Sermon for July 20th, 2025

Readings:

Genesis 18:1-10a
Psalm 15 
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42

I didn’t have time to write a sermon this week. I’m sure most of y’all won’t mind.

I was busy. A church doesn’t just run itself you know. There is a lot to do. There were about three different contractors in and out this week working on one thing or another. There should have been four, but one stood me up. I had several administrative meetings. I was making plans for next year. I had another meeting about several folks who feel called to the priesthood. I spent some time sorting through some of the fair stuff on the stage. Updated the website. Lots of stuff. There’s always just stuff to do. I was busy.

I meant to read the bible this week and study the lessons for this morning. I had the texts all laid out beside me, but everytime I looked at my computer there was another email I needed to answer. Or worse, there was a very carefully worded email that I needed to send. You know. Who has time to write a sermon when you have to think of ways to politely tell someone off? I was busy. 

Yes, I prayed this week. I always pray, but sometimes my prayers are just another window open on my desktop if you know what I mean. It’s going on in the background. I’m praying while I’m doing something else. I’ll think “Lord help this person,” or “Lord heal that person,” while I’m driving or running around. Or I might remember to pray as a last resort when everything else I have tried fails. I know better than to do that, I should always pray first, but sometimes even I forget. There is just so much to distract me, so much to keep me busy, so much to do. I wish I would have taken the time to pray more this week, I could have prayed for help with writing this sermon, but I was busy. 

And of course, I’m a human, and a husband and a father, and a child, and a brother, and lots of things to lots of people, so I have a life of stuff outside of this place too. That keeps me busy. And speaking of praying when everything else fails….nobody ever told me how hard it would be to potty train a toddler. All I have ever had experience with is dogs and cats and I assure you…it’s not the same. This is so much harder. Do you know how hard it is to write a sermon when you and squatting down next to a toilet and praying “Go! Just Go!”? Well neither do I actually, cause I didn’t write a sermon. I didn’t have time. I was busy. Busy cooking, busy shopping, busy cleaning, busy working, busy living. Just busy. I was busy. 

Now if I had had time to come up with a sermon, if I were preaching, I know I would be preaching to the choir this morning, because y’all are busy too. Work, kids, sports. I know how busy y’all are. Those of you who are from an older generation may remember when work was mostly a 9-5 sort of deal. Clock in, clock out, go home. But it’s not that way anymore. We all carry our office in our pockets now. Email, text, phone, work is always right there at our side begging for attention. You can’t get away from it. This is the world we live in now. And I gather from those of you that are retired, that it’s not that much better for you either, because I watch and y’all are always up to something, or going somewhere, or doing something. Y’all are busy too. All of you. We are busy people.

And we are busy doing important things. Not everything is important, to be sure, but lots of things are. People need to eat. Dishes need cleaning. Bills need paying. And the church does important work too. Keeping ministries going is important. Keeping the business side of church going is important. We all have important things to do. I’m not special in that regard. We all have such full lives that it can be very hard sometimes to know what has to come first. What needs to happen and what can wait? In a world full of important things, what things are the most important? That’s what I would like to know. That’s what I would fine helpful, not just in some philosophical sort of way, but in my day-to-day life. This is one of those areas where we could really use some guidance from God. Tell us Lord. Give us a sign.

I mean, if God wanted us to take time off to rest on a regular basis (like every seven days or so), I would expect him to tell us so. Is that so much to ask? God, if taking a day off every week to just pray and worship and be with our families is important, please just tell us. Don’t make us wonder. Better yet Lord, give us a little list of behaviors just to remind us what sort of things we should and should not do. That would be so helpful. Some of y’all may be mourning the Late Show this week. I must confess that I never really watched it, but I seem to recall that once upon a time it was famous for having top 10 lists. Well if God could just give us a top 10 list, that would be great. Think of how helpful it would be. I mean, if you had a list that said something like “don’t commit adultery” then you wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught on the kiss cam with your mistress at the Coldplay concert? Am I right? Wouldn’t that kind of guidance make life easier? Help us out Lord.

As I said, I didn’t have time to write a sermon this week. I was busy. But if I had written a sermon, I probably would have poured over the bible looking for some guidance from God on what things are more important than others. I would have looked for examples in the Old Testament of patriarchs like Abraham just stopping what they were doing and paying attention to something. People in the ancient world never left the office either. There was always work to do. Grain to grind and sheep to shear and Lord knows what else. What made people like Abraham stop what they were doing and pay attention? If just being in the presence of God was truly important for our ancestors, then I am sure that there must be an example somewhere in the bible, of someone like Abraham just stopping…putting the busyness aside and spending time with God. If I had had time to look for it, I think that kind of story or example would have been helpful.

And if not in the Old Testament, then surely in the New Testament I would have found help. I believe that Jesus is God, the creator of the universe, in the flesh. I am sure that he has powerful, wonderful things to say about which things are more important than others. I didn’t write a sermon this week, I was busy. But if I had written a sermon, I would have poured over Jesus’s words to see what he had to say about all this stuff that we have to do. Maybe there is a concrete example there of someone just working and working and working and along the way losing sight of what the work was all about. That sort of story, that kind of guidance might be helpful for people living in this day and age. I know I would find it helpful. 

If I had written a sermon this week, if I had had the time, I would have looked for an example of someone who could, at least for a moment, push their busyness aside and just be in the presence of the Lord, listening to his words, without guilt and without the shame of being unproductive. I would have looked for someone who understood that there is a difference between doing things for God, and spending time with God, and that one is actually more important than the other. I would have looked for permission to stop, permission to rest, permission to just let things go now and then. Anyways, that is probably what I would have preached on if I had had time to read the lessons this week, or study the scriptures, but as I said, I was busy.  

Sermon for Easter Sunday 2025

Readings:

• Acts 10:34-43 
• 1 Corinthians 15:19-26 
• John 20:1-18
• Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

There is a wonderful scene in the biblical book of Job, where Job, who is a righteous man that is suffering mightily, starts to question God’s justice and God’s goodness. Job is also getting some bad advice from his friends as he is trying to figure out how God works. So, Job demands an answer from God, and God gives him one. Incidentally, you should be careful when you ask God questions, because sometimes you do get answers. Only you may not like what God has to say. 

Anyways, God answers Job and says:

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
⁵ Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
⁶ On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone
⁷ when the morning stars sang together
    and all the heavenly beings^[a] shouted for joy?

Where were you?

‘Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
    and caused the dawn to know its place,

‘Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
    or walked in the recesses of the deep?
¹⁷ Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
    or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
¹⁸ Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
    Declare, if you know all this.

Where were you?

Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
    Can you establish their rule on the earth?

³⁴ ‘Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
    so that a flood of waters may cover you?
³⁵ Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go
    and say to you, “Here we are”?
³⁶ Who has put wisdom in the inward parts,^[c]
    or given understanding to the mind?^[d]
37 Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?
    Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens,
³⁸ when the dust runs into a mass
    and the clods cling together?

Where we you? Where were you when I created the earth? God asks. God encourages Job to take a look at the world around him and he says to him: you had nothing to do with this. You did not create this. 

I love that scene, because although it is perfectly fine and natural to question God about the mysteries of the universe, we always need to do so with great humility. And we humans, even the best of us, are not good at sustained humility. Sooner or later we all are prone to thinking a little too highly of our own ideas and our own actions. We like to think we are all-powerful. We like to think it’s all up to us. So, we humans need a good, loving smackdown from our creator now and then. We need to be right-sized. We need to be reminded that we are not in complete control of the universe. We need to be reminded that we did not create this beautiful world that we are living in. We didn’t even create our own lives. Every single one of us in this room was created by someone else. And there is no such thing as a self-made man. We didn’t call ourselves into existence. And most of the beautiful things in this world are not the work of human hands. 

I love that scene in Job, because it is sharp reminder that in the beginning, God did marvelous things without any help from us. 

Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. God cares about what we do, and how we live our lives and how we treat each other. That is abundantly clear across all of sacred scripture. Our actions are not meaningless. God gives us commands about how to live in both the Old Testament and the New, so how we live matters. But this is still our Father’s world. God always has the last word. The next time you are worried about something, remember that. You don’t need to wait for God to shake you up and speak to you out of the whirlwind like he did with Job. Our scripture and our tradition are filled with stories to remind you that God is in control. Your actions matter; God care about your actions, but God is always in ultimate control. It is his world. God gives us wisdom and advice for living, that’s true, but God also works miracles without any help from us. Remember that the next time you are feeling anxious, or tired, or broken. God can work a miracle without your help. And don’t let God’s miracles go to waste. It is amazing to me how prone we are to doing just that: wasting God’s miracles. God shows us his love and faithfulness and power in the most astounding of ways, and we still can’t take it in or believe it, or we won’t believe it. We still want to think that our actions are more important than God’s actions. We still want to think that it is up to us to save ourselves.

Think about the Passover story. God spared the Children of Israel from the plagues in Egypt, he led them with clouds and a fiery pillar, he splits the sea for them, destroys Pharoah’s army, feeds them with miraculous food, makes water to come out of rocks, saves them from poisonous snakes, makes them victorious in battle and leads them through the desert to a land flowing with milk and honey and all along the way what did the people say?

You know, it wasn’t so bad in Egypt was it? Sure, we were enslaved and treated harshly, but we had melons and cucumbers and a little meat now and then, so it wasn’t so bad, was it? I wonder if we can find our way back. Let’s turn around and head back there.

I can just see God scratching his head, if God had a head, and wondering, did I just waste all those miracles on you people? Did you think that I would bring you this far and just leave you here? Did you split the sea or make the water come out of the rock? No. I did that! Why are you so convinced that I am going to abandon you now? 

But this is what we think sometimes, isn’t it? Not just the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, but all of us. We all are inclined to think that God has abandoned us to our own devices. That it is up to us. God has done whatever God has done, now the rest is up to us. That’s the voice we hear. But I don’t think it is the voice of God telling us that. Time and time again, God has shown us in the most miraculous ways that we are not abandoned and that he is still in control and will have the last word. God has given us miracles to remind us of his love and faithfulness. We don’t want to waste those miracles do we? A good miracle is a terrible thing to waste, especially the miracle of Easter.

Who helped Jesus get out of the grave early on Easter Sunday morning? Was it Mary Magdalene that rolled the stone away? Did all of the women get behind the stone and say “alright, on the count of three, push!”? No. God didn’t need our help to get out of that grave. Nobody moved his body. It’s funny, I can tell you with 100% certainty that there were a lot of clergy staring at blank computer screens last night trying to figure out how they are going to get Jesus out of the grave again this year. What a waste of a miracle. Jesus doesn’t need any help getting out of the grave. God has shown us that he has the power to do that without our help. But we like to think he needs us. Clergy can be terrible about this, myself included, we can be terrible about thinking that God needs us to make Easter happen. Well, if that were the case, Easter would never have happened. Easter was a miracle to remind us that God has the final say in all things, including life and death. Jesus did not need help getting out of the grave Easter Sunday morning. It was not our superior faith, our correct opinions, our education, our wisdom, or our abilities that restored breath to his lifeless body. It was the power of God alone. Nobody moved Jesus’s body. It got up on its own. And the women didn’t roll the stone away. God’s angels did that. And why did they do that? Was it so that Jesus could get out? Was that stone holding him back?

In next Sunday’s gospel reading a curious thing happens. Here’s a preview: the risen Jesus appears to the disciples who are hiding in a locked room. Nobody unlocked the door for him. He just showed up. His resurrected body is real flesh and blood, but it has different powers. Jesus can get through a locked door, so I have to believe that he could also get out of a sealed tomb. That rock wasn’t holding him back. So why was the stone rolled away? Was it so Jesus could get out? NO. It was so that we could look in and see that the tomb was empty. The stone wasn’t rolled away for Jesus, it was rolled away for us. We are the ones who need to see God’s power at work. Jesus doesn’t need any help getting out of the tomb. The stone was rolled away for us. We are the ones who needed to see that God was still in control and that God has the final say in this world. Don’t let that miracle go to waste. 

Don’t waste Easter. Don’t waste this miracle. Don’t waste the free grace that God has shown us by leaving this place worrying about how you are going to save the world. It isn’t all up to you. God made the world without your help. You weren’t there when God created the world. And God raised Jesus from the dead without your help. The women weren’t there when it happened, and you weren’t there either. You didn’t roll the stone away. You didn’t breathe life back into his body. God can work miracles without your help, don’t forget that. We can rejoice in God’s power today without being focused on our own power, whether we have it or don’t have it. Witnessing God’s miracles, witnessing God’s power, can and should inspire you to live differently. God obviously cares about what we do, but God is not waiting on humans to start living right before he works his purposes out in his world. God isn’t waiting for you to get it together before he starts loving you, and saving you. Don’t go home today more anxious than when you came. God is giving you a gift this morning. God’s miracle is offering you hope. If a dead body coming back to life doesn’t give you hope, then I don’t know what will. Celebrate that hope. Celebrate that love. Feel the joy in this story. Share this joy with others. Don’t waste Easter. Don’t waste a good miracle.

Sermon for March 23, 2025

Readings:

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

A friend of mine once said, “If you buy Cole Hann shoes, they will last you a lifetime. If you put them on your credit card, that is about how long you will be paying for them.” I have to admit that over the years that has been one of my preferred brand of shoes, not just because they are comfortable and fashionable, but largely because they are durable, and I do a lot of walking. So they aren’t cheap, but sometimes you get what you pay for. Anyways, this is a sermon and not a commercial. 

I bring up shoes, because it occurred to me this week that they really are a piece of ancient technology. I don’t usually think of shoes as being technology, as they aren’t mechanical or electronic. I think of them as being an object of fashion at best, or an everyday necessity at least, but I don’t usually think of them as being a technological advancement. But that is what they are. They are one of the most basic human inventions, that allow us to travel great distances. They give us freedom, they give us protection, they make us feel less vulnerable. They are technology, but I hadn’t really thought of them much in that way until I was reading our Exodus passage this week.

In our Exodus passage this morning we hear the story of Moses’s first encounter with God speaking to him from the burning bush. It is important to note that this is the first time Moses meets God. This is long before the encounter when Moses receives the Ten Commandments, which we recited a few minutes ago. That meeting happens after the exodus from Egypt, but this one is before. Moses’s first meeting with God.

And the thing about this meeting that I find fascinating is that the first thing that God asks Moses to do is to take his shoes off. Why does God do this? He says that the place Moses is standing is Holy Ground, but that doesn’t really answer the question. What is it about shoes that God finds to be unholy or inappropriate for this place or this encounter? What is wrong with Moses’s shoes? That is the question that I have been pondering this week. So, I began to wonder, “what is a shoe really?” Well, it is a piece of technology. A human creation that makes us feel less vulnerable. Shoes protect your feet so that you can travel great distances. Without shoes Moses would have had a much harder time trekking across the desert to meet God. They serve a good purpose, but like any piece of technology they can mask our true vulnerability and weakness as humans. As simple as they are, they make us feel stronger and more independent than we actually are. Don’t believe me? Those of you who commute into the city, think of what your life would be like if you had to do that barefooted every week? Still don’t believe me? Then I would just point out that I put out a sign-up sheet several weeks ago looking for twelve volunteers to get their feet washed on Maundy Thursday and I am still a name short. Shoes make us feel less vulnerable, and on most of our walks in life that is a good thing, but not on our walk with God. With God, we need to be vulnerable. With God, we need to first understand how weak and helpless we really are. 

That is where Moses begins with God: barefooted. God is almighty and there is nothing that Moses can do, but just bow down before him. But then God has work for Moses to do. God is going to send Moses back to Egypt, back to Pharoah, and through Moses God is going to set his people free and lead them out of slavery into a new land. God is going to use Moses to save his people, and then after God saves his people, after he spares them from the plagues, and from thirst and starvation, and after they walk through the sea, then God is going to call them back to this holy mountain and then he is going to give them the law, the instructions on how they are to live their lives in this world. But he saves them first.

The first time that Moses encounters God on the mountain, he has to learn about his own weakness and vulnerability and dependence on God and God’s love for salvation. That comes first. Then, the second time that Moses encounters God on the mountain, then he is given practical rules and laws that he can live by that will make his life and the lives of others better on earth. The children of Israel aren’t saved because they adhere to the law; they adhere to the law because they are saved. God saved them before he ever gave them the law. God saved them simply because he loved them. It was his power that saved them; not their own. It wasn’t their shoes that parted the Red sea.

One of the things we encountered in our study of Deuteronomy this week, was Moses saying to the Israelites before they entered the promised land that they were not here because they were more righteous than other nations. In fact, he says, you are stubborn. But God loves you. That is why God has brought you here. And the commandments that God has given you, they are for your benefit. They will make your life, and the life of the world better, if you keep them, and teach your children to keep them. This is not about earning God’s love; it is about responding to God’s love. Yes, you will fail in some way, we all do, but you can always come back to them. That is what repentance means. It doesn’t have to be a shameful thing. It shouldn’t be shameful at all. It is about rediscovering something wonderful: God’s love. That is what repentance really is, rediscovering God’s love and rejoicing in it again. 

When Jesus talks about repentance in the gospel this morning he is really talking about it as a way of life. Not a one-time thing of telling God you are sorry, but a continual returning to God as the source of all that is good in your life. Our faith really is about trusting in God’s goodness more than we trust in anything else, including and especially ourselves and the works of our own hands. No piece of technology, no matter how insignificant should ever come between us and God. We can’t put our faith in them. In the gospel, some people came up to Jesus and asked him about two things: a horrible act of cruelty that Pontius Pilate had done, and a terrible disaster where many people were killed by a building’s collapse. Right away Jesus dismisses the idea that those disasters were in any way God’s punishment for sin. No, he says. It doesn’t work that way. Disasters happen. Humans do despicable things. Technology fails. Bad things happen to innocent people. The world has always been this way. Don’t try to blame the victims for being sinners and don’t try to blame God for punishing sin. That is not what is going on here. But repent anyways Jesus says. Repent. Turn back to God. Rediscover God’s love and rejoice in it, because the world is unpredictable. No amount of technology is going to give you complete control over the world around you or the people in it. So first of all, live in the knowledge and light of God’s love. But if you do believe in and trust the saving power of God’s love, then listen when God is telling you to do something, or not to do something. We should rejoice in God’s salvation which is not something we earn, but we should also rejoice in God’s wisdom and law and exercise it to the best of our ability. It is not a choice between belief and action. It is both. Belief and trust first, then action. 

First, we must learn what we cannot do, then we must learn what we can do. That seems to be how God’s salvation works. It is a two-step process. First, we must be completely vulnerable with God, and recognize our own weakness and frailty as human beings; then we must listen to God and choose to follow in the way he has shown us. God does give us commandments; he gives us examples; he sends us out into the world with work to do, and we should do that and do it boldly, but only as people who have first humbled themselves, and know, truly know, that everything ultimately depends on God and not on us. That is at least why I think that God makes Moses take his shoes off first, before he sends him on an incredible journey.

Sermon for March 9, 2025

Readings:

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

“After his baptism, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” 

On the first Sunday of Lent, the church’s season of fasting and penitence, we hear the familiar story of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the desert.

 He is tempted to turn stones into bread. That is the temptation of gluttony or lust. The temptation to serve the flesh. 

He is tempted with worldly goods and power if he will only serve the devil. That is the temptation of greed. 

He is tempted to publicly display his own power and divine status by throwing himself off the temple to see if angels catch him. That is the temptation to pride. 

These are familiar temptations, because we all suffer from them. 

We overindulge our bodies. 

We chase after things. 

We are controlled by pride and vanity. 

Jesus’s temptations are not unique to Jesus; they are temptations that we all must contend with. The reason that Lent focuses on the spiritual disciplines of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, is that each of those is a weapon against one of those temptations. 

You don’t want to be controlled by your stomach? Then try fasting.

You don’t want your life to be focused on acquiring more stuff? They trying giving some of your stuff away to those who have less.

You don’t want to be so utterly self-centered all the time? Then try praying and focusing your mental energy on a power much greater than you. Try remembering that you didn’t give birth to yourself. Try remembering how much you have needed God in order to be who and what you are. 

That’s not what the devil wants. The devil wants you to forget. But God wants you to remember. If you think about those temptations of Jesus for a moment; we say there are three temptations, but they are all really just variations on one big temptation. The temptation to forget God. 

Forget about God. You can make your own food and feed yourself. You don’t need him.

Forget about God. You don’t need to serve him. There are easier ways to get power and money in this world.

Forget about God. You are the one who is powerful and special. You don’t need to heed his warnings. You have control over your own destiny. 

The devil thinks that he can drive a wedge between Jesus and God. The devil thinks that he can make Jesus forget about God. He fails with Jesus, and that’s what makes Jesus special. Jesus does not fall for Satan’s tricks, but we often do. Jesus does not forget God, but we do. That is why our scriptures are littered with divine commands to remember. The devil tempts us to forget, but God commands us to remember. And God commands us to remember for our sakes, not for his. 

The Book of Deuteronomy, which we hear this morning, and which we are going to start studying this week, is really all about the command to remember. Moses is commanding the Israelites to remember their story. To remember where they have come from. To remember what their God has done for them. And this memory is for their sakes, not for God’s. Their success as a nation will hinge on their capacity to remember. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who I mentioned in my sermon on Wednesday, in his book on Deuteronomy, notes that the Israelites, who have wandered for forty years in the wilderness, have more hard times ahead of them in the Promised Land than they do behind them in the desert. He says, “The real challenge is not poverty, but affluence, not slavery, but freedom, not homelessness, but home. Many nations have been lifted to great heights when they faced difficulty and danger. They fought battles and won. They came through crises – droughts, plagues, recessions, defeats – and were toughened by them. When times are hard, people grow. They bury their differences. There is a sense of community and solidarity, of neighbors and strangers pulling together. Many people who have lived through a war remember it as the most vivid time of their life. The real test of a nation is not if it can survive a crisis but if it can survive a lack of a crisis. Can it stay strong during times of ease and plenty, power and prestige? That is the challenge that has defeated every civilization known to history. Let it not, says Moses, defeat you.”

The real challenge is not poverty but affluence. The real test of a nation is not if it can survive a crisis, but if it can survive a lack of a crisis. Nations crumble when they forget. When they forget their history; when they forget their values; when they forget their God. When they become comfortable and powerful and well-fed and well-respected, that is when a nation is really put to the test. That is when it is tempted. With stability, and affluence, and power comes the overwhelming temptation to forget. Moses does not want his people to forget, so not only does he remind them of their history but he also gives them specific instructions on how and when to remember. In our passage this morning he says to them, AFTER you have taken possession of the promised land and are settled, and AFTER you can collected the first fruits of your harvest, THEN you must take an offering to the priest and recite this: 

A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.

This is what the Israelites were supposed to say after they entered the promised land and collected the harvest. Not before, but after. It is one thing to pray for something when you don’t have it, but it is another thing to remember to give thanks once you have what you want. That is when it is easy to forget. Earlier in Deuteronomy there is a verse where Moses says “When you have eaten and are satisfied, bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.” The instruction is to give thanks AFTER your belly is full. Most of us I would argue are used to saying grace before a meal, but here Moses wants folks to say one after, because that is when it means more. That is when you are most likely to forget. It is easy to forget when your stomach is full that not very long ago you were hungry. 

It is amazing how quickly we humans can forget things. We don’t just forget phone numbers and car keys. We forget God. We forget our own stories. We forget history. We forget values. We forget who we are and how we got here. Forgetting is a temptation, perhaps THE temptation of the devil. But God commands us to remember. Over and over God commands us to remember, and he does it for our sakes, not for his.

Sermon for March 2, 2025

Readings:

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

My son has recently become fixated on Jesus. His parents, as they are both priests, are delighted with this, as you can imagine. He knows lots of Jesus songs, and because Jesus is usually depicted in similar ways, even in cartoons and children’s picture books, he can easily recognize the image of Jesus. We sometimes argue about Moses, Noah, and Abraham, but Jesus he correctly recognizes. It is all very heartwarming and encouraging.

But several times this week, my son has looked at me and said “What’s Jesus doing?” Now, because he wasn’t looking at a cartoon or a picture book, it wasn’t a question about what is happening in this story. It was more of an existential question; at least an existential question for a two-and-a-half-year-old. “What’s Jesus doing?” And the only honest answer that I could give, at least this week, was “I don’t know, son. I just don’t know.” I could easily tell him all about the things that Jesus did. I could tell him about my hope for what Jesus is going to do. But when it comes to here and now, in this moment in history, in this time in which we are living, at times I find myself struggling to understand what God is up to. What is Jesus doing? 

Of course, my son doesn’t read the news yet, so I know that the things that I find distressing or crazy-making, he isn’t even aware of. He doesn’t know about politics or world affairs; He’s just being a curious toddler. His question really revealed more about my own day to day faith than it did in his. Because I can tell you all about what Jesus said and did while he walked the earth. I know the gospel stories. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t read something that Jesus said. And I do have faith that ultimately the salvation of the world is in his hands. I do believe in those things that I say I believe every week. What Jesus is going to do. I believe that he will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting. Where I struggle, and where I think many people struggle, is wondering what Jesus is up to right now. Doesn’t he see all the sin and hypocrisy? Doesn’t he see war and death? Does he see lies and misinformation? Doesn’t he know what a mess the world is? I would so love to have perfect clarity in knowing what God is up to at all times, but that is not something that my faith affords me. I may have occasional visions and moments of revelation, but they pass and I am forced to get on with everyday life just like everyone else. Sometimes the only honest answer I can give when asked what God is up to is to say, “I don’t know.”

So, I am very sympathetic to Peter in today’s gospel story. I am sympathetic because when he has this wondrous vision on the mountain of who Jesus is and what he is up to, Peter says to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let’s build some houses and just stay here.” Peter wants to stay right there in that moment. Peter can see a transfigured Jesus. God’s glory is just shining out from him. There is little room for doubt about Jesus’s identity in this moment. You have all the special effects: the light, and the clouds, and the booming voice from above saying “this is my son. Listen to him!” It’s all there. Its spectacular. There is little room for doubt. And then you have the figures of Moses and Elijah on each side of Jesus talking to him. They are a revelation too. They reveal that this Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. The law from Moses and Elijah the greatest of the prophets. And they are talking to Jesus about his departure. That’s another revelation, because the word for “departure” in the text there is exodos, which means exactly what you think it means. His exodus. God makes clear to Peter and James and John in this moment that there is a link between what Moses did and what Jesus is doing. Both figures represent divine liberation from slavery into freedom. Both represent a journey from an old way of living, according to the rules and laws of this world; rules that are focused on power and who has it; into a new way of living with rules and laws that are focused on love and where it must be shown. This is a revelation to Peter; it is a glorious vision. So, I can understand why Peter would want to just live in that space. Who wouldn’t?

But no sooner does Peter say that, and the vision is gone, and he and James and John and Jesus are headed back down the mountain and into the messiness of everyday living. I don’t think it is an accident that our gospel goes from a glorious vision of who Jesus is and what he is doing immediately into a personal encounter between Jesus and one sick individual. There is a whole crowd of people that want to see Jesus, that need his help. But one father shouts out above them all that his son is sick. And what makes matters worse, is that this man has gone to Jesus’s followers for help and has gotten no relief. When Jesus comes down the mountain he seems to be pretty disappointed in what he finds in his disciples. Why? It seems like he calls them and their whole generation faithless and perverse? Well, maybe they had the power to alleviate this person’s suffering and they just didn’t do it. Or, maybe they didn’t understand that they could call upon God and God’s power to fight evil. Maybe they didn’t realize that God’s power wasn’t just for fighting globalized and glorified evil like images of Armageddon or the devil running around with a pitchfork, but also mundane evil. The evil of sickness. The evil of pain and loneliness. The evil of despair. The evil of callous disregard. The little evils of everyday life. Gods power can be called on to fight that evil too. God’s power can set people free, and Jesus has given his disciples access to that power. But Jesus comes down the mountain and finds people in bondage to the evils that he was trying to set them free from. Sort of reminds you of Moses coming down the mountain. He came down to discover that while he was away the Israelites had constructed a golden calf to worship, an Egyptian God, not the God who was setting them free. Exoduses don’t always go easy. The people want to turn back. They wonder where they are going and fear that they may be lost. So it was with Moses, and so it is with Jesus too. The disciples are not faultless in following Jesus. They don’t always get it and they often try and turn back to idols and the ways of the world. But as at the foot at mount Sinai, so also at the foot of the mount of the Transfiguration, God shows himself to be faithful, even when his closest followers are not. 

The challenge of being a follower of this God and of his son Jesus Christ, is translating that vision of God on the mountaintop into the God of everyday life. Peter and James and John have a vision of Christ’s glory, but God doesn’t let them stay there. They have to go back down the mountain, to people who are suffering and lost and in despair and find God and God’s power there too. They have to put God’s power to work. They need to see God’s power at work. It is so easy to get overwhelmed by trying to figure out what God is doing globally, that we can’t see God at work when it is right in front of us. It is also so easy to be so overwhelmed by all the suffering and evil in the world that we think there is absolutely nothing we can do to make life better for anyone. But there are things that we can do. We may not have the power to save the world, Jesus does that, but he has given us power, his power, to fight evil and sin and hard-heartedness, sometimes in very simple, little and small ways.

Yesterday, March 1^st was the Feast of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales. He is actually where our son gets his middle name. Saint David was famous for his last words to his followers “Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed, and do the little things.” Do the little things. Little acts of compassion. Little moments of grace. Little prayers to God asking for helping with either speaking up or shutting up, whichever the case may be. Little moments of remembering who our God is can help you a lot when you aren’t sure where you are going. Peter and James and John had this awe-inspiring vision of Christ on the mountain, but then they came down the mountain and saw Christ’s power at work in the life of one ordinary sick person that needed help. What is Jesus doing? Well he is setting that person free, and that person free, and that person free. That is what Jesus is doing. We just can’t see it all at once. That is why it is easy to doubt sometimes, or to wonder like I do at times, what is Jesus doing? Well, we may wonder sometimes what Jesus is up to, and that’s ok, but we know who Jesus is. And that is far more important. 

I didn’t have a ready-made answer for my son when he asked me “what’s Jesus doing?” mostly because I just didn’t expect the question. But at one point this week, he sat down next to me on the couch with his little play computer, and he said to me Jesus loves me. And I said “that’s right buddy” and I looked down and I realized that he had typed it. Correctly. And then he did it again. I think he answered his own question. It was a better answer than I could give. What’s Jesus doing? Jesus is loving you. That’s what he’s doing.

Sermon for February 16, 2025

Readings:

• Jeremiah 17:5-10
• 1 Corinthians 15:12-20
• Luke 6:17-26
• Psalm 1

Our gospel reading this morning from Luke, is Jesus’s “sermon on the plain,” which sounds a lot like the “sermon on the mount” but it is a little different. I will talk about that sermon more in a minute, but first I want to jump back to that letter we heard from the Apostle Paul. Our epistle this morning is Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, one of his longest and most important letters. In that letter, Paul addresses many divisions and controversies going on in the church in Corinth. In this passage he zeros in on one issue. Some folks in the community are saying that there is no resurrection of the dead. What that essentially means is that they don’t believe in or really care about an afterlife. Actually I will be more specific, they don’t believe that physical human bodies will actually come back to life, in the flesh as physical beings at the end of time. They might believe in some sort of shadowy spirit realm; or they might just think that when you are dead you are a memory and nothing more. The world has always had plenty of people that have believed both of those things. But the belief in the resurrection of the dead that Paul is referring to is the belief that at the end of time, our souls will be restored in flesh and not just in spirit. It is a belief that even today many Christians don’t quite grasp. We think about a person dying and going to heaven, but we don’t think too much about a future day when the dead will be raised and heaven will be a place on earth. But that is a part of our faith and a part of our hope. It is a part of our creed. And Paul argues for the reality of the resurrection of the dead by pointing to Jesus. 

Paul says, “how can you say that there is no resurrection of the dead, when we say that that is exactly what happened to Jesus?” Our proclamation as Christians is that Jesus literally got up out of the grave. In the flesh. His body was transformed. It was a bit different. He had some different properties and powers. But it was recognizably Jesus. He ate. He drank. You could touch him. He was alive. Not dead. He wasn’t resuscitated, he was resurrected. He had defeated death. That is the resurrection of the dead. That is what we are talking about. And Paul says, “how can you say that that can’t happen, if the cornerstone of our faith is that it did happen?” He says, “look, if what you are saying is true, if there is no resurrection of the dead, if that truly cannot happen, then I guess it didn’t happen to Jesus. And if it didn’t happen to Jesus, then none of this means anything. None of it. Your faith has been in vain. There is no such thing as the forgiveness of sins. The dead are dead, and we are the biggest fools and of all people the most to be pitied. If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain, and your faith has been in vain. If Jesus has not been raised from the dead, then your faith has been in vain. That’s what Paul says. 

What Paul did NOT say though, that you need to have a perfect understanding of the afterlife or the resurrection or your faith is in vain. Paul didn’t say that.

Paul did NOT say that if you don’t have all the answers your faith is in vain.

Paul did NOT say that you need to understand all of the mysteries of God or your faith is in vain.

Paul did NOT say that you need to understand why bad things happen to good people, or your faith is in vain.

Paul did NOT say that your church needs to have an auditorium, a soup kitchen, a thrift store, a basketball team, a coffee hour, a mission statement, or your faith is in vain. 

Paul did NOT say that if you can’t fix the world, your faith is in vain. 

Paul never said any of those things. Our faith does not rest on any of those things. Paul said that if Christ has not been raised, then your faith has been in vain. The power of our faith comes from believing in something that God did, not believing in the things we do. But in fact, Paul adds at the end, Christ has been raised. So our faith IS NOT in vain, our proclamation is not in vain. Our faith is not in vain so long as our faith is in what God is doing, or in what Christ has done, or in what the Holy Spirit is going to do. So long as our faith is in God and God’s actions, our faith is not in vain. If God raised Jesus from the dead, we have every reason to hope that he will do the same thing for us too. If God did not raise Jesus from the dead, then why are you here? Free coffee? If Jesus has not been raised from the dead, then why should we worry too much about what he has to say in the gospel today? It matters because he has been raised from the dead. That is why Jesus’s teachings were written down. 

You know, we are pretty sure that Paul’s letters were written before any of the four gospels were completed. And if you read Paul’s letters you will see that he doesn’t record much of what Jesus had to say at all. Jesus’s teachings don’t factor prominently in Paul’s letters, but the fact that he was raised from the dead DOES. The proclamation of the resurrection came first and THAT is what gave power and authority to Jesus’s words when people finally heard them. I think that it is interesting that in the mass this morning, before you get to hear Jesus’s sermon on the plain, you have to hear Paul’s proclamation that this man was raised from the dead. Paul is going to tell you that Jesus was raised from the dead, before you can decide whether or not you like what Jesus has to say. 

So when we hear “blessed are you who are poor.” When we hear “blessed are you who are hungry, blessed are you who weep, blessed are you when people hate you,” when we hear these things and hear Jesus’s promises of fulfillment and reversal, We are hearing a message from someone who knows a little something about reversal. We are hearing from someone whose death has been transformed into life. We are hearing from God. This is not just any speech from any old philosopher. These aren’t just nice words. These are blessings and promises from God. The blessing is that God sees your suffering; the promise is that he is going to do something about it. 

But before we run off simply rejoicing in this good news and in this divine promise, this same Son of God shares with us warnings to go with the promises: reversal can work both ways. If you are rich, if you are satisfied, if you think life is a big joke, and if everyone is shouting your praises, enjoy it while it lasts but be warned: things can change. Don’t assume that you know how history is going to end, because you don’t. Things can change. That is what Jesus says to the disciples in his sermon on the plain and it is both a promise and a warning. The end of all things is in God’s hands. If you are suffering now, remember that the end is in God’s hands. If you are comfortable now, remember that the end is in God’s hands. If God has defeated death, if Christ has been raised, if the resurrection of the dead is real and if our proclamation and our faith is not in vain, then God will have the last say in all things. That is something worth having faith in.

Sermon for August 18, 2024

Readings:

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

https://youtube.com/watch?v=TN1m5hfTgyU%3Fsi%3DR5hqix1A0D-IzYog%26start%3D835

Few things in this world can compare to the glory of a good church potluck. You might think I am being a little tongue in cheek, but this is not completely a joke. These things can be miraculous you know. Think for a second about a good church potluck. First of all, it’s basically free. You may have to pay for the food you are bringing, but for the most part you stand to get way more than you give. And I’m willing to bet that you could probably get away without bringing anything without getting the evil eye from too many folks. Second, you usually have so many types of different foods that almost everyone can find something that they like, or that they can eat. There are amazing new things to try and you always seem to end up with way more food than you need. Third, no one person is burdened with doing all the work. Fourth, everyone has the opportunity to show off their culinary skills a little if they want to, and you know folks like to do that, myself included. Fifth, you can actually enjoy the food because you don’t know how much sugar and fat is in it and there are no labels telling you if these vegetables are organic or if this beef came from a happy grassfed cow from upstate. You don’t know how many calories are in that piece of cake, you just get to eat it, and that is a beautiful thing. A good church potluck is a beautiful thing. It can be an encounter with God’s grace.

If the church had spent the last 50 years working on improving its potluck game rather than endlessly tinkering with the liturgy and trying to serve as political action committees for either the right or the left, we would be in a much different place today, and so would our nation and our world. We are in desperate need of the relationships that are formed at church potlucks. The church likes to go out and talk a good game about reconciliation and bringing people together and building up communities…well do you know what the most fundamental and basic way to bring people together is? Food. I know y’all are used to me being food-obsessed, and I know I preached last week about the importance of having a snack, but I don’t think I can overstate this. Food is a critical way that relationships are built. It is responsible for shaping families and communities. It is the magic ingredient. It is so simple that we overlook it or ignore it. If you want people to come to a church service or function, feed them. Why do you think we have the meal on Maundy Thursday? Yes, there is religious significance to it, but also, how else am I going to get folks to come to a weeknight service? The same goes for the soup and scripture series and for the children’s prayer breakfasts. Feed people and they will come. Food brings people together.

And I hasten to add here that this isn’t a gimmick or a ploy. It is simply a recognition that relationships are formed around food. We all have this basic human need to eat, but somehow when we do it together, when we eat with each other and serve food to each other, something else happens and we walk away with something more than just food in our bellies. God has the power to do more through food than just fuel our bodies.

Relationships are formed around food. It is such a common thing that I think we often fail to realize just how powerful it is. But there is power, real power in feeding people. You give them a bit of yourself. Part of you becomes a part of them, even across seemingly uncrossable barriers. I think of this, not every time, but often when I sit down to eat my favorite vegetable. Now my favorite vegetable is something that many of you probably find repulsive, because its okra. If you didn’t grow up eating okra, if you don’t know how to cook it or if you aren’t familiar with the texture, then you may not be able to stomach it. But I love it. I love the flavor of it. We used to grow it in the garden growing up, so it has always been a part of my life. My ancestors have eaten it for hundreds of years. But we know precisely where okra comes from. It comes from Africa. The reason my ancestors ate it was because slaves grew it and fed it to them. So the food that you are eating may be telling a more complicated story and may represent more relationships than you can even imagine. We are often so focused on the more obvious power dynamics in this world that we often miss or misunderstand the real power there is in feeding people. 

But this is something that scripture makes clear to us over and over again. God is regularly described in scripture as one who feeds. One who feeds. THE one who feeds. The ultimate source of that which fills us and makes relationship possible. Scripture is filled with this image:

The food in the garden of eden. 

The manna in the wilderness. 

Psalm 23: thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

Our reading from Proverbs this morning: God’s wisdom has set herself a table and sent servants out inviting people to come and eat. 

This is what God does. God feeds people. Not just in overly spiritualized and symbolic ways, but in actual concrete ways that feed the body, but do more than feed the body. What God gives us is more than just food, but it isn’t less than food. Actual food is a part of the equation. Does that make sense? What I mean to say is that I often hear Christians talking about food, real food, as if it isn’t really that important itself, but only insofar as it represents something spiritual. And I’m here to reject that way of thinking. The daily bread that I pray for every day may be more than just a mixture of flour and water, but it isn’t less than that. When we pray for daily bread we aren’t just praying to be filled spiritually. We are human beings, we need real food. You may recall that I had my jaw wired shut for six weeks a few years ago. You may recall that fondly. But let me tell you, by week two I wasn’t hoping for God to give me some nebulous form of enlightenment, I wanted real bread. Yes, I wanted all of the spiritual benefits of knowing that God was the ultimate source of my food, that’s wonderful, but I wanted the real food too. Real food matters. Feeding people real food is a powerful thing that can change their life and yours.

What is one of the first things you do when you want to have a relationship with someone? You feed them; take them out to dinner. In John’s gospel, at the end, after the Resurrection, what does Jesus tell Peter to go and do? Feed my sheep. Repeatedly, Jesus tells Peter, if you love me, feed my sheep. It is what God does. God is the one who feeds. God’s servants are called to feed too. Now, God has more than just food to offer us. Man does not live by bread alone. God offers us relationship and wisdom and life that transcends this physical world, at least the world as we understand it. But that relationship, that life, often begins with and is sustained by actual eating and the many, many relationships that are formed around the table. Any table.

It is only natural in a church like this, a church that celebrates communion every Sunday, to hear Jesus talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood in the gospel this morning and think that he is referring to the Eucharist. Every week we recall Jesus saying “this is my body” and “this is my blood” over the bread and the wine, and we come forward and receive them at the altar, the holy table. We say that Jesus is spiritually present in them. So in this context, it is easy to hear this morning’s gospel and think that is what Jesus is talking about. Simply taking the host and wine of the Eucharist like some sort of medication divinely engineered to prevent death. But I think there is so much more to Jesus’s self-offering here than just what happens at the Last Supper and in the mass. In the first place, Jesus is speaking well before the Last Supper at this point in the gospel, it hasn’t happened yet. In the second place, this is John’s gospel and it doesn’t mention the bread and wine at the Last Supper at all. That comes from the other gospels. So I think Jesus is talking about more than the mass here.The Eucharist is definitely a way that God offers us his life. But I think we need to think bigger. Holy Communion is special, but can God feed us in other ways and at other meals? I think he can. I know he can. I might not be willing to hold up a casserole and say “the body of Christ,” but I do think that a relationship with God can begin around any food. It is how many people come to faith, through relationships formed over meals, and it is how many people hold on to faith during those times when God seems distant or irrelevant. The relationships and the meals keep people coming back. 

Yes, I believe that Jesus is present in the bread and wine that we bless at the altar, but that meal reminds me that in a different way, at different tables and with different food and different people, Jesus feeds us and offers us his life and his body at other meals too. Especially at Church potlucks. Now we just have to have more of them, and invite others to come.

Sermon for August 11, 2024

Readings:

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

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cw9xu4EKJYo%3Fsi%3DFi1u8OW67P5lgR9f%26start%3D880

In the Book of Kings this morning we find the prophet Elijah sitting by himself under a tree and having a pity party. 

Elijah is exasperated; ready to quit; ready to die. The leaders of the land have had their values all screwed up, he tried to correct them, and they didn’t take too kindly to it. There is a part of me that doesn’t blame Elijah for being frustrated; but then there is another part that wants to say to Elijah, “well, what did you think was going to happen?” Did you think that human beings were all of a sudden going to just open their eyes one day and start behaving? I want to ask Elijah, “why did you think you were better than your ancestors and the prophets who came before you?” That is foolishness. Do you not know your own history? 

If you sit down and read the Book of Kings sometime you will see that things had been bad for a very long time before Elijah came along. One horrible leader after another. It’s funny, the Book of Kings is really all about how bad kings are. And I say this as someone who you all know is a big monarchist. “King” is not a dirty word for me. But I can certainly recognize that some kings are better than others, some rulers or leaders are better than others, and all of them, at some point, are going to disappoint you. 

Just as a side note here, I am going to save you all some grief right now. Whoever you are planning to vote for in November, prepare to be disappointed! He or she is going to disappoint you!

Anyways, the Book of Kings points out just how disappointing leaders can be. Even wise old Solomon and good King David, they had major flaws, and made major mistakes. And now, in Elijah’s time, after a trail of bad kings and wars, the old kingdom of David has been split in two. Society has been split in two. The laws, and the values and the traditions that people used to care about have been forgotten. The King and the Queen where Elijah is living, in the North, are corrupt politicians that have made all sorts of shady foreign alliances. They brought in prophets that worship different Gods than the God of Israel and have different customs and traditions. Why have one God when you can have lots of Gods? 

And you may think, so what? Big deal! That’s like living in New York. That’s just multi-culturalism and diversity, right? Well diversity is great when you have some common values that make living together possible. But what if those values disappear and it just becomes every man and woman for him or herself? Diversity is great when you have a strong unifying core; when you have commonality. But without that strong core, diversity just becomes division.

Elijah is looking at a kingdom that has been divided over and over. It wasn’t a community of people with a common goal and purpose; it was just a collection of individuals all looking out for what is in it for them. He, Elijah, wants them to return to the worship of the one true God. The God of Israel was that unifying core that had been holding the kingdom together. Elijah wants to revive and restore the worship of God. But it’s not an easy task. How do you refocus people on God? How do you restore those “common values?”

You know, the Book of Kings spends plenty of time talking about King Solomon’s faults, but it spends even more time, way, way more time actually, talking about the good thing that Solomon did. And the greatest thing that Solomon did, that outshined his many faults, was build the temple. It was the greatest thing he did, because not only did it give glory to God; it also brought people together. It was a focal point of unity, even for the folks who didn’t live in downtown Jerusalem. It meant so much, but now, during Elijah’s time, the temple was in a different Kingdom altogether that had split off. And all around the North were these shrines and high places and altars to other Gods, particularly a Canaanite god named Baal. The prophets of Baal, many of whom had been brought in by that shady Queen Jezebel (and yes, that is where that name that we associate with wanton women comes from), those prophets were going around selling a lie. Pay us money and Baal will protect your crops, give you good weather, make you fertile with strong children, and on and on. And Elijah knew this was a lie, and he challenged those prophets to a duel or a contest to prove which god was real, and Elijah won and people saw it. The story of the contest is a great story, but I’m not going to tell it now. You will have to go home and look it up if you don’t know it, but let’s just say there was undeniable evidence that Elijah was telling the truth, and that the God of Israel was alive and well. So why is Elijah running for his life now instead of leading the nation in a giant act of repentance and renewal? 

Because no one likes to admit that they were wrong. Our relationship with truth as human beings has always been very selective. There are instances of communal repentance in the bible. People CAN change, communities can change, and renewal does happen, the Holy Spirit does work, but it rarely happens on our timeline. Elijah must have thought that it was going to be one and done. Win one battle and the war is over, but sadly life just isn’t that way. It’s like trying to keep this building going. Fix the steps today and tomorrow the air conditioning will break. Recover from covid and then hurt your back mopping the floor. Life brings with it new struggles every single day. Progress is never a one-way street, and if that is true for physical things, then it is especially true for less physical things like human nature. 

We cannot be naive about human nature. Elijah came to the realization that he was no better than his ancestors and it came to him like a slap in the face, but it doesn’t have to come to you that way. Don’t be naïve about human nature and human sinfulness. It is never a one and done battle. We may get a little better about one sin while we let ten more run rampant. We may shuffle the deck on our sins every generation, but we still hold all the same cards. We are still sinful. Don’t set yourself up for disappointment, humans don’t always embrace the truth. 

If you read through the Book of Kings, society doesn’t just get better from one King to the next; it gets worse a lot of the time. Good king, bad king, good king, bad king. Elijah thought that he could call on God and it would all just be settled. Well, he did call on God, and God answered, but he still had a new battle the next day. And when Elijah complained to God, what was God’s response to Elijah’s moment of despair?

Get up and eat. 

Seriously, that was the angel’s message to Elijah. Get up and go eat something. It was such good advice, he gave it twice. Two times the angel said to Elijah, get up and eat something. Perhaps Elijah was expecting a more profound, sympathetic response from God, since he was God’s servant, but that is the response that he got. Get up and eat. 

Don’t underestimate that advice though. God understands human nature better than we do. God knows what we need. God knows that our lives aren’t just one big battle and then peace and happiness. Our lives, human lives, are a million little battles, one after the other. From one king to the next, from one generation to the next, from one moment to the next. A million little battles. We don’t get to just give up and die, like Elijah wanted to do. God’s instruction was to get up and go on. Get up, have a cookie, and move on to the next battle. God knows that Elijah isn’t going to finish the job. God isn’t asking Elijah to save the whole world. God is simply telling Elijah to get up and go on to the next battle. That is what victory looks like: resilience. And eat something. The answer to your prayers might be right in front of you and it very well might be a cookie. God’s grace comes in many forms and sometimes that form is food. 

All human beings have to eat in some way. And every culture has its special and unique foods. Many faiths have foods that have particular religious significance. But for Christians, food has a place in our most sacred rituals. Jesus referred to himself as bread; something that nourishes and feeds us on a daily basis. He made a reference to bread in the central prayer of our faith, the Lord’s Prayer. He fed people in miraculous ways. The bread that he blessed at the last supper, he said was his body. And we believe that there is real, spiritual power and grace in the food that we receive at the altar today, only please don’t call it a cookie. We believe that Christ meets us there to share his life with us and to give us grace to go on and fight the next battle. It is, and always has been, central to our life as a community. It is one of our common values. Just like the Jewish community in ancient times was focused on the altar and the worship of the temple, the early Christian churches were focused on the table and Christ present among them in the breaking of the bread. And boy was that community diverse. Read any of the New Testament, especially Paul’s letters, and you will see just how diverse the Christian community was, but for that community to hold together, people would have to learn to hold on to the core beliefs, values, and behaviors that would keep diversity from becoming division. Paul understood that. He knew that Christians learning to hold on to God and hold on to each other, would have to fight a million tiny battles and that is as true today as it was in the first century, or indeed, even in Elijah’s time. 

Sometimes the battle is listening, sometimes it is forgiving, sometimes it is speaking with grace and sometimes it is shutting up…with grace of course. Following God, being faithful to God is not a one and done decision that you make, it is a million tiny battles. Some of them you win, many of them you lose, but you get up and go on to the next battle. Resilience. That is the victory of faith, and that is what God is feeding us for here. God gives us the strength, and the grace, that we need to get up and go on to the next battle.

Sermon for July 14, 2024

Readings:

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

Sometimes the problem we face isn’t all that new. Sometimes the solution isn’t all that new either.

In the town of Guedelon, France, which is somewhere South of Paris, there has been an interesting project going on for about the past 25 years or so. A bunch of archeologists and laborers have been building, from the ground up, an entire castle using only the tools and techniques available during the 12^th and 13^thcenturies. I first learned about this through watching a British documentary television show, which focuses on a group of people trying to understand and recreate the lives of people living in different periods. I am fascinated by these shows.

Anyways, one of the things that is fascinating about this castle program is that many of the tools and techniques that builders were using in the 13^th century were thousands of years old even then. So you had very sophisticated buildings being built with very simple and ancient tools; tools that had remained effective and useful across thousands of years, some of which are still in use to this day. You know the modern world often likes to sneer at our ancestors and their beliefs and methods, but I hasten to point out that the reason these archeologists in France can build this castle using ancient methods is that there are still many, many buildings, cathedrals and castles from the 11^th, 12^th, and 13^th centuries still standing. Meanwhile, we are rebuilding and renovating our front steps that are a mere 7 years old. We might make things faster now, but we don’t necessarily make them better. The old ways aren’t always wrong. Our ancestors still have a lot to teach us.

Well, one of the tools that they demonstrate using in this documentary about the castle in Guedelon, is a plumb line. A plumb line is an incredibly simple tool. It is just a weight on a string that is held against the stones of a wall to determine if they are “plumb” or rising purely vertically. It’s the simplest thing, but it is brilliantly effective. As long as the weight hangs exactly the same distance from the wall, the wall is rising vertically. If there is any variation, then it means that the wall is starting to tilt one way or another. It is a critical measurement and has to be done constantly during building, because when you are building a tower, the tiniest variation at the bottom can become a huge variation at the top resulting in the building collapsing. The slightest tilt matters, not necessarily for the stone that was just laid, but for the many, many stones that will rest upon it. A builder needs a constant reference point for what is straight up and down, and that is what a plumb line does. 

Our Old Testament passage from the prophet Amos this morning is clear evidence that plumb lines were in use LONG before the 13^th century. Amos was writing some 500 or more years before Jesus was born, and plumb lines were old technology even then. Amos has a vision. God shows him a plumb line, and God says “see, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people.” I am holding up a gauge to see what is crooked and what is straight. And what does Amos see? He sees the whole thing tumbling down. Not just God’s house; not just the walls of Jerusalem, but God’s holy people are not upright anymore. The whole society is crooked. And those at the top, the priests and the politicians and the leaders of society, they are the most crooked of all. They are so far from plumb, so far from true, that they are about to pull the whole building down with them. But it’s not just their fault. As master masons know, little problems at the bottom of the wall lead to big problems at the top. That’s what the plumb line is for. Amos is looking at a whole society that is not straight; not upright. He warns people, but naturally they don’t want to hear it. The priest Amaziah, the king Jeroboam, they don’t want to hear how far they have strayed from God’s standard. They tell Amos to go and preach somewhere else. And Amos basically says “hey look, I’m just the messenger. I’m no one special. I am just doing what God told me to do. He sent me to his people to remind them of the true standards that he gave them.”

That is what the plumb line is. It is the standard. The line by which things are judged to be straight or crooked. For God’s people that standard was the law. God’s law. The commandments about what should be worshipped and how. The rules and standards of behavior in how we should live our lives and treat each other. Basic ideas of right and wrong. It is amazing how many non-believers and atheists will appeal to ethical standards and ideas of right and wrong, without really appreciating why such standards should even exist. This is a part of C.S. Lewis’s argument in Mere Christianity: there seems to be an external moral standard by which we judge things. Where does this standard come from? Well, the faithful answer is that it comes from God. 

It is God who sets the plumb line in the midst of his people.

Now you may think that the prophet Amos was writing to a certain group of people at a certain place and a certain time, and that’s true, but when I look around I don’t see a world all that different from the one Amos was living in. Human beings haven’t changed all that much. Sometimes our technology may change, but our nature doesn’t. We still don’t live up to the standards of right and wrong that God has given us. Next to the plumb line that God is holding we are all a little crooked. Now you may think to yourself: I’m not so bad. I haven’t killed anyone. I make sure my parents are cared for. I haven’t had any affairs with my neighbor’s wife. Compared to some people, I’m doing pretty good commandments-wise. I’m not THAT far off the mark. 

But you see, as I have learned, the reason that builders use a plumb line is because they understood that little mistakes grow into big ones. If this stone is a little off, the next stone is going to be ever so slightly further off, and the next further off still and on and on until the wall falls down. What happened yesterday is, I think, a clear example of what happens when we ignore little things (little faults or sins or inaccuracies). We may have witnessed the heinous act of one individual, but we can’t say that it came out of nowhere. Is there anyone in here that can honestly say they have never said something about a politician or a political party that wasn’t completely fair or true? I don’t think there are many people in here who have never had a laugh at the expense of a politician we didn’t like. Most of us have probably launched into hyperbole from time to time; exaggerated our opponent’s faults; blamed them for things that we knew weren’t their fault. These aren’t big sins. We all do them. But the problem is sins grow. You might be content to just make nasty comments online, but someone else might want to take it further. Your nasty comment leads to someone else’s nasty comment. The anger and fear and resentment grows, until someone, or even a bunch of people, decide to turn their anger into actions. That is how we have gotten to where we are in this country. Obviously, there is much that we still don’t know about what happened in Pennsylvania yesterday. We don’t know much about the shooter’s motives or even mental state, and yes, the man who pulled that trigger was responsible for his own actions, but we all need to recognize how sin and hatred and fear and anger grow. We all have some responsibility for the temperature of political discourse in this country, the problem isn’t just with the stones at the top of the wall. We all need to recognize that next to God’s plumb line, there ain’t none of us that are standing perfectly straight.

And that is why grace and forgiveness is such a critically important thing to understand. God has given us standards of behavior that even the best of us don’t meet. God has given us a standard, but God has also given us grace and forgiveness. We are told that in Jesus Christ, God is still gathering up all these crooked stones, and loving them as his adopted children. We are told that God’s love for us is not contingent upon us being perfect, or perfectly fulfilling the law. Christ loves us even when we are so crooked that we topple over. But the law is still there. We still need the standards, even when we don’t meet them. They are a perpetual reminder to us of how much we all need grace and forgiveness in our own lives, both in receiving it and in showing it. And that is what we need in this world and in our country, now more than ever. The problem of sin and hatred isn’t a new problem, and neither is the solution. We need to show each other a little more grace and forgiveness; we need to trust that while God may be holding the plumb line in one hand, he is busy picking us up and holding us with the other. 

I don’t have easy answers for the times we are living in, and I certainly wouldn’t trust anyone that does. My faith is in God, not in countries or elections, or political parties or leaders, and my faith is certainly not in violence or attempted murder as a solution to anything. My faith is in God. As people who have faith in God, the best thing that we can do right now, in addition to praying for our country and our leaders, including the former president and those who have been injured or killed, is to show people what it looks like when you put more faith in God’s righteousness than you do your own. It always amazes me in this parish how people of just about every political stripe can come together, day by day, week by week. We live life as a community and most of the time we get along. What makes this place work is the conviction that I think most of us have, that we all stand in need of perpetual grace and forgiveness. We can live together because we recognize that God is holding the plumb line, and not us. God is the master builder, not us. That is good news that we can share with the world. Grace and forgiveness and personal restraint may not be new tools, but they still work. Despite all of the talking heads and headlines, the problem we face in our world and in our country right now may not be all that new, and the solution may not be all that new either.