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.

 

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42

Well, here we are. Jesus has been crucified. The event he predicted has come at last, and he is gone, killed by a blasphemous intersection of religious and political power. The Savior we worship was executed in the most brutal possible way. Crucifixion was not a death used for the average run-of-the-mill criminal. It was slow, essentially suffocating the victim to death as they hung, unable to breath. It was meant to serve as an example.

We are the lucky ones, because we can see past Friday. We know ahead of time what’s coming.  But people who were part of the story couldn’t know that. Peter, who told people he didn’t know Jesus, couldn’t know that. The disciples couldn’t know that when they ran away in fear rather than risk being associated with a condemned criminal. Mary, who watched her son die a slow, agonizing death on the cross, couldn’t know that.

They couldn’t see past the horrible, horrible now. In the words of blogger Fred Clark, they had to spend all day Saturday never being sure that there would even be a Sunday. Not knowing if anything would ever be right again. The dream of the Messiah was over. Done. Killed by the Romans. Executed as a criminal.

All was lost. Could there even be anything left to live for?

They couldn’t know that something else was happening. Something beyond anything they had ever experienced.

In John’s Gospel Jesus says at the end, “It is finished.” And it WAS finished. The work he had come to do was complete, his tasks were accomplished. But the people who knew him, who followed him, who loved him, couldn’t know that.

They couldn’t know that in his death, Jesus had already won. In his dying he destroyed the power of evil and death. We no longer have to fear either one. Resurrection came after, yes, but the completion, the victory, was in his dying, in his judicial murder by the people he had come to save.

I know, I know. It makes no sense.

People often ask why we call today “Good Friday.” How can we call it “good?” It’s the worst possible Friday. Jesus was crucified today! How can that be “good”?

It makes no sense.

St. Paul saw the paradox quite clearly. In fact, he reveled in it. Paul saw that the cross — to most people an emblem of shame — was instead the symbol of Christ’s victory. The victory that Jesus won in his death is why this is indeed “Good Friday,” maybe even the best Friday.

But our brothers and sisters back then couldn’t know just how good it would turn out to be. And that is why we have a solemn, somber service today, even though we all know it is a Good Friday. Our altar is bare. We’re not singing. We have no alleluias. We worship in sympathy with those who didn’t know, who couldn’t know what was coming.  Who didn’t understand.

In a moment, we will begin the Solemn Collects, a group of solemn prayers that we traditionally use on Good Friday. These prayers do not even once reference Christ’s resurrection, but they do make reference to our hope of resurrection. And this, today, is where we must live. In sorrow, yes, but also in hope.

As we pray, let us dwell with those who have gone before, in the sorrow of Jesus’ death. But let us also remember the victory.

And let us also remember that he promised resurrection and new life. Let us live in hope.

Amen.

 

 

 

2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9

Who is this Jesus of Nazareth?

We have just spent several weeks meditating on that question. The season after Epiphany is the season where we celebrate Jesus being revealed to the world. We go straight from celebrating his birth to celebrating his revelation.

On the Feast of the Epiphany we always read in Matthew about the visit of the Wise Men.

On the following Sunday every year, we read of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River.

The next two Sundays this year were about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, as he called his first disciples.

The following Sunday was Mark’s first account of Jesus expelling a demon, and last Sunday was Mark’s first record of Jesus’ healings.

The culmination of the season comes today, when, as we always do on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, we read an account of the Transfiguration, where Christ is revealed in his glory to a select few of the Apostles.  Jesus invites Peter, James, and John up on a mountain, where he is transfigured. His clothes become “dazzling white,” and Elijah and Moses appear and talk with him. Jesus’ transfiguration bears an echo of Moses’ descent from Mt. Sinai, when his face glowed so brightly that people couldn’t bear to look at him, and he had to wear a veil.

In fact, we have two such miraculous events in our reading today. In the Old Testament reading, we hear the story of Elijah being taken to heaven in a whirlwind, with flaming horses and a chariot of fire. It’s quite spectacular. Elisha, the man who is to be Elijah’s successor, is there with him, even though Elijah has done his best to send him away. So Elijah appears in both the Old Testament and Gospel readings today.

People do not always do well with with these kinds of events. We don’t have a way to process them. Our minds aren’t built for it. Elisha, when he can no longer see Elijah, tears his clothes, normally a sign of mourning. The only context Elisha has for Elijah no longer being there is death, so he behaves as if Elijah is dead.

And good old Peter, always impetuous and generally inappropriate, wants to build huts for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, as if they could be kept from leaving. As if they were confined to the strictly physical. And I can sympathize with him. He is witness to an event that is so incredible, so overwhelming that his mind can’t really deal with what he is seeing. So he reverts to what he knows. He reverts to the purely physical.

It’s a transcendent experience, and Peter misses the significance because he wants to respond by doing something mundane.

But then God’s voice comes through, telling the apostles to listen to Jesus.

Stop doing. Start listening.

I think all of us probably have problems listening at one time or another. How many times in a conversation has our mind wandered? How many transcendent experiences have we missed because we weren’t listening? Because we just weren’t paying attention?

Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, does speak to us, and we need to listen. One way we can listen is contemplative prayer. We are used to active prayer, where we are praising God, thanking Him, or asking Him for something. This is the way we are taught to pray. But in contemplative prayer, you don’t spend time talking. You spend time listening.

Mother Theresa was once asked about her prayer life and told the reporter she prayed an hour every day. The reporter asked, “What do you say?” She replied, “Mostly I just listen.” The reporter asked, “What does God say?”

Mother Theresa’s reply? “Mostly, He just listens too.”

Sometimes we don’t need to do something. Sometimes, we just need to listen.

One of the mottos of my own order is “Contemplare et contemplata aliis trader,” which in English is “to contemplate, and to share with others the fruits of contemplation.” We are encouraged to spend time daily contemplating scripture. We pass along the fruits of that contemplation in our preaching and teaching. It’s one way that the Dominican life supports Dominican preaching. And when you’re contemplating scripture, at least in my experience…mostly, you just listen.

As Christians, we want to be working for the kingdom of God. The thing is, when we are active, when we’re doing all the time, we tend to not listen. Often the things of the world get in the way of our listening. There is just so much going on. The Holy Spirit has trouble getting to us through the noise. We need to learn to shut out that noise.

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten season. Lent is an excellent time to practice our listening skills. Maybe this year, instead of just giving up chocolate, or meat, or something else we know very well we’re going to start enjoying again once Easter hits, we should try taking up something new. Maybe try sitting quietly and just listening. Listening for what God wants to say. Maybe he’ll just listen too. But, then again, he may have something important we need to hear.

This Lent, let’s remember today. Remember the whole season after Epiphany and how it showed just who this Jesus of Nazareth is. In God’s own words,

“This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

Take some time to stop doing, and start listening.

Amen.

Delivered at Holy Cross Episcopal church in Poplar Bluff, MO, on December 24, 2023 (4th Sunday of Advent)

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Canticle 3: The Song.of Mary; Roman’s 6:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

Welcome to the 4^th Sunday of our minimalist Advent season. We don’t even get a full Advent Sunday today! Tonight, we will come back to the church to celebrate the Feast of the Incarnation. Most years we get a least a couple of days between the two.

But before we can get to the Incarnation, we have to talk about the Annunciation, an event that the church, as early as the sixth century, considered important enough to have a feast of its own. But we also get the Gospel reading for the Annunciation on this day. For a couple of weeks we’ve been hearing John the Baptist talk about the coming Messiah. Now we are getting down to actual events, with the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary to tell her how God’s plan for the birth of the Messiah would proceed.

Which means we need to talk about Mary.

You may not know this, but the Order of Preachers has a special devotion to the Virgin Mary. Traditionally, the Dominicans are under Mary’s special protection, and tradition has it that she gave the gift of the rosary to St. Dominic. Since becoming a Dominican I have been spending more time thinking about Mary.

Now, I have heard it said that the Romans make too much of Mary, and Protestants make too little of her. I can certainly speak for that last bit. As a Southern Baptist, I was really never taught much about Mary. She seemed to be an afterthought. And I think in many ways this was a reaction to the Roman Catholic doctrines such as the Immaculate Conception, which likely doesn’t mean what you think it means. To avoid giving Mary too big a role in the salvation story, we minimized her.  What we ended up doing to her was just as bad as giving her TOO prominent a place.

I have become much more comfortable with Mariology over the past couple of years, so much so that I now recite the Angelus as a prologue before Morning and Evening Prayer, in which I actively ask Mary to pray for me. If you’re curious, I will gladly tell you about it later. I have become comfortable with using the title “Mother of God” for Mary, because I finally got it through my head that this historical title tells us more about Jesus than it does about Mary.

Most of the time we argue about side issues with Mary. We can argue about whether she was born sinless (THAT’s the Immaculate Conception), we can argue about whether she stayed a virgin her entire life, or whether she had other children. But none of these speak to the real point about what makes Mary special. The point is not whether she was born without sin, or any of those other things.

The point is that she said “Yes.”

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

In stories of others being called by God, we get a variety of responses. Moses, from instance, declares he’s unworthy, then tries to weasel out of God’s call by saying that he has a speech impediment. Isaiah, too, when he sees his first vision in the temple, at first protests that he’s not worthy, as though anyone can be worthy. And Jonah…Jonah just flat runs away.

Mary…did something different…something different and wonderful.

She didn’t ask “Why me?”

She didn’t ask what the cost would be. And yes, there is ALWAYS a cost to doing what God wants.

She didn’t try to weasel out of it.

She asked one question: “How is this possible?” Mary knew perfectly well how conception and childbirth work, so it was an innocent and understandable question. And when given the answer, she just said “Yes.”

She said “yes” to whatever plan God had for her. To give birth to the Messiah, yes, but also “yes” to whatever came about as a result of that birth. She had no way of knowing that she would see her son die a slow, excruciating death, executed as a common criminal. But she still said “yes.”

She said “yes” and became so excited by what was happening to her that she got together with her cousin Elizabeth and had what I have seen described as “the best girl talk ever.” Something about pulling down the mighty, feeding the poor and sending the rich away hungry, basically toppling the entire social order.

Can we follow her example? In the very short time between now and our Christmas Eve service, can we meditate on her “yes” to God? Can we make her “yes” OUR “yes?” Can we do it without trying to weasel out of whatever it is that God wants us to do?

Can we be as excited as Mary about what is happening to us here at Holy Cross? I really believe we are experiencing new birth here. But in order for that new birth to continue, we have to say “yes.” We have to say “This is what we want.”

I imagine that very few of us will be asked by God to do something as cosmically important as giving birth to the Savior of the human race. Most of the time God asks us to do something much simpler, and yet we still seem to want to try to talk him out of it, like Moses. Or we give an excuse, like Isaiah. Or we just run away, like Jonah.

Jesus, the Messiah is about to born. He is eternally born in us if we are willing. Will we run away? Will we make excuses? Will we try to talk God out of it? Or will we echo Mary and say “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Amen

Delivered at the Church of the Holy Cross in Poplar Bluff, MO on the 2nd Sunday of Advent, 2023

Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85 1-2; 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

Sermon writing can be an interesting experience. Sometimes it’s really a good thing that I usually have a couple of weeks to prepare a sermon. As I looked over the propers for today — starting a couple of weeks ago — I wasn’t really sure what I could do with them. They seem to be a mishmash of things, and in many ways saying the same things that we will read next week, when I will be preaching in New Orleans. I really couldn’t see a way to make a sermon out of these propers. But as sometimes happens, the Friday and Saturday before I preach can bring more clarity. As I contemplate the scriptures and let the Holy Spirit do her thing in my subconscious, I can begin to see a way.

In Isaiah we are given comforting words, using the recurring theme of God as shepherd, and his people as sheep for whom he will care. God will take everything that’s upside down and put it the right way up.  The Psalm follows in a similar vein, with promises that there will be truth and mercy in the world.

Then…we get 2 Peter, with the elements dissolved in fire, and the heavens “set ablaze and dissolved.” And it could come at any time.  That’s a bit discomfiting.

And to top it all off in Mark we get John the Baptist, calling for repentance. That’s not the most comforting thing in the world either. And Mark claims that it’s the beginning of the “Good News!” How is that possible? How is having to repent “good news?”

Our Old Testament scripture comes from the part of the book that scholars call “Second Isaiah,” since it’s believed to have been written by a different person than the first part of the book. The content is so much different that it reads like an entirely different book. First Isaiah warned of the approaching doom of the Northern Kingdom, leading to its destruction by the Assyrian Empire. Second Isaiah looks to the return of the Judean exiles from Babylon, and the restoration of Jerusalem and the temple.

Second Isaiah spoke of a redeemed Israel, but there is also a strain among the Old Testament prophets that God would remake the world; that God would re-create the world as it should have been. And that it would be pretty…well, exciting…when it happened. Some of the later prophets speak of “the great and terrible day of the Lord.”

Peter’s letter points to a fulfillment of this prophecy, with the heavens being consumed by fire, and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth, where mercy and truth would reign. The new heaven and the new earth part sounds good, but the heavens being consumed by fire, to be frank, makes me uncomfortable.

So, it would seem that to get to the redeeming of the world we are going to have to go through some stuff. But the thing to remember is that no matter how bad things look, God’s acts are ALWAYS focused on redemption. There is a redemptive purpose behind all of it.

I think we can all agree that we are not living in the best of times. War in Ukraine and in Gaza. Climate change bringing massive storms. Hate crimes. Gun violence. Things get bad before they get better, but how do we get from the bad to the better? Getting from the bad to the good points the way for us to repentance.

The season of Advent is a penitential season. It’s not Lent, and we shouldn’t treat it like Lent. It’s not all sackcloth and ashes. But we are preparing for something – for the arrival of the Christ child — that amazing, singular event in which Almighty God chose to incarnate himself as a tiny child, to live with us, to experience what we experience—the good and the bad—and to redeem us from the horrible mess we’d gotten into. It’s a sacramental event, in which the divine breaks into the physical world.

And we are also looking forward to his coming again to complete the work he began two thousand years ago – the work of recreating the world as it should be, and of doing the same to us. This will also be a sacramental event, as the entirety of Creation is made anew in God’s image.

But are we ready for all this? We all have things that we need to repent of. And that’s why John’s cry of “Repent!” Is good news! We need to repent because Christ is coming! Because we want to be ready to meet him! And how can his coming not be good news? It’s the very best news.

At least, it is if we are ready. And it’s repentance, that turning away from the things we’ve been doing, that makes us ready.

Are we ready? Have we taken our sins against God and our neighbor out and looked at them honestly? Have we turned them over to God? He’s really good about forgiving. That is the sort of thing we need to be doing during Advent, perhaps instead of worrying about getting the tree decorated or the lights up or spending tons of money on presents.

The candle that we lit on the Advent Wreath today is the candle of peace. We can have the peace and comfort promised by Isaiah, the truth and mercy promised by the Psalm, but all of that won’t come without our turning around from those selfish acts that we all commit, even though we may not at first admit them to ourselves. This is the work of Advent. And make no mistake, it is work.

Are we ready for redemption to arrive? Have we unloaded all our baggage and turned it over to God? Or are we just coasting to Christmas through habit?

Do we actually want peace? Peace for everyone, not just for ourselves and the people we like? Or do we only want peace where we win?

Have we truly repented? We ALL still need to repent of something.

Let’s get ready. He’s coming.

And that’s good news.

Amen.

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18; Psalm 90:1-8(9-11)12; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

So, we are drawing very near to the end of the long season after Pentecost. Its almost Advent, folks! The propers we get for this time of year tend to focus on eschatological themes, “eschatological” being a ten-dollar word that just means we are dealing with the “last things” – things that will happen at the end of the world as we know it.

The readings from the Prophets tend to look toward the “great and terrible day of the Lord.” The Epistles also follow the end-of-times theme. Last week and this week we read in St. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians his exhortations for people to be ready, because Christ could return at any time, and it will be a surprise to everyone when it happens.

The Gospel readings we get are usually Jesus describing – mostly through parables – what things are going to be like when he comes back. So, last week we got the story of the wise and foolish virgins, which immediately precedes today’s reading. Next week, on the Feast of Christ the King, we will read one of my favorite passages in Matthew – the parable of the sheep and the goats. The goats, unfortunately, don’t come off well in that one.

Today’s Gospel starts with a man going on a trip. This man is very rich. He’s rich enough that he can turn over a massive amount of money to his slaves to take care of while he is gone. Interestingly, he doesn’t seem give them any instructions as to what to do with the money. He apparently just hands it to them and leaves. Five talents to one, two talents to another, and one talent to a third.

The word that is translated “talent” is the Greek talenton, which in Jesus’ day was a sum of money. Specifically, it was roughly equivalent to 15 full years pay for a day laborer. Unfortunately, through the years it has morphed into our word talent, meaning an ability or skill. So, we tend to get sermons that say, “Use your talents for Jesus, kids, or he’ll take them away.”

Now, I’m not against sermons that say we should use our talents for God’s glory — as long as we leave out the threat at the end. We should be using our talents for God’s glory. But like so many of our interpretations of parables, this one only scratches the surface. I’m also going to avoid the knee-jerk tendency to equate the master with God or Jesus, because I think when we do that we tend to figure we’ve solved the parable. We’ve figured it out, and we stop thinking about what we can really learn.

Let’s take a look at the generosity of the master in the story. He is going on a journey, and entrusts his slaves with money. The first one he gives five talents — that’s 75 year’s pay for a day laborer. He gives the second slave two talents — 30 years wages. The third, he gives the least, a single talent, which is still 15 years wages — probably equivalent to well over $200,000 in today’s money. He seems like a very trusting sort.

The first two slaves use the money to earn more through trade, but the third slave frets about losing the one talent he was given, so he buries it in the ground until the master returns. Trade involves risk, you see. When the master returns, he commends the first two, but is not exactly pleased with the third.

I don’t think Jesus is talking about using our talents or resources and having them increased. That’s not what talenton meant in the first century C.E. I think Jesus is talking about fear and risk, and how we can be so paralyzed by the first that we are afraid to take on the second.

The third slave is operating out of fear. He didn’t DO anything with the money because he was afraid. He had, apparently, told himself stories about what might happen if he lost the money. “I knew you were a harsh man,” he says to his master. He was worried about what his master would do if the lost the money.

This is something we all tend to do. We imagine consequences to actions we haven’t taken yet. We make up stories about how things might turn out, and they are almost inevitably worst-case scenarios. How often do we tell ourselves stories about what might happen, and frighten ourselves out of doing anything at all? How often do we fret about outcomes when we already know what we should do, even if it involves some risk?

How often do we dig a hole and even go so far as to bury ourselves in it to keep from risking failure?

And how many times do we find that there was nothing to fear after all?

Living the life of a follower of Jesus is inherently risky. You may notice that I did not use the word “Christian.” That is intentional. That name has been co-opted by people who don’t seem to believe they should actually do what Jesus told us to do. Being a modern “Christian” is easy, and it tends to be very popular. It’s much more difficult — and less popular — to be a follower of Jesus.

You put yourself at risk of being ridiculed, of being called names. You may be laughed at. In some cases, you can be physically in danger. But being afraid and hiding isn’t the answer.

What are we called to risk for the sake of the Gospel?

Everything.

But what do we really have to fear when we spread the Gospel?

Nothing.

So instead of being afraid of what might happen what if we just go ahead and do? Taking risks means having faith. In fact, I would say that taking risks is exactly what faith is for. Faith is the knowledge that God is with us when we take risks to advance His kingdom, when we step out of our self-imposed “comfort-zones” and do things we know we should do, but are not exactly certain that we can do. Faith is the knowledge that God is with us, even when it may feel like he isn’t.

And Jesus says we will rewarded for taking the risk! The first two slaves are allowed to continue with both the money they were given and the money they earned, and are given more responsibility! Faith can’t grow if it’s buried in the ground. Using our faith, taking risks for the Kingdom, is the way we grow our faith.

The parable is not about our skills and abilities. And it’s not even about the money. This parable, like most parables, is asking a question, one that we should ask ourselves every day.

Where is my faith? What am I willing to risk for the Kingdom of God?

Amen.

 

Preached at the Kitkin’ o’ the Tartans at St. James’ Episcopal Church, Springfield, MO, 4 November 2023

Psalm 138 & 139; Revelation 7:4-17; Matthew 13:31-35

For those of you who don’t know me, I am Br. Mike Malone, and I am not a monk. I’m not clergy, not a priest or a deacon. I am a friar. I am a life-professed member of the Anglican Order of Preachers, the Anglican expression of Dominican spirituality. Most people In the Episcopal Church don’t even know that we even HAVE religious orders. And most people here in the Bible Belt don’t seem to know what a religious order IS. Sometimes I will jokingly tell people outside the Episcopal Church that I’m in a cult. It does get their attention.. If you’d like to hear more about religious orders in the Episcopal Church, I’d be happy to speak to you about them later or give you my email address.

I would like to thank Fr. Petty for allowing me to deliver the homily this evening. If you’re not Episcopalian, you may not know that the rector of a parish pretty much has veto power over anything regarding services. And Fr. Petty doesn’t KNOW me. I’m guessing he went strictly on Bob Lanning’s recommendation.  Unless, of course, he got a recommendation from a certain FORMER rector who is now the Episcopal Bishop of Idaho and, coincidentally, the new Bishop-Visitor for my Order.

Whenever I start working on a homily for a special day like this, the first thing I always want to do it find an endpoint — some basic truth that I need to bring to the pulpit.  For a service like this, of course, it really needs to relate to something specifically SCOTTISH. Of course, preachers always go — in the Anglican tradition, anyway — to the scriptures for the day. Tonight we are using something called the Daily Office Lectionary. It’s a plan of set scriptures for each day of the week that cycles through most of the Bible — with a few exceptions — over the course of two  years. What I do is try to find something in one of the readings that you can apply to the day or special service being celebrated; in this case, a festival of Scottish clans. At first I thought Fr. Petty had thrown me a curve ball, but it turned out to be easier than I expected.

In tonight’s passage from the Revelation to St. John we read:

“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne land before the Lamb, robed in white…”

And so I want to talk to you for a few minutes about some of that ”great multitude.” I want to talk about those who have gone before us: specifically, Scottish saints. A Wikipedia listing of the Saints of Scotland lists no fewer than 64 saints, most of whom I’ve never heard of, and I don’t expect you have either.

Some of our best saints weren’t even Scottish, but they ministered in Scotland. Take St. Columba, an Irish monk who was instrumental in being Christianity to Scotland. Evidently a LOT of Irish monks came to Scotland. This speaks to my heart, since although part of my heritage is Irish, I found out recently that more than 50% of my DNA is Scottish. Or we could speak of St. Margaret, whom we have celebrated before at this gathering. She was born into the English royal family, but married King Malcolm III of Scotland, and is known for her charities to the poor. Or St. Cuthbert, a very important saint from the 7th century on. He was technically Anglo-Saxon, but was born in Dunbar, Northumbria. That area is now in Scotland, so I think we can claim him.

But we can claim as our own, too, such saints as William of Perth, the patron saint of adopted children. A baker by trade, he was martyred while on a pilgrimage to holy sites. We can claim St. Fillan of Pittenweem, a 6th-century monk who was active in the area around Fife.

There are more. For some of them we have little information. I’m sure there are some whose names have been completely lost. A lot has been lost. Great spans of time and a few invasions will do that sort of thing. But many of them are still held up as examples to live by. I am reminded of a passage from a book in the Apocrypha, the Wisdom of Ben Sira, also known as Ecclesiaticus:

Let us now sing the praises of famous men,
    our ancestors in their generations.
The Lord apportioned to themgreat glory,
    his majesty from the beginning.
There were those who ruled in their kingdoms
    and made a name for themselves by their strength;
those who gave counsel because they were intelligent;
    those who spoke in prophetic oracles;
those who led the people by their counsels
    and by their knowledge of the people’s lore;
    they were wise in their words of instruction;
those who composed musical tunes
    or put verses in writing;
rich men endowed with resources,
    living peacefully in their homes—
all these were honored in their generations
    and were the pride of their times.

Some of them have left behind a name,
so that others declare their praise.
But of others there is no memory;
they have perished as though they had never existed;
they have become as though they had never been born,
they and their children after them.
But these also were men of compassion
whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten;
their wealth will remain with their descendants
and their inheritance with their children’s children.^[c]
Their descendants stand by the covenants;
their children also, for their sake.
Their offspring will continue forever,
and their glory will never be blotted out.
Their bodies are buried in peace,
but their name lives on generation after generation.

Every year we get together here at St. James to celebrate our Scottish heritage. I don’t know how long this has been done in Springfield. Todd Wilkerson can probably tell you. But I’ve been a part of maybe 5 or 6 celebrations here at St. James and participated in one or two before that at St. John’s Episcopal Church across town. It had a little hiatus during the height of the COVID epidemic, but it has been done often enough that I believe it’s become a tradition here, and that’s not a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s a very GOOD thing.

Tradition, as someone once said, is giving the dead a vote. And by holding this celebration every year we are giving those who have gone before us their due. We celebrate them as our progenitors. We celebrate them as our fathers and mothers in faith. We are, in essence, giving them a vote as to how we live our lives now. Some of them became famous and we remember their names. Others, as Ben Sira said, are gone as if they had never been.

In the first verse of Chapter 12 of the Letter to the Hebrews we find,

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

We have all these Saints of Scotland watching us, the ones we know by name and the ones we do not. How will we live? Will we live up to their example in faith, the example of those who have gone before? Will we run the race with perseverance?

There is a hymn in our Episcopal Hymnal, a children’s hymn about the Saints of God. It’s sung less often these days than it once was — it’s kind of quaint, and the words are VERY British — but it’s beloved, especially by many older Episcopalians. In fact, it was almost removed from our current hymnal but was kept by popular demand. The first verse goes like this:

I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true

Who toiled and fought and lived and died

For the lord they loved and knew

And one was a doctor, and one was a queen

And one was a shepherdess on the green

They were all of them saints of God, and I mean

God helping, to be one to.

It’s the last verse, though, that, even with its peculiarly British viewpoint really sums up how we should think about saints:

They lived not only in ages past;

There are hundreds of thousands still

The world is bright with the joyous saints

Who love to do Jesus’ will.

You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,

In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;

For the saints of God are just folk like me,

And I mean to be one too.

You don’t have to be famous to be a saint. You don’t have to move mountains. Someone once said, “I cannot do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good I CAN do.” You don’t have to be a Margaret, or a Cuthbert, or an Aidan. For the saints of God are just Scots like me, and I mean to be one too.

I hope you will join me.

Amen.

 

 

Isaiah 45:1-7; Psalm 96:1-9 (10-13); 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22

Delivered at Holy Cross Episcopal Church on October 22, 2023.

Sometimes when you are preparing a sermon, you have one idea at the beginning. Then you think, and contemplate. — there’s a good Dominican word for you — and things take a turn. That’s what happened to me in writing today’s sermon.

We have today another Gospel reading we all know very well. We’ve heard it so many times. A group of Pharisees ask Jesus whether or not it’s lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. Jesus says, “Show me a coin.” They give him a denarius. He asks, “Whose picture is on it?” They say, “The emperor’s.” At the time this likely would have been Tiberius, the successor to Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome.

Jesus says, “Well, then, give the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and give God the things that are God’s.” Simple, right? We’ve heard it so often that the interpretation seems almost automatic. I mean, the emperor’s picture is on the coin, so it obviously belongs to him. It looks like Jesus is suggesting some sort of doctrine of separation between things that are in the sphere of religion, things that belong to God; and things that are in the secular sphere, things that belong to Caesar. Do your duty to God and do your duty to Caesar — or whoever the secular authority happens to be. And I’m sure there will many sermons preached today that make that exact point. It’s a tempting, simple interpretation, which automatically makes me suspicious.

Too often, when we look at the sayings of Jesus, we interpret them as if he were part of our culture, a 20^th-century man with 20^th-century sensibilities and a 20^th-century upbringing. We seem to forget that Jesus was…Jewish. He was one of the people of Israel, steeped in Hebrew Scripture. And when we interpret his sayings, we would do well to remember that. Here, Jesus is, once again, saying more than is evident at first glance.

Let’s just take what he says about giving to God what’s God’s, and giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and ask the question that’s begging to be asked: What do the Hebrew Scriptures say about what belongs to God, and what belongs to the ruler, whoever that may be?

It’s not that difficult to find references. A few minutes with Google will do it.

In Deuteronomy 10:14 we find, “To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.”

In 1 Chronicles 29:11 we read “Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours”.

I don’t know about you, but I’m already sensing a theme here.

From Psalm 24: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it; the world, and all those who live in it.” And in Psalm 89, we find “The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it—you founded them.”

The Hebrew tradition — the tradition that both Jesus and his antagonists, the Pharisees would have learned from an early age — says that everything on earth belongs to God. Everything. He made everything, and everything belongs to him. This includes you and me. It included the Pharisees. It even included the man whose image was on the coin: Tiberius Caesar. Now there’s something to contemplate. And I imagine the Pharisees did just that.

I personally think that Jesus was intentionally not answering the question that the Pharisees posed, and with good reason. There’s no good direct answer. If he had said that it was lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor, the people would have been angry. They hated paying taxes to the Romans. But if he had said it was NOT lawful, he could have been arrested for sedition. The question was a trap. And it assumed a kind of equivalence between God and the Emperor.

So Jesus…didn’t answer that question. Instead, he gave a response that demanded an answer to the question we posed before: Exactly what does belong to God, and what belongs to the emperor? Posed in this in a way, the Romans couldn’t possibly have taken offense. It would have seemed eminently fair to the Romans, and fit right into their own theology. You want to worship your one God? Fine! Just keep the money flowing.

But the Pharisees would have known that Jesus had seen through them. He reminded them of something they already knew: that everything belongs to God. There is no division between what belongs to God and what belongs to the emperor because everything, even the emperor, belongs to God.

We should remember this any time we are tempted to put secular power in an equal position with God. Our allegiance to God must come first, every time. We have to keep our priorities straight. God is always first. Secular rulers are created by God, just like we are, and must always take second place.

And this is where we sometimes have a problem. Sometimes we think about our country and we just kind of…turn God off. We’re giving Caesar what we think belongs to Caesar. We’ll give God what belongs to Him on Sunday. After all, this is what Jesus told us to do, right?

To be clear, Jesus never said not to pay taxes. He didn’t say we should never obey authority. After all, not paying taxes was a wonderful way to run afoul of the Roman authorities and likely end up in prison. I really don’t think Jesus wanted people to do that. I think Jesus was telling us how to set priorities. Even when we do pay our taxes, we need to remember who everything really belongs to: not to us, not to Caesar, but to God.

So what does this mean for those of us who have patriotic feelings? We love our country, right? Of course we do! And that’s OK. But…and this is a big but…you can never put your country before God. God’s demands must always come before anything our country asks of us. Every single time.

Let us pray that we can always remember who we belong to, who our nation’s leaders belong to, who everything belongs to.

Amen

Genesis 50:15-21; Psalm 103: (1-7) 8-13; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

Psalm 103:(1-7)8-13

Today’s readings are just chock full of indications as to how we are to treat each other. Beginning with Joseph forgiving his brothers for selling him into slavery, then to the Psalm, which describes God as slow to anger, and patient, to St. Paul’s advice that we are not to judge each other.

Today’s Gospel is a story we are familiar with, even though it’s not as famous as the “Good Samaritan” parable. Like most parables, it contains situations that are entirely ridiculous, something we don’t always pick up on. We are so used to hearing these stories, and we don’t have the same background as someone from 1^st-century Palestine, so we often don’t get the sense of the absurdity of the situations Jesus sets up.

A king wants to settle accounts with his slaves, and one of them — let’s call him “Phil” — owes him ten thousand talents. Now, this is a HUGE amount of money. I don’t think we really grasp how much money thousand talents equates to. A denarius was a standard day’s wage for a laborer. A talent was about 6,000 denarii, so close to 20 year’s wages. If I’ve done the math correctly, that means Phil owes his master nearly 200,000 years’ wages. Can you even wrap your head around the size of this debt? I can’t. How could a slave – a slave – accrue that much debt to his master?

Jesus doesn’t explain. This is how he gets people’s attention: by setting up an entirely ridiculous situation, but one that has just enough familiarity that people can hang in there. People understood the master-slave relationship. They understood debts, and they knew very well how to compare talents to denarii. But the size of the debt is simply a ridiculous impossibility. 

But the king forgives Phil this incredibly huge debt. Who is going to do that? Jesus is going from one unbelievable thing to a another here. It’s like he’s almost daring his listeners to keep up.

Now, by coincidence, Phil runs into Bob, a fellow slave who owes him 100 denarii, about 3-1/2 months’ wages. A much more reasonable debt! This is less than one thousandth of 1 percent of the Phil’s debt. Miniscule in comparison. Does Phil forgive the debt? Of course not! Even when Bob begs for just some extra time, Phil simply gets him thrown into prison.

Unfortunately for Phil, word gets around, and the lord does to Phil what Phil did to Bob, plus some.

Now, the obvious point of the parable is, if God can forgive us huge sins, we need to forgive your brothers and sisters the little piddling sins that we always commit against each other.  

But I think there’s something else here too, something deeper. When Bob can’t repay his debt immediately, Phil no longer has any use for him. Their relationship is transactional,based on what they could do for each other. Phil did something for Bob — lent him money — but Bob couldn’t repay. So, to Phil, their relationship wasn’t worth having any more. 

But forming relationships that way tends to turn people into things, objects that can be exploited for our own gain. And that is not the way the kingdom of heaven works. The kingdom of heaven works when we all recognize each other as having value in and of ourselves, not just for what we can do for one another.

When the king forgives Phil, he seems to be seeing him as a person. He has pity on him. He could have just given him extra time to pay the debt, although I’m really not clear on how such a monstrous amount could EVER be repaid. But he doesn’t. He goes all the way and forgives the entire amount. But Phil can’t even be bothered to give his fellow slave a little extra time.

Remember that “Golden Rule”? You know, the “Do unto others” thing? It doesn’t seem to have been operative in this story.

This is what’s wrong with Phil. He hasn’t treated Bob the way he wants to be treated. He has been given a huge gift, a gift of a magnitude that is impossible to imagine. And yet, he can’t bring himself to give a much smaller gift to his fellow slave. And we are the same, whenever we don’t treat others the way we want to be treated. We are the same whenever we fail to forgive others in the same way that we are forgiven. When we treat people as things to be used.

So, this being the Season of Creation, how can we connect this to our relationship with God’s creation?  Well, in the same way that we often treat people as if their only value is what they can do for us, we treat nature as if its only value is what it can do for us. We treat God’s Creation as just things to be used for our own purposes and profit. And this is not good in God’s eyes. You see, we are supposed to be the caretakers of God’s creation. Creation has value in and of itself. It is not valuable just because of any used we can wring out of it.

Whenever we treat our fellow humans as things to be used, to be exploited and then discarded when they are of no more use, we fall short of God’s promise and plan for us. And by extension, whenever we treat any part of God’s creation as simply things to be used, we fall short of God’s promise and his plan for us. And using Creation in this way is how we end up with a world where precious, limited resources are being used up and climate is rapidly changing for the worse.

We must regain that sense of our calling as caretakers, as stewards of God’s creation. We must d what we can to heal the damage we have done.  And not just for our own survival. We need to do it because taking care of the world that God has given us is a way that we can respond to God with thanksgiving for that very Creation — and for our own creation. It’s a way that we can show that we truly believe God created this world — and us — out of love. 

Amen.