about who God is. Too many mistake God for an emperor, one who meets out violence and judgment and provokes obedience through fear. We who know Jesus need to share with the world another knowledge of God, the knowledge of God who tends to the orchard - who feeds and nurtures, who goes out of the way to the barren tree to bring it back to life, to give it a second chance.

I believe this pastoral image is so good for us in this moment. For two year and more we have been on high alert - our cortisol levels elevated from a constant experience of threat and elevated fear. I am deeply concerned that this cortisol flood in our brain has changed us - made us overly reactive, overly defensive, often quick to aggression, and even seeking out more drama for our fix of cortisol. Cortisol changes our brain. It affects our soul, our position in the world.

But Jesus teaches us well. Move away - detach - from the big dramatic stories of slaughter and mayhem. Turn instead to this pastoral image of nurture and mercy. And In that turning - in that repenting - we can give good loving care to our brains and detox from stress hormones and reach a more peaceful loving place that will feed our souls and feed our world with peace and faithfulness. We know - it’s been shown - that prayer, meditation, worship, singing, scripture study - are good for the mind and the soul. They create new pathways for grace in us. They change our brain, change our perspective, decrease stress pathways and build up flexibility and grace. So my proposal deep into Lent is this: let us declare a fast from cortisol. Let us wean ourselves from drama. Let us give loving kindness to ourselves and others so that God may spread some manure on our roots that will give us life and return us to flourishing. Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.


Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Tune into the sermon from Eugenie Dieck for the Second Sunday in Lent, March 13, 2022.

Support St. Martin’s mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

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

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

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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Amen.

Let’s go for a walk. Let’s go for a walk with Jesus.

Jesus walks throughout the Gospels. Lent is the period of the Gospels when Jesus shares his ministry; as the story goes, Jesus walked for three years. Today, let us reflect on how we walk with Jesus.

What does it mean to Walk?

We all know how to walk… or so we think. There are different ways we walk…we walk towards, we walk away, we walk in circles. Our spiritual lives and Lent have all these manners of walking.

We walk towards Easter, we know the path and the ending of Jesus’s story. During Lent, I sense we try to rush ahead to Easter and not stay in the story. Yet the walk towards Easter is slow and deliberate. We come to know Jesus’s ministry and, through each pause in the journey, to understand more deeply the person and power of Jesus.

We walk away by sinning and ignoring Jesus. Have you ever tripped when you were walking? I have tripped many times, one fall resulted in a concussion. I was not in the walk, I was somewhere else, I crashed. In our spiritual life, when we are distracted or pay attention elsewhere, we sin, and sometimes we crash. Like having a concussion, our souls’ awareness and the orientation of our soul are jumbled. We are not looking into our soul and so we trip into sins of both omission and commission.

We walk in circles when we act as if we know where we are going in our spiritual lives and are honestly lost. Walking in our spiritual lives is like walking in the woods, a place of wonder and worry because we can see only so far ahead. In our spiritual walk in the woods, are we entering a dark place that fills us with worry or a light space that sparks our wonder?

Sometimes we find ourselves overtaken by wonder or by worry. The wonder occurs when we are surprised by delight and the worry when unexpected concerns surface. This wonder/worry tension is also the reality of our spiritual life. When we focus on ourselves we are worried, when we focus on Jesus we feel awe and wonder.

How are we With Jesus?

Being with someone can ease the wonder/worry dilemma. We can share the wonder and lessen the worry. We are not alone. “With” can have many meanings – I want to focus on two – the act of accompaniment, and the difference between empathy and sympathy.

As some of you may know, I work at Georgetown University, which is a Catholic and Jesuit institution. The Jesuit expression of charism or purpose has evocative language about being in relationship with God. The word “accompaniment” is often used. It means to be alongside someone in their journey, not to change the journey but to accept the journey.

True accompaniment also means to not be in control. When we accompany someone, we give over to the experience – we do not use active verbs – direct, determine, guide, define. But how do we give over to accompaniment? We can understand accompaniment by the contrast between empathy and sympathy.

Is our connection by knowing of the other person’s circumstance? When we have empathy, we understand the circumstance of the other…but with some degree of distance and disengagement. Or is our connection by feeling the reality of the other person? When we have sympathy, we experience another’s world. We identify with the person.

Lent calls us into sympathy. We move in response to Jesus. Jesus breathes in, we breathe in... Jesus breathes out, we breathe out. We mirror Jesus’s experience.

We are not setting the path of the journey, no matter how many Lents we observe, no matter how often we read the Gospels. We are following in Jesus’s steps.

How do we come to know Jesus?

Jesus is revealed to us as we walk with him through Lent. And we are revealed to him in turn by how we engage. We do not have a speaking part in the Gospels, yet we have a significant role in bringing the Gospels into this world.

Jesus is both the path and the destination of Lent. As the path of Lent, Jesus’s walk and encounters and lessons are demanding. Lent is not a stroll, it is a real honest journey. And as the destination, Jesus brings us to Christ, who gives us salvation.

How do we encounter Jesus in the words of the Gospels, and in the actual lived Gospels of our lives? Every day, we Walk with Jesus…we encounter Jesus in the strangers we meet and particularly in the people we know most deeply.

I will close with a story about accompaniment. In these weeks of Lent, I am mindful of accompanying both my 92-year-old mother-in-law and a work colleague. Each is dealing with physical diminishment, one from old age and one from a degenerative disease.

Both are people who are “doers”. If they could, each would be very active walkers, with a purpose, a quick pace, a destination, and a planned arrival time. Now they are moving slowly towards death. Jesus is walking with them. And I am accompanying them.

My mother-in-law resents the help she needs, she is polite but very saddened. She was always the helper.

My colleague is dealing with being rather than with doing. His work identity, and thus much of his own sense of self, has been anchored in getting things done and marking time by accomplishments. Now he says, he just “is”.

Both my mother-in-law and my colleague are sanctified people. They are in sympathy with Jesus. Their breaths of yearning and of sorrow mirror Jesus’s breaths through Lent.

I am honored to accompany them, to walk with them, to walk with Jesus.

As we continue with the rigors of Lent, with the temptations, with the times of lonely solitude, with the moments of feeling misunderstood and slighted…all which Jesus experienced…know we are walking with Jesus and Jesus is walking with each of us. Step by step, stumble by stumble, blessing by blessing…we are walking towards salvation.

My beloved friends, keep walking with Jesus, keep walking. Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Listen to this week’s sermon from LIFT Worship from Ms. Anne Alexis Harra for the Second Sunday in Lent, March 13, 2022

Learn more about LIFT, Living in Faith Together, at stmartinec.org/lift

Today’s Readings:

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

Readings were taken from God’s Word, My Voice: A Children’s Lectionary

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Good morning. It is so good to see everyone! My friends I haven't seen in awhile, my friends I see all the time. It's just great to be here. This morning, let's get ourselves into a prayerful, quieter space. I invite you to close your eyes and feel your feet firmly on he ground with the earth beneath you holding you up, and just take a deep breath. The Lord be with you.
Gracious God thank you for this gorgeous, gorgeous day on the second Sunday of Lent. It is chilly outside but that cool air reminds us that you are with us wherever.
Oh friends, the world is heavy right now. I don't know about you, but I am feeling that loss of sleep from last night on top of what feels like a very turbulent world. Things in Ukraine don't seem to be getting better. Innocent people are losing their lives really senselessly. We are not yet out of the Covid woods.
Raise your hand if you feel just a little bit tired or weary today. I share in your weariness.
My message today is going to be a reflection on the Psalm. The Psalmist in Psalm 27 (and psalmist is just a fancy word for someone who writes a song) so the author, who is probably King David, is clearly distressed in this psalm. However, Kind David tells God that he trusts God. David trusts in God's plan and God's salvation and in God's love for us. And I really love that he asks God to guide him, to teach him and to be kind to him.
These are all things that we can ask God for, especially when we're overwhelmed. Sometimes it feels like there's too much, and we can say, "God, please guide me, just walk with me." And that's really cool!
My favorite part of this psalm, though, are the final two verses (page 3 of our leaflet) The final two verses, why don't we read these together:

"I truly believe I will live to see the Lord's Goodness. Wait for the Lord's help. Be strong and brave and wait for the Lord's help."

"I truly believe that I will to see the Lord's Goodness." Isn't so powerful? It's such a powerful, prayerful, hopeful statement. There's soo much assurance and love in just that one statement, let alone the entire psalm. Kind David believed he would see the Goodness of God, and he did. And if you remember a few Sunday's ago when we talked about Jesus' presentation in the temple and we met our friend Simeon in the temple, Simeon believed he would live to see the Lord's Goodness, and he did.

When it feels like everything around us is starting to crumble or crack (and it may actually be cracking, who knows? ) we can turn to the words of the psalms for immense comfort and inspiration. Sometimes if I'm having a frustrated day I find someone who is frustrated in the psalms. And those were written thousands of years ago, and yet I can still go back to those words and remind myself that what I am feeling is shared by others. The psalms are such a human experience because they were written by people just like you and me, and to know that we have a shared experience of human feeling and human connection through God is remarkable.

Reading the psalms helps us remember that we are not alone in our experiences of suffering or pain, nor are we alone in experiences of joy and excitement and love. God is at the center of the psalms just like God is at the center of each one of you.

This week, I invite you to pray one of the psalms together as a family. You can choose the one that's appointed for the day, or you can do Bible roulette where you just open to a page and there's the psalm - that one's fun - but see how much that effects your prayer and attitude for the better in the subsequent days, enjoying that shared experience, feeling the feelings of the psalms, reading that beautiful poetry. Soak up every moment of that poetry and that love with God.

We will get through this with God's help. We will be strong and brave and we will wait for the Lord's help. And if you don't believe, ask Kind David, or Simeon, or John the Baptist, or Mary, or so many other people, but we will get through it. Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Tune into the sermon from the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the First Sunday in Lent, March 6, 2022.

Support St. Martin’s mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

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

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

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Please join me in a spirit of prayer.

Lord God, we give you thanks that your word is very near us even on our lips and in our hearts and we thank you that that word is about its work of saving us, saving us from our collective human madness and for all the ways we afflict ourselves. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

The ashes of Ash Wednesday this week mingled with the ashes of warfare in my mind. When Putin put his nuclear weapons on high alert, my soul went on high alert and these ashes, these ashes of Ash Wednesday mingled with the dread of being reduced to ash by nuclear war.

A felt, vivid fear that I remember all too clearly from childhood. A horror that had gone dormant since the Cold War ended. Dormant even though the weapons were all still there. A horror, a fear, a dread shared by every kid I knew growing up. We would compare notes about the dreams we would have about mushroom clouds in our neighborhood. Towering, glowing, fearsome explosions seeming to come for us.

Ash Wednesday, those ashes remind us every year of our humble origins in the dust of the earth. The ashes on our foreheads remind us that we are held in life only by God's creative goodness and grace. And yet knowing that, knowing the gift of life, knowing the gift of this world, we humans who wear those humble ashes are still so misguided, so arrogant, so sinful and distorted, that once again we've maneuvered ourselves into the possibility of mass incineration, mass genocide, global extinction.

To not react with horror, to not react with painful, moral horror is simply to be spiritually dead. And who can read these temptations today without thinking about the war in Ukraine? The temptation to rule by domination and force. The temptation to build an empire of control to be despotic, tyrannical. It is not alien to the human soul at any time.

While we are absolutely right to condemn Russia's aggression. We need to avoid the risk of self righteousness, forgetting our own history of invasions and the consequences of those aggressions we still live with. While I still fully support Ukraine, in their self defense, I must remember and I hope we all remember that war in the teaching of the church is always a product of sinfulness and only ever rises to the status of necessary evil.

Meaning, it's always to be mourned and lamented. It's always something we must work to prevent. And we must name its evil so we can mourn it and give loving care to all who are affected by it. Praying for Ukrainian and Russian alike.

Turning to scripture, which has so much to teach us today, oddly enough, I find myself agreeing with the devil. The devil knows scripture. And the devil is quoting Psalm 91 and Psalm 91 which we heard beautifully sung by the choir is very comforting for me right at this moment. This is the Psalm the devil pulls from when Jesus is on the pinnacle of the temple and when I am frightened, I need to remember that Psalm in its comforting words which say “God is my shelter, my refuge, my stronghold, the one I can trust.” That beautiful line that we can imagine is addressed to us. “Because the righteous one is bonded to me in love, I will deliver him.” I need to hear that assurance addressed to me because I need comfort.

And just as a small aside because you're probably shocked that I'm agreeing with the devil from the pulpit. It's okay to agree with the devil because in the Bible, the devil is a literary figure with a specific task and his task assigned by God is to test the righteous.

Think of the story of Job. Jesus who is the very embodied righteousness of God is being tested so to clarify his person and his mission so that he may be more clearly revealed for who he is for us. And the devil in his desire to test always gets things wrong and he got something wrong this time too. And his mistake is simply this, trusting God is not an opiate.

Trusting God is not a painkiller. The life of faithfulness is full of struggle and threat and discomfort. As a friend said to me this week, Jesus shows us that the way of faithfulness, the way that he embodies is both hard and good. Hard and good live together. If we want the easy way out, we have the wrong Lord.

And this is what Jesus is proving to us in the wilderness and maybe proving to himself he shows that he is ready to live within his limits. What kind of son of God will Jesus be? One who suffers, one who struggles, one who is thrust into a world that has power over him, and this son of God will be fully faithful to God within the constraints of human life which is why we can hope, which is why we in our limits have hope.

He does not accept that comfort of Psalm 91. He turns it away quoting scripture back to the devil because he knows the way of redemption confronts the powers, confronts the principalities and powers, confronts the deadly dominating power of empire. Not through cheap tricks and feats of daring by leaping off of temples but through the cross.

Jesus will be lifted up. He'll be lifted up on a high place. But it won't be an easy out. It will be the cross, and on the way to that cross, and the reason he gets to that cross is he's confronting every evil, every toxic effect of sin that corrupts and destroys our humanity along his way, and in that cross, he extinguishes all that opposes God in that unmatched act of faithful, loving resistance.

Jesus knows the way will be hard. And that the way is good.

And we know this because we've been listening. in Eucharistic Prayer C which we'll pray today and we use during Lent we say these very important words, “deliver us from the presumption of coming to this table for solace only and not for strength, for pardon only and not for renewal” even in the moment of our greatest comfort and solace we are challenged into faithfulness.

When Jesus is arguing with the devil, the devil is quoting the Psalms and Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy. And one of the characteristic preoccupations of Deuteronomy is this fear that in prosperity, Israel will forget what God has done for them and who God is for them. Just like Deuteronomy 26 today.

But Israel when they enter the promised land and become prosperous and secure, when the text says they inhabit other people's houses and take over other people's orchards and fields -it's right there in the text, they're taking over someone else's occupied land - Will they remember God and what God has done for them? Will they remember their God with their first fruits? Will they recognize the gift of all they have? Will they acknowledge the sacred or trample the sacred and worship the work of their own hands? It's this forgetfulness about who God is and what God has done for us and how we are God's people that the prosperous are especially at risk of forgetting according to the Bible.

Indeed, the prosperous mind often turns God into an abstraction. God becomes vague, impotent, a notion, an idea, not a force that can push us, pull us, move us, change us, surround us, comfort us. And once again, Jesus is our comparison. He remembers who he is. He remembers who God the father is and doing so he resists the temptation to be something more than he is. Something more than he is.

He's not going to be a Superman. He's not going to display the will to power. He will not be a Charlatan, a trickster. He will not offer cheap, dishonest grace. He's not a manipulator. He won't present himself as invulnerable or impermeable. He will not be a tyrant. He is tempted like we are in every way and yet he is faithful. Jesus knows that the way is hard and the way is good.

For that hard way, Jesus gives us some help today. He teaches us frankly and honestly and he shows us a practice I want to commend to you. When we struggle with whatever bedevils us, and we are bedeviled people, let's face it. How about we try on the practice of quoting scripture to ourselves? I do it. I hope you will do it. When I'm triggered by my compulsions, when I'm triggered by my fears, when I'm triggered by my neurotic inner life, I simply interrupt the cycle and I insert a verse from a Psalm like Psalm 91 “God, you are my refuge and my stronghold.”

God, you are my refuge and my stronghold and those words of comfort can center me for the faith I try to follow even when I'm afraid. Or I say to myself, “you are bound to me in love. Deliver me.”

You are bound to me in love. Deliver me. And my fear can Go away in part and I can function again in my limits and my faithfulness. My cravings can retreat. My compulsions subside because Jesus has gently reminded me that he is my Lord and he does this for me.

Maybe it sounds too easy. Maybe I could be accused of being cheap, but here's what I believe and here is my experience. That I am joining a struggle that has already been won. The powers that bedevil us inside and out have been defeated. Ultimately defeated by the death and resurrection of Jesus so that we can be saved, saved even from ourselves.

Amen.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Tune into the sermon from the Rev. Barbara Ballenger for the Last Sunday After the Epiphany, February 27, 2022.

Support St. Martin’s mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

• Exodus 34:29-35
• 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
• Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]
• Psalm 99

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

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Listen to this week’s sermon from LIFT Worship from the Rev. Carol Duncan for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, February 27, 2022

Learn more about LIFT, Living in Faith Together, at stmartinec.org/lift

Today’s Readings:

• Exodus 34:29-35
• 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
• Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]
• Psalm 99

Readings were taken from God’s Word, My Voice: A Children’s Lectionary

Transcript:

You all just heard the Gospel as I read it. Now let me tell you how our story rises out of the biblical story. You are in this story. I hope you will put your body into the story to make the story your own.

So, here’s how we’re gonna do it. We are going up a mountain with Jesus, Peter, James, and John.

I invite you to step out into the aisle to discover for yourself and to show others how it feels to climb this mountain. Take big steps in place as though you are climbing up a steep mountain. Take some deep breaths because you get out of breath as you climb.

We get to the top. The climb has made us sleepy. Find a place to sit down and close your eyes, because you are so sleepy. Now with your eyes closed, try to see what is happening in our story. Suddenly the air around us changes. We are inside a glowing light. In a sort of dream we see that Jesus’ clothes have become dazzling white. Now two other people come to stand next to Jesus. And somehow in your dream you know who these people are. One is Moses who led God’s people for 40 years through the wilderness to the promised land. The other is Elijah who led God’s people when a wicked king and queen worshiped idols instead of worshiping God. Moses and Elijah each put an arm around Jesus because they tell him his life on earth is coming to an end. Jesus is going to come and live with them in the realm of everlasting love.

As you see this happen, a great love for Jesus swells up in your own heart. Can you feel that love and awe there on the mountain? And so you want to do something for Jesus because now you know he will be leaving you in this life. You want to keep Jesus with you. Maybe we could put the LIFT tent back up for Jesus.

But now a cloud comes and covers you so you are afraid. Breathe in the cold dampness of the cloud with the light shining through it. A great voice like thunder surrounds you in the cloud. “This is my Son. He is the One I have chosen. Obey him.” The voice fades but the echoes ring in your ears up on that mountain.

And now you sort of wake up and you are back in your seat, or come and sit back if you have left it. And if you’re very very much asleep you can just listen.

So we are back on level ground at St. Martin’s, here’s where our story comes into the biblical story. You know that our priest Rev. Barb Ballenger has been with us for most of your lives, certainly for the whole time of LIFT. Now she is leaving us to go be a priest at St. Peter’s in Glenside. I am as sad about this as Peter and James and John were sad to learn that Jesus was leaving them. But I am also as glad as they were to know that great person Barb and that great person Jesus. She has taught me to know more about Jesus. I wish she could be with us longer, forever. But I know that my life has changed and grown because of her. I will keep faithful to LIFT and to loving Jesus as she taught me. I hope you know what a light has shown on us because of Barb. You may come to know it more and more in your continuing life at St. Martin’s. We have been blessed for sure. And that is the good news for today.

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Tune into the sermon from the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Seventh Sunday After the Epiphany, February 20, 2022.

Support St. Martin’s mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

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

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

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Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.



Don’t Be a Stump

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

February 20, 2022

Please join me in the spirit of prayer.

I grew up in a home where there were mixed messages about love. I might not be alone in that. My mother taught me at least two versions of love. One: love turns you into a stump. The second one she also taught me was: love causes you to take a stand.

Now, the stump lesson came through a children’s book she used to like to read to us all: The Giving Tree. Now, in that story there is a boy and there is a tree and the tree is a she. The she-ness is important here, because as the story goes the little boy loved the tree and the tree loved the little boy and they delighted in each other and played and frolicked and slowly the boy took things from the tree, and she gave them out of her delight. He wanted the apples, he got the apples. He wanted the leaves, he got the leaves. He wanted the branches, he got the branches. He wanted her trunk, he got her trunk. Until she was a stump.

Love evidently means giving your whole life away until you’re a stump. My mom stopped reading us that story as her feminism grew, and as she made progress in Al-Anon. My sisters and I like to joke that she was of the fundamentalist branch of Al-Anon. Boy, could she detach with love. It’s a problematic story. I’m not the only one to say this. This notion that love is so sacrificial that you make yourself disappear.

She taught me the “take a stand” lesson about love at church. During the late 70’s, during liturgical reform and prayer book reform, my mom was the first person at Christ Church in Brunswick, New Jersey to stand up after the Sanctus. Remember, back in the day after the Sanctus was sung, everybody hit their knees. My mom called this “mowing them down.” And there I was as a small child in our colonial box pew and there was mom standing. The only one. And I wanted to hide in a weird mix of embarrassment and pride.

Then Communion came. We gathered around the altar rail and she was still standing. The only one to stand to receive Communion. It caught on eventually. But what she was teaching me with courage and grace and a deep faith was that our human dignity has been restored and recognized by God so that in God’s presence we can stand in our dignity. We don’t need to kneel. God has restored us and recognized us as God’s image here on earth, and so she stood with dignity and I learned that to love is to stand up.

Now, if you are one of the people who has been sticking with Jesus’s sermon on the plain in Luke, are you still listening? That’s how our passage begins today. “Are you still listening?” This is challenging stuff, these beatitudes and woes and challenging instructions for those of us who might be disciples, and you might wonder with this lesson about loving enemies and praying for those who abuse you, whether Jesus is calling us to be a stump for the sake of love or to take a stand for the sake of love.

For me, it is the second and by now, you know me, I will explain why. For fidelity to the text and pastoral reasons, I believe we are called by Jesus to stand as we love our enemies. Remember that Jesus is preaching to his disciples. He has done the Beatitudes and the Woes. He has told us very clearly that if we follow him we can expect to be reviled and he said also, “Woe to those who are admired.” Right before the current passage, Jesus says, “Woe to you when all speak well of you. For so our ancestors did to the false prophets.” Jesus is telling us that if we choose to be disciples we are called to be truth-telling prophets, and as truth-telling prophets we should expect to have mixed reviews, if not full out enemies.

So this teaching about enemies, this teaching about loving your enemies, comes from the fact that we’re gonna have some, and then what do you do? And Jesus is really clear. He said twice in this passage, “Love your enemies.”

Now, if you thought the Trinity was hard, or the Incarnation or the Resurrection, I think “Love your enemies” is right up there on the Christian Challenges. And Jesus knew we would struggle. He knew his people would struggle, so he teaches them a new thing.

You might know the German philosopher Hannah Arendt for her Banality of Evil: Trial of Eichmann. She also has a book called The Roots of Totalitarianism where she points out that it’s very easy to form community when you identify an enemy. If you have an enemy to react against you can create internal cohesion and identity against that enemy. And she is of course talking about Germany in the 30’s and 40s.

Jesus is not going to give disciples that option. They cannot be a community that gains its identity by having enemies. They will have enemies, but they cannot get a cheap internal sense of fellowship by having those enemies, because they must love those enemies.

Now we might think, well we are Episcopalians, we don’t do that. We like to say other people do that. But we do that all the time! Every time one of our members says, “Oh those Evangelicals! Oh those Fundamentalists!” we’re doing it. We’re defining ourselves against somebody else. Jesus doesn’t let us do that. We are to love our enemies which simply means that our identity is in that love not in its opposition.

Our identity is in the love not in the opposition and because of our life in God we have through Christ, we have the spiritual freedom granted to us to exchange good for ill, to regard the good of the other, which is to love them.

Jesus then gives some amazingly striking (literally) examples. And these are tough love examples and they come from knowing our human dignity is from God, restored and recognized and delighted in by God. How do we love the enemy? He gives some examples: the slap example, the strip example. In Matthew the extra mile example, and back in Luke the lending example.

And what I want to say, coming out of wonderful theology done by Walker Wink in the context of South Africa during Apartheid, there is a very different reading of these examples. These examples have too often been used to rationalize abuse, to justify oppression, to create a passivity among Christians in this face of the intolerable. Wink found in South Africa a different reading.

So for example, the slap - in the ancient world, a backhanded slap is a slap of disrespect. A superior slaps an inferior this way. To turn your cheek is an act of resistance. Forcing that person to slap you the other way, like an equal. This is resistance from knowing your dignity and insisting on their dignity. You are regarding their good by holding them accountable in asking them to recognize what’s real and true. You are equals.

Stripping - same thing. In the ancient world, it was legal to take your cloak. That was a legal way to get a debt repaid. And this whole little bit hinges on how many pieces of clothing people had in the ancient world. Any guesses? A cloak and a shirt and what else? Nope, two. You had two pieces of clothing so if you took the cloak and then took the shirt, you were naked. This nakedness was another form of resistance. If you are gonna treat me as less than human, I’m gonna call you on it by embarrassing you in this public space by getting naked and showing your exploitation. Once again, resistance. Non-violent resistance claiming integrity, claiming dignity on an equal basis.

Same with the extra mile in matthew. A roman soldier could impress you in his service for one mile. Well, if you take on two that’s you asserting your agency. That’s you asserting your identity based in the generosity of god. That’s you asserting your dignity which your oppressor wants nothing to do with.

And on and on and on. You see where I’m going. If you read these examples the wrong way, we teach submission to oppression. If we teach them the way I think Jesus was teaching them, we learn transformational resistance. Transformational resistance that recognizes the necessity of dignity in all parties. Jesus is promoting the agency and spiritual freedom of his followers. Your identity is not as a victim. Your identity is not conferred on you by the would-be enemy. Your identity and agencies come from you from your life in Christ and your life in the Christian community. Remember you are a child of God. That little bit in this passage gets missed, doesn’t it. “Remember you are a child of God.” All things stem from that identity.

So why is this so crucial? Why am I so wound up about this? Well, I am the son of a fundamentalist Al-Anon member, and it rubbed off on me, I know. I was raised on feminism all the way and I’m proud of that. I’m passionate about this because these stories are used to teach an unhealthy form of love. A sick form of love that gives away way too much and asks us to deface our dignity, destroy our health, ruin our self-regard to adapt to a dominating power however that comes.

Pastorally, I’ve seen too much of this and I will not be a false prophet about it. I will be a truth-telling prophet about it. In my ministries with women in so many cases, I see women who have been taught to sacrifice everything just like that Giving Tree, to disregard themselves to the point of self-destruction. Giving up their safety, giving up their physical health, giving up the regard that is their right for the sake of abusers, narcissists, hateful, neglectful people, cautioned too often by pastors who say “Oh just put up with it. Love your enemy. “

At the 8 o’clock service one person reminded me about his grandmother who was married to an abusive alcoholic and she went to her priest here in Philadelphia and the priest said, “oh just go home and be meek and mild.” Because that’s how Christians are, aren’t we? Well, he said the good news is she divorced him, and she still went to Communion. She took a stand for love.

I am passionate, I admit. I say no to that teaching that turns people into doormats for the sake of Christ. I say yes to standing up in love for the dignity God has so restored in us, because love, real love, is between people who respect and recognize the full dignity of the people engaging in that love. Love recognizes and respects the dignity of all involved. Love elevates the disregarded and it brings down the overly regarded, the haughty.

There is no place for domination in love. Love resists mistreatment. It resists mistreatment so to reestablish and repair right relationship in the joy of God-given love which includes all parties in God’s dignity.

“Love your enemies” is not a request for warm, sentimental, gushy feelings towards our oppressors, tormentors and violators. Love is simply the desire for the good for each person who would be our enemy. For our own safety, and sanity and well-being we can love in a detached way. We can love from a distance. We can wish a person well in an openhearted way while keeping our limited boundaries in tact. This is the way of dignity and integrity. We can release a person from our life in love, handing them over to God for God’s care where we no longer can do it.

In short, I guess I sum up my sermon as I sum up advice to many people I work with pastorally: Don’t be a stump. Stand up for love - God’s love. The love that God gave everything for to restore our dignity. God gave everything in God’s commitment to restore God’s good creation in us and renew us in our risen image of Christ. So, my friends, let us be faithful to what God has done for us without trying to repeat God’s work, letting God be God and letting ourselves be the humans that God made us to be in our dignity, our limits and our grace.

Amen.

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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