Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

We Episcopalians love our traditions. We really do. After all, we have over 500 years of tradition since old Henry declared that the Pope would no longer have any say in the affairs of the Church in England. That’s a lot! We have things like the Book of Common Prayer, a document that defines our worship and our beliefs all at once. We have heroes like Thomas Cranmer, Robert Hooker, Samuel Seabury, Joseph Kemper, and Daniel Tuttle. We absolutely love this stuff. We love the candles, the hymns, the Prayer Book, all the traditions that make us uniquely Episcopalian.

To be totally honest, those traditions are something that attracted me to the Episcopal Church. The church I was raised in didn’t do much with tradition. We really weren’t taught the history of the church. Learning the history and traditions behind what we do in our worship made things come alive for me.

The Pharisees loved their traditions, too. The main difference between the Pharisees and their opponents, the Sadducees, was that the Pharisees believed in an oral tradition, not just the written Torah. The Sadducees stuck strictly to the Torah as it had been written down. No additions, no subtractions.

Here’s an example: there’s nothing in the Torah that says that everyone has to wash their hands before eating. There was a commandment that the priests and Levites had to wash their hands and their feet before entering the tabernacle, but that’s it. Just the priests and Levites, and only when entering the tabernacle. By tradition, this had been extended to include everyone washing to avoid defiling their food. It was a tradition, not a commandment.

In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees want to know why Jesus disciples aren’t washing their hands. Jesus calls them hypocrites, and with good reason!

Unfortunately, the lectionary sometimes leaves out sections of a passage that might help in understanding the reading. In a portion of the Gospel that’s not included this morning, Jesus takes exception to the Pharisee’s use of the doctrine of “corban,” which just means “dedicated to God.” Once something was dedicated to God it couldn’t be used for anything else. Evidently, some Pharisees were designating some of their property as “corban” in order to get around using it to take care of their elderly parents.

I know, right? That’s kind of despicable, and definitely hypocritical. Jesus calls them out for using their tradition to get around obeying the Torah commandment of honoring your father and mother. According to Jesus, if your tradition disagrees with Torah, your tradition is wrong.

Now, we, as Gentiles and Christians, don’t live under Torah. So, what might this passage mean to us in the 21^st Century?

I would suggest just this: That when your tradition gets between people and Jesus Christ, your tradition is wrong.

When you insist that people adhere to your traditions in order to be admitted to the Body of Christ, your tradition is wrong.

When you use human-devised doctrines to try to exclude people from the love of God, your doctrine is wrong.

The Church has all too often been guilty of excluding people because of tradition, often tradition that masquerades as theology.

For years, we excluded women from the ordained clergy because of tradition that masqueraded as theology. We’re doing much better, but that work isn’t done yet.

For years, we excluded LGBTQ+ people from the altar because of tradition masquerading as Bible scholarship. Again, we’re doing better, but that work, alas, is not done yet either.

Jesus said that it’s not what goes into the physical body that defiles. It’s what comes out. Since the Church is the Body of Christ in the world today, I think we can safely say that it’s not who comes into the Church — the Body of Christ — that defiles. It’s what the Church is seen to put out that might defile it. When we use tradition to reject anyone, we are putting out a very definite message that we value our traditions are more than we value people.

In our Baptismal Covenant, which we will reaffirm next Sunday as a part of the sacrament of Baptism, we will promise to “seek and serve Christ in all persons” and to “respect the dignity of every human being.”

We can’t do those things unless we accept all persons.

Every human being.

Everyone.

Without exception.

Let us pray that we continue to have the courage to do just that and to make God’s house a house of prayer for all people.

Without exception.

Amen.

Delivered at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Ironton, Mo, on August 25, 2024

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18; Psalm 34:15-22; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69

We sometimes hear these days that Christians in the United States are persecuted. The truth is that we are not persecuted. Christians here are among the least persecuted groups in the free world. Christians in other countries may have to put up with the government trying to suppress them. We do not have that problem here.

But that doesn’t mean that we are not under attack. We are. But the kind of attack we are dealing with is much more difficult to deal with than simple persecution. It’s more insidious. And I’d bet the people attacking us don’t even realize they are doing it.

We are under attack by our society. And they don’t want to destroy us as such. Instead, they want to make us just…like…them.

Because let’s face it, Christians are…odd, especially Episcopalians! We are accepting. We loved everybody (or at least, we know we SHOULD). We forgive people who wrong us. We care about the poor, about people who are discriminated against, about all those who are marginalized by society.

And, generally, societies don’t tend to like that sort of thing. We are advised to fit in. To “go along to get along.” We need to “get with the program.” We need to like whoever our friends like and hate whoever our friends hate. We need to be like everybody else.

The Church in Ephesus had similar issues to deal with. Ephesus was a jewel of the Roman Empire, home of the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was a bustling city, with an estimated population at this time of up to 225,000 people.

When you were a Roman citizen, certain things were expected of you. These days, being a good citizen doesn’t depend on religious observance. In the Roman Empire, it was different. There was no separation between religion and civic duty. To be a citizen in good standing meant honoring the gods – multiple gods, the gods that everyone else worshipped. Gods that included the Emperor. In Ephesus, that duty might mean making sacrifices at the Temple of Artemis: not something followers of The Way should be doing.

Paul knows what they are going through, so he gives them some guidelines for how people should prepare themselves to behave, using metaphors from the military. The example Paul uses is something people would have been familiar with. He uses armor: helmet, sword, and shield — the basic tools of a Roman soldier. He’s giving the Ephesians a structure that they can pattern their lives around, so that they can live their faith.

In our religious orders, we might call such a thing a “Rule of Life.” Every religious Order has a Rule of some kind, although some don’t call it that. A Rule — with a capital ”R” — isn’t a list of “dos and don’ts.” It isn’t a straight jacket. You can think of it more as a trellis. It’s a framework on which we hang our daily lives. It’s a pattern for growing our relationship with God, in order for that relationship to flower. In my own order, the Anglican Order of Preachers, the Rule includes praying the Office morning and evening every day and studying the scriptures daily. It includes staying in community with our brothers and sisters even though we are dispersed. It includes taking Eucharist at least once a week if it is available.

Personally, I think that every Christian should have a Rule of Life, because it actually helps protect you. We are buffeted by so many conflicting messages from so many different areas of life that it’s easy to forget who we are. Everything demands our attention and we can simply get lost. Creating a Rule of Life and working to LIVE that Rule helps bring us back to the center of who we are, and who we want to be in Christ. When we stray from our commitment, we have the Rule to help us work our way back.

A Rule of Life is, in effect, your own personal “armor of God.”

Bishop Deon Johnson has charged the Religious in our diocese with creating a Rule of Life for the Diocese of Missouri. This is not meant to be an imposition, but an aid to living into our Baptismal Covenant. The Rule we plan to create will be general enough that any parish can adapt it for its own special circumstance. Once the Rule is complete and accepted by the diocese, we hope to assist each parish in adapting it into their own Rule that can then be adapted by each person in the parish for their own daily use.

Now, coming up with a Rule of Life is not something you can do in 5 minutes. It takes time and discernment. We Religious in the diocese spent several months just figuring out how we were going to go about this. What we decided is that our diocesan Rule should grow organically from what people in parishes are already doing. It’s a bottom-up approach, rather than an imposition from the top down.

We need input from all the churches in the diocese, no matter how small. We hope you will help us.

Living the Christian life is not an easy thing, in any age. I would ask each of you, in the weeks to come, contemplate how you structure your life in Christ? Ask yourself, “What practices do I keep to regularly that help me strengthen My relationship with God?” You may already have the beginnings of a Rule of Life.

 A Rule of Life can help solidify our walk with Christ and provide us with that armor that Paul was talking about. And I don’t know about you, but I can use all the help I can get.

Amen.

 

Preached on the opening night of the annual Chapter of the Anglican Order of Preachers, the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 2024

Psalm 99, 2 Peter 1:13-21, Luke 9:28-36

In our little parish in Southeast Missouri, we do the office of Tenebrae every Holy Week, on Wednesday. We have done this now for over 20 years. If you have never experienced it, I urge you to try it. There is some preparation, as you need a whole bunch of candles, but it is absolutely worth it.

At the end of Tenebrae you have meditated on the Lamentations of Jeremiah, on St. Augustine, and on the Epistle to the Hebrews. You have read a whole bunch of Psalms, putting out a candle after each one. You are left with one lone candle burning, which you hide. By now the church is dark. After a final Psalm, the presider recites an anthem. Then, after a short silence a loud noise is made, symbolizing the stone being rolled away from Christ’s tomb. The final candle is brought back out, and all leave in silence. It’s one of those moments when the space becomes thin, and you can listen. And if you listen, you can hear God in your heart.

That silence, that listening, usually holds as people leave. People don’t want to talk. They want to stay in that quiet space. Some stay in the church for a surprising amount of time after the ministers have exited.

But there always seems to be that one parishioner who can’t help but try to start a conversation, often loudly. It’s jarring.

In this evening’s Gospel reading, Peter is that guy.

Peter, James, and John — the “core three” of the apostles, if you will — have gone up the mountain with Jesus. Evidently they’re pretty tired. The text says they are “weighed down with sleep”. Being sleepy seems to be a recurring theme for them. But things are happening that they can’t help but notice. Jesus is transfigured! His face is shining! And he’s talking to Moses and Elijah!

Now, personally, I think I would have been struck dumb. I HOPE I would have just lived in the moment. But it’s really possible that I might have been like Peter, and felt that I just had to say something, instead of basking in that transcendent experience. Peter is impulsive, and goes with his first thought: to intrude, basically, on what is going on. But God has other ideas.

The disciples hear the voice of God saying “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him.

Peter, always ready to say something whether it is appropriate or not, needs to be reminded to shut up and listen to Jesus.

Now, as Dominicans we do a lot of talking. It’s our stock in trade. We preach and we teach, and both generally involve talking.

But are we taking time to listen?

We live in a world of noise. We have the noise of our political environment right now. We have the noise of our 24-hour news services. Some of us who are (ahem) older remember when you only got the news a couple of times a day. Now it blasts at us all the time. Then there are jobs, the cares of daily living, all of them clamoring for our attention.

We can work at blocking that out. I think all of us probably have some “quiet time” – perhaps first thing in the morning. That’s when I have my “alone time.” Nobody else in the house is up yet. I can feed the cats, make my coffee, and sit down with Morning Prayer.

And this is good. Nothing wrong with this. But if we are really going to listen to the voice of God, we have to do more than just shut out the world. We have to learn how to quiet the noise that comes from within. We have to learn to let go of our agendas.

When you’re talking, you can’t listen, and vice versa.  If I am spending some of my quiet time in the morning thinking about the things I need to accomplish during the day, I’m not listening. If we can’t take the time to practice quieting our thoughts, it can be a little hard to hear what God may be trying to tell us.

It may be that God doesn’t spend that time talking either. One of my favorite quotes from Mother Teresa happened during an interview with Dan Rather. Rather asked her what she said while she was praying. She replied, “I listen.” Rather then asked her what God said to her. She replied, “He listens. And if you don’t understand that I can’t explain it to you.”

One of the Dominican mottos, in English, is to contemplate, and share with others the result of that contemplation. I think we often take that to mean we think about things like scripture or theology and let people know what we figure out. But that’s really too narrow. In Contemplative Prayer, you don’t think with words. In fact, you generally try to let words go, so you can find stillness. And in that stillness, you can listen.

Now, I’m sure some of us DO practice contemplative prayer, but I’m sure not all of us do. And I’d be willing to bet that even those of us who do aren’t as regular, as diligent as we need to be.

During a recent retreat I attended with the Bishop Kemper School for Ministry, we focused on Contemplative Prayer, led by a Benedictine monk. We practiced three types of prayer: Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina, and the Jesus Prayer. All are useful under different conditions. I personally am focusing on using the Jesus Prayer for contemplation, because you can do it almost anywhere. Any of these forms will work, but you have to practice regularly and consistently to be able to gain that quiet, that listening mind.

This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him.

Before we preach, before we talk, we need to listen.

In this, the first office of this year’s Chapter, I would ask that we all take time to listen. Take the time to listen to each other, yes, but also to listen for the voice of God. Listen for what He is urging us to do, for where He is urging us to go. To learn to quiet our own agendas and open ourselves to the possibilities that Christ opens for us. What does He want for our Order over the coming year? Not “what do we want”, but “What does He want?”

I would also challenge all of us to build some form of contemplative prayer into our regular prayer lives. It can be difficult. Believe me, I know how hard it can be to take that time. But I truly believe it is essential for us as Dominicans.

This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him.

Let us take the time to listen.

Amen.

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

This…may seem a bit disjointed. Sometimes, even after you’ve got your sermon virtually finished and it flows nicely, it’s logical, all it needs is last-minute tweaking…something happens and you have to start all over, and you may not have the time to make it as smooth as you’d like. I can’t preach the sermon I was going to preach, because something happened. I was rewriting this at 7:30 last night, and continued at 5:30 this morning.

This has happened to me a few times. The last time was when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. And the previous time was when 50 people in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, were gunned down while they were worshipping.

Yesterday, at a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, someone shot at ex-President and Presidential Candidate Donald Trump. They apparently grazed his ear, but at least one person in the crowd was killed and one other person was injured.

This not the way things are supposed to work. People are not supposed to die because they went to a political rally. Candidates are not supposed to be targets of violence. This is not what Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, wants for us.

Now, let me be clear and honest. I don’t like the ex-President, and I won’t vote for him. But that is a side issue. It’s not the point. I make my preferences known at the ballot box, not with violence.

We are so very good at dividing people into them and us. Into those who are in and those who are out. Into those who are with us and those who are against us. Whether our “enemies” be Muslims, or Chinese, or Mexican, or Republicans, or Democrats, whatever, we have to have walls to keep us apart. And let’s be clear: we are the ones that erect those walls.

And, it seems, there are some who are ever ready to take the next step, to use violence to take care of “those people.” Yesterday, in our already polarized political environment, someone did just that.

And I am very afraid it won’t stop there. Someone somewhere will be blaming the other side for this. Someone could else retaliate. The situation could very easily get completely out of hand. I am already hearing conspiracy theories from both sides of our political divide.

What can we do?

We can remember who we are. From the Epistle today:

“In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.”

We are God’s own people. We must behave like it.

One thing we must not do is speculate. We must not be quick to place blame — on anyone. The blame for this is not on our current President, or his party, or the ex-President, or his party, or the media. The blame is on the person who decided to use a gun to kill someone. We must not jump to conclusions. We must not turn up the heat on an already volatile situation.

We must not be divided this way.

We must love one another, no matter what our respective politics. I don’t have to agree with you to love you. I know it’s weird, but there it is.

We must still be the children of the kingdom of God.

And we must pray. Right now.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us Pray.

Heavenly Father, we come to you in horror at the heinous act perpetrated at yesterday’s shooting. We acknowledge that we are a race that is and always has been prone to violence. We can only reject it with your help.

We pray your mercy on ex-President Trump, on the traumatized people at the rally in Butler, on the families of the dead. We pray that you would be with the injured as they heal. And we pray for the soul of the shooter and for his family.

We pray that you would be with the police, with the Secret Service, and the FBI as they investigate, both to determine the motive of the shooter and to determine how to prevent such a thing from happening again.

We pray for our country, with our terribly divided politics. We pray that you would help us reject violence as a tool of political discourse. We pray that we can convince our leaders to enact common-sense gun control, that weapons of death can be kept out of the hands of those disposed to violence for any reason.

We pray for peace.

Grant us Lord, that we can rise above our petty differences and come together in peace. Heal our divisions. Grant that we can see that we are ALL God’s children.

We pray this in the name of he who is our Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Delivered 6-30-2024 at St. Andrew Lutheran Church I Poplar Bluff, MO

Lamentations 3:22-33; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43

Our Gospel today is an excellent example of a writing technique known as a “Markan sandwich.” Mark uses this technique a lot in his Gospel. He will start one story, then in the middle of that story stop and tell another story, then go back and finish the first story. It’s a very effective technique, and the two stories are always thematically related, and the inner story parallels the meaning of the outer story.

In this case, the “bread,” or outer story is that of a synagogue leader, Jairus, coming to Jesus and asking him to save his daughter’s life. The “meat”, the inner story that illuminates everything, is the story of a woman with an “issue of blood,” a hemorrhage that simply will not stop.

The easy interpretation of this passage is simply two acts of miraculous healing. And that’s not wrong. But looking a bit deeper, we run into the idea of ritual impurity. This was a real thing in the Israelite world. Now, ritual impurity was not the same as sin. It was just impurity. There were a bunch of things you could do that would make you ritually impure that didn’t rise to the level of sin. And there were certain things you couldn’t do if you were ritually impure: go into the Temple, for instance. If you did one of these things that were forbidden while you were impure, then it became a sin. And if you were impure, people who touched you or people you touched would also become impure. Impurity was considered contagious.

A menstruating woman was considered impure. And a dead person…well, that was the biggest impurity of all.

But, in general, ritual purity wasn’t something that needed to stop life in its tracks. In general, it was easily fixed: A sacrifice, some prayers, maybe a waiting period, and you were good to go. No sweat. Ritual impurity was just part of life. You dealt with it and moved on. No big deal.

But some forms of impurity couldn’t be easily fixed. When a woman never stopped bleeding, she could never break out of that impurity. She was perpetually impure. No worshipping at the temple. If you touched the ones you loved you made them impure, and then they had to deal with it. What a lonely, lonely way to live.

And when somebody is dead, they can never be ritually pure again. And the people that love you can never be with you again.

So here we have two stories of Jesus dealing with impurities that can’t be fixed. Impurities that kept people from being with the ones they loved. Impurities that created walls between the woman, and Jairus’ daughter, and others. Walls they couldn’t break through.

But Jesus…Jesus didn’t seem bothered by these barriers. He blasted right through them. He wasn’t concerned about being made impure. Some commentators say that Jesus was trying to tear down the impurity system, but I have doubts. Jesus was an observant Jew. I think he was okay with the impurity system, but he also recognized when it just couldn’t work for people. And he could fix it. He could break the walls separating those who had been impure. He could make them pure again.

And this is what Jesus still does. He breaks through walls. He breaks through the barriers that keep people apart. He’ll break the walls that keep us from being the human beings he wants us to be, if we let him.

We modern Westerners don’t have any system of impurity per se, but we certainly have plenty of substitutes built into our society. People who have been convicted felons are discriminated against even after they have completed their sentences. We don’t like to hang out with people who aren’t like us – who don’t look like us, who don’t think like us, don’t worship like us, don’t love like us. And our society tells us that we are right to do that. That we need to protect ourselves.

Yes, we humans a very, very good at building walls. Walls of class, walls of nationality, walls of ethnic identity, walls of gender identity, walls of religious identity. But there’s really only one reason to build a wall: because we’re afraid of something. We’re afraid of what’s on the other side of that wall.  And that’s a problem, because, like Jesus, we should be breaking down walls, not building them. We can’t be fully human in the way Jesus was fully human if we’re forever separating ourselves from others with walls.

Instead of building walls, we should be breaking them down every single day. Breaking down the walls of division. Breaking down the walls of hate. Breaking down the walls of fear. Breaking down the walls that make us less than God wants us to be.

In this coming week, let’s look around us at the walls WE put up to keep ourselves safe. How do we distance ourselves from others? What “impurities” do we see in others that make us want to put up barriers between us. What is in others that we are afraid of, that makes us want to protect ourselves? And once we see the walls, let’s see what we can do to tear them down.

Because that’s what Jesus would do.

Amen.

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

With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.

Have you ever had mint growing in your yard? We did when we lived in Oregon County. It was great! Once it got so big, you could cut the leaves and make mint tea — really refreshing on a hot summer day. Or if you were outside you could just crush a leaf in your hands and breathe in the aroma. Wonderful.

The big problem with mint was that it would spread. Almost uncontrollably. We had to keep mowing it round the edges or it would have spread to cover the entire yard. It could easily go from a delightful herb to an invasive weed.

Jesus, not having this kind of mint around, maybe, used mustard for his parable. When I was a young Southern Baptist, it was popular for young ladies to have a necklace that had a mustard seed set in crystal or glass — both of my sisters had one. It was to remind us of Jesus’ statement that if we had faith “as a grain of mustard seed” we could move mountains. Mark doesn’t have any statements about faith the size of a mustard seed, but he gives us today’s parable instead.

Mustard is an herb that can grow into a kind of thick shrub. Mustard can grow quite large, although I’m not sure about the “greatest of all shrubs.” While not a tree, mustard plants can easily grow to 6 feet in height and have been known to reach double that height. So birds COULD nest under it, in the shade.

But beyond just growing up, mustard SPREADS. In fact, at least one variety of mustard grows and spreads so quickly that the State of California has designated it an invasive species. Its seeds, being so tiny, spread on the wind. And because they spread on the wind, fences and walls mean nothing to the mustard seed. It blows right past them and settles into the soil.

We don’t usually let mustard get very big – or out of control – when all we’re interested in is a condiment. But I think it’s this invasive, wildly growing nature of mustard that is the clue to the parable. Invasive plants cross boundaries. They grow where they want to grow, not where we might expect or WANT them to grow.

We always have to remember when reading Jesus’ parables that they are not meant to give pat, easy answers. In fact, sometimes they raise more questions than they may answer. No, parables are meant to shock you, to bring you up short, to take you out of your usual patterns of thought. They can give you answers that you may not be happy about.

So, how is the kingdom of God like a mustard seed?

The kingdom of God starts tiny, like a mustard seed. Not exactly what the disciples wanted to hear.

The kingdom of God grows, like a mustard plant. The disciples were probably scratching their heads by this point.

And the kingdom of God spreads, like a mustard plant.

The kingdom of God crosses borders, both real and imagined. It grows right past barriers, even the ones we might try to put in the way. We’re really good at putting up barriers. Sometimes we’re not so good about tearing them down. But the Kingdom goes everywhere, with or without us.

The kingdom of God spreads without regard to what you or I want it to do. It spreads to take in everyone. It spreads to include places and people that we may feel don’t belong.

In our passage from Ezekiel today, we read another plant metaphor, this one a cedar tree:

Under it every kind of bird will live;
in the shade of its branches will nest
winged creatures of every kind.

There are those birds nesting under the shade again. But in Ezekiel it’s “winged creatures of every kind.” And I don’t believe Ezekiel is really talking about birds. I think when Ezekiel says “every kind” he’s speaking about every kind of people. To the prophet, that would have meant both Israelites AND Gentiles. Everyone can find rest under the shade of God’s tree. For us, I believe it means…EVERYONE.

Back when I was a kid, my father was a Naval officer. When a decision had to be made for which he didn’t have the authority, he would say, “that’s above my grade.”

Quite simply put, deciding who is in and who is out of the kingdom of God is above my pay grade. It’s above Father Ryan’s pay grade. It’s above Bishop Deon’s pay grade. It’s above Presiding Bishop Curry’s pay grade.

Deciding where the kingdom of God will spread is above our pay grade.

We don’t get to decide that the alcoholic next door, or the sex worker hanging around that bar, or the thief, or the panhandler on the street isn’t fit for the kingdom. But we can make the ground fertile for the mustard seed, by loving them. By accepting them. By making it easier for the kingdom to take root in their hearts.

Invasive species are really, really, hard to kill off. Just ask any farmer in south central Missouri who had to try to eradicate the multiflora rose from their farmland. But in the case of the kingdom of God, we need to take a different tack. We need to help it invade the entire world.

So, instead of trying to decide who belongs and who doesn’t, how about if we fertilize the soil to make it easier for the mustard seed to take root.  Let’s do some reverse pest control. Let’s show everyone all the love and the joy and acceptance that we have found in Christ.

Let’s be mustard farmers.

Amen.

Genesis 3:8-15; Psalm 130; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35

Today’s story from the Gospel is in the form of a sort of “story sandwich,” with Mark beginning a story, then switching to a different story, then going back and finishing the first story. In this particular case the structure is a little more complex than that and is something called a “chiasm,” but “story sandwich” will do for now.

In this case, the “filling” in the sandwich has to do with the scribes claiming that Jesus is using the power of Satan to cast out demons.

And the “bread” of the sandwich has to do with Jesus and his relationship with his family. In the first verse, they want to take him away because they think he’s lost his mind. In the final verses, Jesus seems to reject them in favor of those who do God’s will.

We don’t often think about Jesus having issues with his family, but it seems like he did. There must have been some reconciliation later – Jesus’ brother James, for instance, became an important figure in the early church, the leader of the church in Jerusalem. But in the short term they had some trouble understanding what was going on. Why was Jesus doing these things? Where did he get these weird ideas? Why couldn’t he come home and behave like a good boy?

We know that Jesus cared for people with families. He comforted the disciples who had left their families to follow him. So we know this situation must have been difficult and painful.

Everybody has family problems. Even Jesus.

Paul had family problems too. Paul regarded the church in Corinth, a church he founded, as his family. His second letter to that church is a very complex composition, so complex that scholars have trouble deciding if our text was made up of fragments of several letters or if it all is of one piece. But it is obvious Paul is writing to the Corinthians out of deep sorrow, deep PAIN, for the way things have been going.

You see, other teachers have come in, claiming that Paul was not an apostle, and that he did not carry the true Gospel. Paul has been put in the position of having to defend his apostleship to a church that he founded. To people to whom he had brought the good news.

Paul is not deterred. In this wild letter he goes from angry to pleading to earnestly trying to convince. Read through it sometime. Paul is desperately trying to convince these people. And he is suffering.

But Paul is not deterred, because of his faith in the message he has proclaimed. As he tells the Christians in Corinth, everything is for their sake, so that God’s grace make extend to more and more people. And even though we know our physical bodies — our earthly homes — won’t last, we know that we have an eternal home with Christ waiting for us.

And so Paul writes the phrase that stuck with me after reading these passages: “So we do not lose heart.”

Do not lose heart.

Jesus did not lose heart when his family thought he was insane, he did not lose heart.

Paul did not lose heart when a church he founded turn against him.

Christians throughout the ages have not lost heart even when threatened with persecution and death.

Holy Cross has been through some tough times. I can remember weeks when we had to choose which bills to pay. But we still did not lose heart.

Guess what? We will have tough times again. But we should not lose heart.

Do not lose heart.

Even when those may close to us seem to turn against us, we do not lose heart.

Even when things seem impossible, we do not lose heart.

Even when things in our country seem totally out of control, we do not lose heart.

We do not lose heart even when innocent civilians are killed in bombing and missile attacks.

We do not lose heart even when more and more people are killed in senseless gun violence.

We do not lose heart when we stand with our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters and let them know that God loves them, no exceptions. That they, too, are created in the image of God.

And when people attack us for making that stand, we do not lose heart, even though it hurts. We must remember that the opposite of courage is NOT fear, but despair.

We do not lose heart because we have a Savior who has already beaten the enemy. Whether you believe Satan to be an actual person or simply a symbol of the evil that is in the world. Jesus has already beaten that evil. Jesus has tied up that “strong man,” as he’s alluded to in today’s gospel, and ransacked his house. He’s already done the hard part.

Jesus has already won the victory. All we have to do is take advantage of that victory.

We do not lose heart.

And that means we can accomplish ANYTHING.

Amen.

 

 

Delivered at the Wednesday Eucharist at the National Association of Episcopal Christian Communities, May 22, 2024

Micah 4:1-4; Psalm 2; Luke 23:26-32

Commemoration of St. Helena of Constantinople

Oh, my what a journey we go on in today’s readings.

We began with Micah and his beautiful vision of a world restored, of peace, of an end to conflict. We went from there to one of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 2, and it seems like we’ve gone backward a bit, because, in our Prayer Book Psalter, the nations are “in an uproar” and plotting against the Lord’s anointed one. And in Luke’s Gospel we have to address the Crucifixion, as Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem on the way to his death at the hands of Rome and worldly power.

We certainly see the nations in an uproar these days, although that is, in reality, nothing new. There seems no end to conflict. Our country is socially and politically polarized. Micah’s vision seems as far away and unreachable as ever. But in the Gospel we see a facet of Jesus that is sometimes overlooked, and points to something that is critical to the Church today.

What took my mind toward this part of Jesus’ mission was that last week, at a college commencement address, a football player made statements saying essentially that the most important place for women to be was in the home, having children. You may have heard of it. He said other things as well, and there has been a lot of negative reaction.

Whether taken out of context or not, it got me to thinking about the place of women in the Church, and how that has changed over the last several decades, and what this means for the Church in the future. And took this sermon somewhere I hadn’t intended to go.

In the Stations of the Cross reflections written by Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, a past Master of the Roman Catholic Dominican Order, he makes the point that, all during his path to the Cross, that long journey on foot, Jesus only speaks to women. We saw an example of this in tonight’s Gospel. At this penultimate moment in his earthly ministry, our Lord chooses to speak to women.

Luke’s Gospel probably gives a higher place to women than any other Gospel. Starting with Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, through Mary, the mother of our Lord, to Anna, the prophetess at the Temple, to the women who helped pay the costs of Jesus’ ministry, to the women watching the crucifixion, being first at the empty tomb, and being the first to tell the disciples of the resurrection, women are everywhere in Luke, facilitating the spread of the Kingdom of God.

And I found myself thinking of those women of Jerusalem, whom Jesus warned of doom to come. I wonder if any went on to become followers of The Way.

I found myself thinking about Mary Magdalene, the “apostle to the apostles.” And what about Junia, Phoebe, Chloë, Priscilla, and other women mentioned by St. Paul? Where would we be without their witness and their effect on the fledgeling Church?

And I thought of how later on, these women were forgotten or marginalized.

And then my mind went further to women such as Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena (Dominican, yay!), and Julian of Norwich, all of whom had profound influences on the Church, even with the restrictions placed on them as women.

And I think of St. Helena, whom we celebrate today. There are a lot of stories and myths about her.  We can argue as to whether she really found a piece of the true cross, or whether the sites of the Nativity or the Ascension she discovered were the real thing. But I really don’t think that matters a great deal. We do know that she had churches built at these locations, and worked to preserve the sites, providing a focus of devotion to generations and generations of believers.

For a long time, women were told that it was not their place to be ordained clergy. Then, the Episcopal Church was forced to actually listen to the Holy Spirit.

We are currently meeting in the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, my own diocese, and — if I have counted correctly on the diocesan website — 13 out of 19 deacons in this diocese are women. 27 out of 56 priests that are canonically resident are women, including the Canon to the Ordinary and the Dean of the Cathedral.

I know many of these female clergy personally. Some of them belong to communities represented here. But they are all awesome servants of God. I have trouble conceiving where our diocese would be without these women. A lot can happen in a few decades when you actually listen to the Holy Spirit.

What does all this mean to us who have chosen the religious life?

Simply put, it shows how the Church can change.

The Church is changing again now. It has always changed when it had to, although often not until it was forced to. In St. Helena’s day it had to deal with the fact that it was no longer just one religion among many, that it had, instead, become the preferred religion. I’d like to say that went really well, but…there were problems. We need to do better.

The Episcopal Church changed with the realization that women could be deacons and priests and bishops. That work is not yet complete, but…we’re getting there.

 The Episcopal Church changed again with the realization that LGBTQ+ people could be deacons and priests and bishops. That work is not complete either, but…we’re getting there.

Now it is going to have to change again.

You only have to look at initiatives begun by some of our individual dioceses to see that our leadership knows we have to change. In this diocese, I was part of the team for the Diocesan Vitality Initiative, a program that is supposed to be rolled out for the whole Church. We were one of 4 pilot dioceses, looking for new ways to be the church. We were lucky, because we had already done that work with a program called Requiem or Renaissance, in which my own tiny parish participated. We learned about things we needed to let die in order that our parish could thrive.

And we can moan and complain about how things aren’t like they used to be, something of an Episcopalian tradition. We can say to ourselves “not yet.” Or we can get on with the work.

We religious should be leading the way in church renewal. Yes, through prayer, which we are all very good at, but also by showing up. By listening to the Holy Spirit, even when she is speaking in a way we don’t expect. By helping the church do the hard work. It’s nice to sit back in contemplation and prayer, but these need to bear fruit or they are worthless. So, as Bishop Deon said, let’s go into the heart of our charisms. Let’s see where each of our particular gifts are needed within our dioceses and put them out there.

Bishop Dion made the point that a person in a habit is less intimidating than someone in a clergy collar. Let’s work that! Let’s be the face of the welcome that people are looking for.

We must help the church change, even if it makes us uncomfortable. Even if we’re a little scared by it. Even if it’s hard work. When the Holy Spirit is speaking, “not yet” may be the worst thing we can say to ourselves, so let’s decide now we’re not going to do that.

Instead, when the Spirit speaks, let’s say, “Yes, now.”

Amen.

Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18

Today, as you have probably figured out, is Good Shepherd Sunday. And generally, sermons today are all feel-good stuff, about how Jesus is our shepherd and takes care of us as a shepherd takes care of his sheep. That’s all true, of course, but it’s not where I want to begin this sermon. Instead, we’ll begin in Acts, with Peter and John in trouble. Again.

Today’s reading from Acts begins a little abruptly. Peter and John are defending themselves in front of the “rulers, elders and scribes”, as well as the family of the high priest. These “authorities” demand that Peter and John tell them what power or name is the basis for something they did yesterday. It’s a little difficult to make sense unless you know exactly what happened the previous day.

So let’s rewind a few hours.

Earlier in the day, Peter and John had cured a lame man on the steps of the temple. While they were speaking to the people after the healing and talking about the resurrection, the Saducees and and the captain of the Temple Guard had come and arrested them. Our reading today begins after Peter and John have spent the night under arrest.

We don’t know a lot about the Saducees, but we do know that they were generally aligned with the Temple authorities, and they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Resurrection wasn’t a “traditional” belief, you see. It wasn’t found in Torah. It really only developed in the period between the testaments. The Saducees were big on written tradition. Many of them were scribes, so its easy to see why written tradition might be important to them.

When Peter and John are hauled out of jail, the Temple authorities have basically one question: By whose authority did you heal this man?

The problem is, they’re asking the wrong question.

They were more concerned about authority than they were that the man was healed.

So many times we ask the wrong questions, often because we are blinded by our worldview. And because our worldview is not in line with Christ’s worldview.

If we ask “Is it liberal or is it conservative?”, we’re asking the wrong question.

We should be asking “Is it Christlike?”

If we are asking “Does this fit in with my politics?”, we’re asking the wrong question.

We should be asking “Does this fit with what Christ tells us?”

If we are asking questions about whether something is good or not, our questions should be based on the teachings of Jesus. He’s our benchmark for everything.

Now we can go back to Jesus as the shepherd and we as his sheep. The shepherd/sheep metaphor doesn’t extend much beyond Jesus taking care of us (which he does). We need to make sure we don’t force it.

For instance, sheep don’t have any responsibility for what they do. Sheep don’t generally make decisions for themselves. They follow the shepherd, because…well, they’re sheep, but they trust that he knows where they need to go better than they do. After all, he leads them to food and water.

But humans…we tend to just wander off on our own a lot. We have our own ideas about what is right and what is wrong. About what we should be doing. And we have a tendency to listen to people who tell us what we want to hear, who tell us things that match our own ideas. We often don’t want to follow where Jesus is leading. And, when we do this, we tend not to ask the right questions.

You don’t see sheep doing this. Sheep follow the shepherd.

We need know who our shepherd is, who to follow, because if we don’t, we can easily be drawn toward other “shepherds”. Other “flocks”. And it’s those other shepherds — other flocks — that teach us to ask the wrong questions.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who cares for his sheep — for us — who leads us beside still waters so we can drink. Who sets a banquet table before us. Who restores our souls. No other shepherd, no matter how attractive, can do those things for us.

But in order for Christ to do those things, we need to trust him. Trust that he will lead us in the way we should go. Trust that he will teach us to ask the right questions.

Is it Christlike?

Does it fit with Jesus’ teachings?

How can my actions mirror those of Christ?

If we are really his flock, these are the questions we should be asking.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; John 20:1-18

Have you ever had something happen in your life that was just devastating? When you were sure your life was over? When it didn’t seem like it was worth the effort to go on? Then only to have everything turn out all right afterward? In fact, maybe turn out better than you could ever have imagined? And not even because of anything you did! It seemed like a gift from heaven!

There is actually a word for this. J.R.R. Tolkien (yes, that Tolkien) coined the word eucatastrophe. It’s a complete turn from a situation that is completely hopeless to a sudden, unforeseen victory. That victory is usually brought about by grace, rather than heroic action. A eucatastrophe brings such joy that it may bring you to tears.

I think we can all feel this in our bones, especially this week. Just two days ago, on Good Friday, we saw Jesus tortured to death as a criminal, and buried. Yesterday morning, we paused in our devotions, focusing on hope. Then last night at the Great Vigil of Easter, we took a sudden turn, brought light back into the world out of darkness, and celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead!

I can’t think of a better example of eucatastrophe than the resurrection. And Tolkien agreed.

Today’s gospel gives us a glimpse of what it must have been like. When I think of eucatastrophe I think of Mary Magdalene, the “apostle to the apostles,”  going to the tomb before dawn on Sunday morning, probably to anoint Jesus’ body according to custom, and finding the stone rolled away. In my Good Friday sermon I made the point that when he was killed, Jesus’ followers must have thought the world had ended. Their dreams were shattered. Finding the tomb this way must have been devastating. Not only did they kill him, but his tomb had been vandalized! She goes back and brings Simon Peter and another disciple. They go into the tomb and find it empty except for the linen that Jesus’ body had been wrapped in.

This is the last straw. The disciples return to their homes. There’s nothing left to see here. Someone has stolen Christ’s body. The last thing they had to hold onto is gone. They have absolutely nothing left of him.

But Mary…Mary can’t leave. Mary is overcome with grief. She stays at the tomb, weeping, sobbing. She has nothing left. Even the appearance of two angels in the tomb doesn’t lessen her grief. Then she turns and sees someone she thinks is the gardener, the caretaker, and asks him where he’s taken the body, so she can attend to it. It’s understandable that she didn’t recognize him. He was dead. There is no way in human experience that she could be talking to Jesus. I can’t count the number of times I have failed to recognize someone that I ran into out of the usual context. Back when I was a Scouter, running into someone out of uniform is all it would take. So yes, it’s understandable.

She doesn’t recognize him, until he calls her by name.

I can only imagine the joy that swept through Mary when she realized that it was indeed Jesus who was standing in front of her. I’m sure that she ran to embrace him. I’m guessing that her tears of sorrow had changed to tears of joy. We react to intense sorrow and intense joy in similar ways. This is the joy that eucatastrophe brings. In some translations Jesus says “Touch me not” to her, but I prefer our translation: “Do not hold onto me,” because I can’t envision Mary not grabbing hold of Jesus and never wanting to let go. Jesus is saying “I can’t be held in one place anymore. I still have things to do.”

Mary is human, and probably would have preferred to stay there in the garden with Jesus forever. But that’s not how things work. Jesus had things to do. And Mary also had things to do. She had to announce to the disciples what had happened to her. I can’t picture her doing anything but running in her joy, running from house to house, announcing to the disciples the good news that Jesus was alive, the first person to carry that news to anyone. The first person to encounter the risen Christ, and the first evangelist, carrying the Good News.

On Easter Sunday, which is, by the way, the second feast in the season of Easter, we meet our risen Lord with Mary at the tomb in the Garden. How do we react to that? Will we want to stay there, basking in the joy of the resurrection? It feels good. It’s comfortable.  But it’s also selfish. It’s too great! We can’t keep this to ourselves! We have things to do, and Jesus is still not someone who can be nailed down to one place. He’s not going to stay here. He will be out in the world, and he wants to do that through US.

We have been celebrating Easter for around 2,000 years, and I think through the long, long years we have lost some of the intense joy that the unexpected turnaround from disaster to victory brings.

We need to break out of our Easter routines. We need to recover something of what Mary Magdalen felt: The deep, deep sorrow that, in a sudden, victorious turn, becomes overwhelming joy. Joy that may bring us to tears. We need to take our joy out of this place, as comfortable and reassuring as it is, and spread that joy to the world. The world needs to know the joy that makes us shout

“ALLELUIA! CHRIST IS RISEN!

THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA”

Amen.