Category: Sermons

Sermon
13 Pentecost • August 30, 2020
Exodus 3:1-15 • Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c • Romans 12:9-21 • Matthew 16:21-28

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

This morning’s Gospel Lesson contains five separate sayings of Jesus that Matthew has stitched together. You can see the places where the verbal “needle” was used to stitch sayings together so they become part of the ongoing narrative, The use of the word “for” at the beginning of each saying is stitching, and it occurs four time in this selection.

The other obvious stitching words are, “Then Jesus told his disciples.” You will find “then” and “for” used a lot in Matthew’s narrative. I point this out because it is critical to understanding Jesus’ message. If we attempt to understand the passage as a whole, it doesn’t make much sense. But if we look at each individual saying, separate from the others, their meanings pop out clearly. So let’s walk through these sayings.

Jesus tries to forewarn his disciples about what he sees down the road—he sees a journey up to Jerusalem where suffering and death await. Jesus knows what he is doing and he wants his disciples to know it too. But. Peter objects. This is not the path to success, so far as he can see, and he mistakenly wants to protect Jesus; “This shall never happen to you!” he says. Jesus rebukes him with these stinging words: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me.” Peter is making Jesus’ work harder because he cannot see God’s hand in Jesus’ ministry. He cannot see that suffering and death are the path to the salvation of the world.

Neither can we. We, too, cannot see that suffering and death are the path to the salvation. Jesus says to us, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Here’s the problem: We are programmed, genetically and socially, for survival. In almost everything we do, we first run it though a filter of “will this hurt me, or help me.” Survival means physical survival, keeping my skin intact and my bones whole; having enough food and housing for the next ten or twenty years. Survival means keeping a respectable image among my fellow human beings and avoiding humiliation at all costs. Survival means keeping my stuff safe—the valuable physical objects that fill my house and my car, that I have come to think are an essential part of me. We need to survive!

Except—that statement is a lie. We do not need to survive. We can die, and eventually, we will. Death awaits us all. We have trouble coming to grips with that fact, and we don’t notice that being alive is not a future event. Being alive is a “right now” event. Right now we are alive. Life, aliveness, liveliness, happens only in the now, not the past and not in the future. Right now. Worrying about the future kills off being alive right now.

Jesus invites us to let go. He invites us to loosen the grip of survival that kills our aliveness. He invites us to shake off fear for ourselves and for our survival, and to shift our attention to others, to love and care for them. He invites us to trust God, who made us and will take care of us.

This is foolishness to the world, of course. But it is where Peter is coming from when he declares that surely suffering and death should never happen to Jesus, God forbid! To this Jesus says: “What will it profit [you] if [you] gain the whole world but forfeit [your] life?” Where’s the benefit of trading the aliveness of “right now” for survival sometime in the future?

So we are invited to give it up; to give up this fearful struggle for survival; and to notice the truth that life is now, right now.

And then, in the back of our minds, we hear that tiny, anxious voice that says, “Do I have to give up Social Security? My savings account? My wonderful possessions? Do I have to stop planning for the future?” Certainly not. The problem is not with sensible measures to look out for ourselves and those we love. The problem is the anxious fear that we must let go of if we are to enter the kingdom of heaven. “Let go and let God,” as the saying goes.

This is particularly important in this time of fear and anxiety over the covid-19 virus. Taking sensible measures like masking and social distancing are fine. But if we succumb to fear and stop living, letting our aliveness shrink in the face of fear; submitting to terror over the danger of infection—if we choose concern for survival over openness to being alive, then we lose the possibility of living in the kingdom. We lose our life, and there is nothing we can give to buy it back.

Courage, my friends! This will not last forever. I love you, and God loves you—passionately.

Amen.

Sermon
12 Pentecost • August 23, 2020
Exodus 1:8-2:10 • Psalm 124 • Romans 12:1-8 • Matthew 16:13-20

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

Jesus and his close disciples are moving around Galilee in today’s Gospel Reading, avoiding the authorities and on the run. He is a healer and an engaging teacher, so they are generally welcomed into places without TV or Internet—no entertainments were available, nor adequate medical care so they were welcomed, and his core group is joined by many others, some coming and others going, a constantly shifting audience.

At one point, Jesus asks them, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” “Son of Man” was Jesus way of referring to himself. His disciples report on the great figures from the past, somehow resuscitated in the person of Jesus. It is not clear to me whether these luminaries were thought to literally embody the person of Jesus, or whether they were just saying he was similar to them. Either way, they are identifying Jesus as some traditional figure from the past.

Okay, says Jesus, but how about you? Who do you say that I am? Simon Peter, who almost always got it wrong, gets it right this time. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” he says. As far as Jesus is concerned, Peter gets it exactly right, and to mark the occasion, Jesus gives Simon a new name: “you are Peter” (which is the Greek word for “rock”) and on such rocks the assembly of my followers, the church, will be built.

The issue that Jesus raises is one of identity. Identity is a matter of being, not of action, or of interpretation, or of nature. Being is a distinctly human thing, and it is not natural, but must be conferred. For example, a lion or an ameba has no being other than that conferred by us humans. Being is a function of language, and it is given by naming.

So you might ask, who has the power to confer being? Other people? Ourselves? The answer is “yes.” You can confer being on another by the simple act of declaring their being. We do this all the time, this godly act of creating beings. We do this when we declare, “You are my friend,” or “She is my mother.” Others can create our being, and then relate to us accordingly. You will treat the persons you call your friend or your mother differently than any other person.

Being can also be created by ourselves when we declare, “I’m an Episcopalian,” “I am a teacher,” “I am a father,” or even “I’m a shopper!” My favorite example of creating being is when a couple stands before witnesses and say, “I, John, take you, Mary, for my wife, etc.” When she does the same, they have created a new entity, a married couple, a family. And they did this godly act of creating a new being by saying the words, by declaring it to be so.

When Jesus raises the issue of his own being, he is doing a profoundly important thing. He is letting his disciples know how to relate to him. He is not just some guy in a diner; he is the strong, God-given savior of the world. He is a person to be listened to. He is one who can be relied on to straighten things out.

It is important to notice that Jesus forbids his disciples to spread the news that he is Messiah. This is a practical measure. Anyone who claims to be Messiah must be a fraud. This is for others to declare, just as Peter did. He said it, not Jesus. The power of Messiah lies in others’ recognition that he is the Savior, not is his boasting about it. You will notice that when we blow our own horn, when we claim exceptional greatness for ourselves, other people raise an eyebrow and cast a skeptical look, as indeed they should.

For himself, though, Jesus identified himself as Messiah. By claiming messiahship for himself, Jesus knew how he should relate to the world, what his job was, and what his deliverables were.

It is the same with us. It’s very useful to know who others say we are. And it is equally important to know who we say we are. When these two things are clear—how others identify us, and how we identify ourselves—everyone becomes more powerful and more enabled to do great things.

Like, for example, forgiveness. Every Jew knew that only God could forgive the sins and misdeeds of us poor humans. Forgiveness was God’s business, and it required sacrifices to get God to forgive. Yet here is Jesus, almost casually conferring the power of forgiveness on his disciples! And, because he is Messiah, they listened to him, and believed what he said, that they suddenly had the power to forgive. This ordinary power to forgive we now take for granted, but in Jesus’ time, it was shocking.

Before this, the power of heaven flowed to earth, not the other way around. Heaven, God’s domain, dominate the earth; but the earth had no power over heaven. Jesus is saying that, from now on, whatever we forgive on earth, heaven will do likewise. And whatever we refuse to forgive, heaven will also refuse to forgive.

You and I, my friends, have a profound gift placed in our hands, the power to either forgive or to hold others in the bondage of unforgiveness. And we have this because Messiah said so.

Amen.

Sermon
11 Pentecost • August 16, 2020
Genesis 45:1-15 • Psalm 133 • Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 • Matthew 15:21-28

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

Today’s Gospel Lesson has two distinct sections—a teaching and a story. Both have profound points to make about the nature of reality.

The first teaching distinguishes what generates good and evil in our poor world, beset with so many problems, so many confusions. Jesus says, “It not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”

This is said against a background of the Jewish notion at the time of purity. Being pure and blameless was, for them in that time, a matter of observing dietary and sexual taboos. Some were contained in the Bible, but many were not. What foods a person could and how they were prepared and with whom you ate them counted. Dairy could not be mixed with meat, or even prepared in the same kitchen; eating with gentiles, those who were not Jews, made one unclean and impure. To this day, some parts of Judaism observe these purity laws.

But the reality is simply that evil and the purity of our souls does not come from such ritual acts. Evil comes from what is generated in our hearts, from out of our mouths. Think about it, think about where war comes from—someone in authority declares war and death and destruction follow. Where does theft of property come from—someone says in their heart and mind, “I have a right to their car and I’m going to take it.”

Think about how you have damaged other people. It all started with a feeling of anger, perhaps, or revenge, or coveting something that belonged properly to another. Then, out of this feeling in our hearts or perhaps our gut, we speak the word, we put the feelings into language in our minds, and then out from our mouths and into the world, actions that damage others.

Notice that Jesus is not forbidding us to speak evil; he is just wanting us to get clear about where evil comes from. Jesus is never the moralist, always the clarifier of what’s so, of the truth of it.

Likewise, the peaceable kingdom of God also comes from our hearts, and through our speech, and into the world.

In the second passage, the story is heartrending, of a gentile woman whose daughter is crazy—“tormented by a demon,” in their words. Jesus at this point in his ministry is on the run from the authorities, avoiding contact as his fame grows and he becomes more and more of a danger to the establishment. He moves into a gentile territory outside of Jewish lands, to Tyre and Sidon, the Phoenician domains. She pleas for help, but he ignores her. His disciples say to send her away because she’s making a disturbance and Jesus agrees that she has no place there with them.

But the woman won’t take no for an answer—“Lord, help me,” she says. No, he says, she’s not my problem—she’s a gentile and my business is with the Jews. She insists. Then he becomes directly insulting in an attempt to get her away: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Most people would be so insulted they’d leave in a huff, but she won’t leave. She says, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” At this, Jesus’ resistance crumbles and he is overwhelmed by the woman’s faith—by her commitment to the possibility of her daughter’s healing. “Woman, great is your faith!” he says, and her daughter is healed.

A couple of things: First, it is at this point that Jesus widens his view of his ministry. In the beginning, he saw his ministry as one aimed at God’s Chosen People, his fellow Jews. But after this event, the distinction between Jews and gentiles seems to be broken down in his mind. He becomes the savior of the whole world.

Secondly, the woman’s faith is what generates the miracle. Again, it is a matter of faith, of a commitment to a possibility, a commitment that will withstand rejection and insults and public humiliation. “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

If you would like to have miracles in your life, to have the impossible thing that you badly want for yourself or for others, you can have it. But it will cost you. We would do well to take the example of the Canaanite woman to heart.

Amen.

Sermon
10 Pentecost • August 9, 2020
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28 • Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 43b • Romans 10:5-15 • Matthew 14:22-33

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

Another extraordinary miracle that Jesus generated appears in this week’s Gospel Lesson—walking on water!

You will recall from last week’s Gospel Lesson that Jesus was very tired and needed some space so he took a boat and went across the large lake that is called the Sea of Galilee. But crowds frustrated this plan for some time alone by walking around the lake to meet him on the other shore. There, he had compassion on the sick and healed them. And then he had his disciples feed the five thousand with only two small fish and five loaves of bread, a remarkable miracle that is a prototype of how miracles happen and how we can generate them in real life.

In today’s lesson, Jesus finally gets some rest. He sends the crowd away, puts his disciples in a sailboat to go home, and spends the night in rest and prayer. Maybe some sleep, too. Meanwhile, his disciples in the boat were having a hard time of it, battling strong winds and waves all night. They had not even made it to the far shore when Jesus showed up, walking toward them on the water.

“Walking on water” has become a synonym for performing miracles—we say about someone who seemingly can do no wrong, “He walks on water.” Let me say at the outset that I do not know how this miracle could have happened. I will suggest a possibility at the end of the sermon, but it is in the form of a joke so perhaps it cannot be taken seriously. Maybe he did walk on water, literally; the story appears, after all, in all four Gospels. And maybe something happened that, in the re-telling, got exaggerated. Who knows?

The story, however, is not really about walking on water; it is about the power of faith; it is about the effectiveness of a commitment to a possibility, and about some of the pitfalls that can lead to ruin.

The miracle begins badly—the disciples, tired and stressed by a sleepless night, struggling against contrary winds and failing to make much headway toward the distant shore, suddenly see Jesus coming toward them, walking on the water.

They let their superstition overcome their direct observation of what is happening. They actually saw Jesus walking toward them, but they knew—they just KNEW—that people cannot walk on water. So they said, in effect, I cannot see what I’m seeing. This is the very nature of superstition: “knowing” with such profound determination that we can’t be seeing what our eyes are telling us, or what our possibilities envision, that we are stopped. “It must be a ghost!” And so they were terrified.

We get stopped when we KNOW something cannot happen. “We tried that and it didn’t work,” we say. “No, that will never happen,” we say. These are statements of “no-possibility” and they make miracles impossible. We cease to be like little children, who are always in a state of “not-knowing,” when we let what we know get in the way of what we want. Yet Jesus’ promise that whatever we ask for will be granted is nullified and made of none effect.

Fear is the other great killer of possibility. Peter wants to believe that it is Jesus and not a ghost, so he says, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water,” to which Jesus responds, “Come.” Peter steps out of the boat and walks toward Jesus, but then “knowing” step in, he notices the power of the wind, knows that it should sink him, so then he sinks.

“You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Jesus chides Peter. Well, he doubted because of fear, which is another kind of knowing. We get afraid when we know we are in danger, which often is a useful survival aid, but also can easily deflect us from our commitment to a possibility.

So walking on water is not so hard after all. It just requires a commitment to a possibility and sticking to it.

Now, how could it possibly have happened? Looking at the event after the fact, after the miracle, we can usually explain how it happened. I confess that in this instance, I am not so sure, but here is the joke I promised at the beginning:

A priest and a rabbi had gone fishing together for years. A new minister came to town, so they invited him to go fishing with them. The three drove to a nearby lake, got into a boat, and began fishing. After a few minutes, the priest said, “Oh! I forgot my pipe and I need a smoke.” So he stepped out of the boat, walked across the lake to the shore to get his pipe and came back. The rabbi said nothing but the minister was amazed. Then the rabbi said, “My lunch! I forgot it,” stepped out of the boat and walked calmly across the lake to the car and brought his lunch back to the boat. The priest said nothing, but the minister was amazed. Finally, the minister drummed up his courage and said, “I think I’ll go to the car also,” got out of the boat and promptly sank like a stone. After the priest and the rabbi had hauled him out of the water, the priest said to the rabbi, regretfully, “We forgot to tell him where the stones are.”

Amen.

Sermon
9 Pentecost • August 2, 2020
Genesis 32:22-31 • Psalm 17:1-7, 16 • Romans 9:1-5 • Matthew 14:13-21

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

Here is a wonderful story of a major miracle in Jesus’ ministry, wonderful in that it tells in detail exactly how the miracle happened, precisely what Jesus and his disciples said and did.

When I was trained as a business consultant, we were expected to produce breakthroughs by working with our clients, and we did. A breakthrough, as we understood it, was making the impossible happen. Marking the impossible happen is akin to making miracles. And the process we used was exactly as described in this passage from the Gospel of Matthew.

This is hard for us Twenty-first Century Americans to hear, since we know quite well that there is no such thing as a miracle. And indeed, we can easily explain how anything that might be called a miracle could happen. We can look back and see the details, the actions that resulted in the miracle. And so we discount the miracle. “There’s nothing miraculous here,” we say since we can explain it.

Looking back it is obvious what happened. But how about before the miracle, before the breakthrough, before, when it was clearly seen to be impossible. So let’s look at the feeding of the five thousand.

Jesus is tired. He needs a little space, a time of quiet to refresh himself. So he takes off for some private time, getting into a boat and sailing to another place where nobody was. But the crowds were not having it. They had seen him cure the sick and tell his marvelous stories, and they walked around the lake on foot so that, when he came ashore, they were there to greet him. So much for quiet time!

But he felt their pain and need, and out of his compassion, he sacrificed his quiet time to heal their sick. When the evening came, his disciples were concerned with the welfare of the crowd and suggested to Jesus that he send the crowd to the villages in the vicinity to get something to eat. This is the first phase of generating a miracle—identifying a need.

The second thing is to propose the most efficient action to satisfy the need, to propose a possibility, to consider an obvious way to satisfy the need. So Jesus says that there is no need to send them on a journey to get food. Feed them yourselves, he says, feed them here and now.

What immediately arises is that it is impossible, a lack of resources or some other obstacle that clearly cannot be overcome. “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish,” the say. It is impossible to feed so many people with so little food.

But Jesus is unwilling to let it go; he has faith that they can be fed. So he says, “Let’s go with what we’ve got,” with the faith that, once started, something would show up to make the impossible thing happen.

Five loaves of bread and two fish are brought forward. Jesus then proceeds with an ordinary meal by blessing God, thanking him for the meal. Then, as with any other meal, he broke the bread and gave it to the disciples to distribute.

Did Jesus know that somehow the five loaves and two fish would suddenly multiply and feed the multitude? Absolutely not. All the evidence indicated that they had a pittance in the face of a great need. It was impossible and Jesus knew it. What he did have, however, was faith—faith that what was needed could happen, he knew not how.

And it did happen. The impossible became a reality and there was more than enough for everyone. Looking back, it was simple to see how it happened. People tend to be self-protective and they are also smart—they did not come out into the deserted place without something in their pockets. After all, his disciples thought to bring along some bread and fish. So did the rest of the crowd; they had their own dinners with them, but everyone was keeping their own dinner for themselves, hidden secretly in their clothing lest others might want to part of it.

When Jesus showed generosity and a willingness to share what little he and his disciples had, the others began to get generous as well, and there was plenty for all—twelve baskets-full left over. This is an easy explanation, one that many people have come up with.

But here is the thing about miracles—it all depends on where you are looking from. Before the fact, it looks impossible. After the fact it looks obvious and simple. A breakthrough—a miracle—cannot happen if we let the impossibility of a situation stop us. It take faith to proceed despite what appears to be impossible.

On one engagement with a computer company, our consulting group had been working with a team of six people who had been given a project. But they were stymied because of a lack of equipment. They had been told that the necessary equipment would not arrive for six weeks and moving ahead was impossible. But the team cost the company about $12,000 a week and six weeks of inactivity would break their budget and the project would fail.

We forged ahead anyway, working from a commitment to the possibility that the project could be successful. “A commitment to a possibility” is business language for “faith.” We lived in the possibility and refused to be stopped by the apparent impossibility; we had faith. And the miracle—the breakthrough—occurred. The needed machine was sitting on the desk of the proper person and the project succeeded.

How? Looking at the situation from before the fact, the lack of a machine made success impossible. But after the fact, the solution was embarrassingly simple—an identical machine was sitting unused on the desk of the team leader. It had been given to him just because of his status in the organization; he had no use for it and had entirely forgotten about it. It was only a matter of noticing it, and moving it about two yards to a new location—an overnight solution.

Faith is a very practical matter. Not a belief, but a commitment to a possibility. My friends, Jesus invites us to have faith, and to ask for whatever we desire. He promises that God will provide it.

Amen.

Sermon
8 Pentecost • July 26, 2020
Genesis 29:15-28 • Psalm 105:1-11, 45b • Romans 8:26-39 • Matthew 13:31-33, 44-62

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

Jesus spoke mainly about the kingdom of God, which Matthew usually refers to as the “kingdom of heaven.” By using the word “kingdom,” Jesus is drawing on the ordinary political organization of his time. A kingdom is a defined geographical space organized by a strongman, who is called a king. The king’s job is to keep order and promote the welfare of the country—peace and prosperity is the king’s work.

At least, that is the theory. More often than not, however, kings have concentrated on their own survival in power and their own family’s prosperity. There are exceptional rulers, of course, but history records remarkably few of them, and rarely do their successors live up to their standard of excellence in promoting peace and prosperity. You can see why the designers of our Constitution rejected having a hereditary king in America—kings and their children just rarely turn out well.

Jesus was clear that peace and prosperity are what is needed for us human beings, and since worldly rulers cannot be trusted to bring that desired peace and prosperity, we will have to turn to another source. His relationship with God, whom saw as his Father, pointed to another possibility, the possibility that the order that God established in heaven could extend to the earth. So he announced that the kingdom of God is at hand, attainable, available, and ready to be entered into.

Heaven is an abstract concept, of course, and like all abstract concepts it is difficult to get a handle on at first. I can remember—in the fourth grade, perhaps—struggling to understand long division. Mathematics, of course, is utterly abstract. You can see two things, and you can see a written symbol for two, but you cannot ever see two itself. It is only a concept, abstracted from our experience of a couple of objects.

So I struggled with this abstract thing called long division, immersed in the inquiry of what it was for and how it could work. It was a bit painful, but I kept at it, perhaps for two or three of weeks. And then, one day, in a neighbor’s back yard, standing idly on the grass next to a chain link fence, it came to me. Long division! I got it!

This is the way it is with abstract concepts—at first, incomprehension; what on earth are they talking about? And then wondering, inquiring about this elusive concept, trying to see it. And, finally we see it and understanding comes, all of a sudden. Unexpectedly, the meaning opens up and we get it. And then the ramifications of the abstraction unfold, and we begin to see its many uses and the variety of ways it impacts our life. This is the way it is with the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, which grows into a huge shrub in which birds can nest. The kingdom starts with a tiny possibility, just a glimpse of what’s possible. And then, over time, that possibility unfolds into an extensive panorama of actions and understandings that create love, joy, and peace, the prosperity that we all desire.

Matthew adds another parable that has the same meaning—the kingdom is like yeast, a small amount of which, when incorporated in a large quantity of flour, causes the whole mixture to expand. The kingdom starts with that small spark of understanding, which then expands to every part of our life.

There are six parables in today’s Gospel Reading, one-liners, short stories. The first two—the mustard seed and the yeast—are followed by another pair—the treasure hidden in a field and the pearl of great price. Those two make another point that, once one gets the concept of the kingdom of heaven, it is so desirable that we will give anything to live into it.

In both parables, the person sells everything to get an incredibly valuable object. To participate in the kingdom of heaven, one has to give up old certainties, long-help opinions, grudges and hurts from past damaging encounters, even the cherished identity and immense wisdom we have built up over the years. We will never give up these things, except for the vision of something vastly better. Once we see the possibility of the kingdom, we can see that it might be worth it to exchange them for the kingdom.

In the fifth parable, the kingdom is likened to a fisherman casting his net into the sea, catching all kinds of sea creatures indiscriminately and hauling all of them ashore. Then, once ashore, they sort out the edible fish and discard the rest. To be in the kingdom is to become like a little child, accepting everything as it comes. Later, one can sort things out. This is a kind of extreme generosity, to welcome everyone and everything that comes our way, and to delay judgment till later—indeed to let the angels of God do the sorting out.

Finally, in the sixth parable that Matthew has collected in this batch, Jesus says that everyone who has developed an understanding of the kingdom of God has both new understandings and old wisdoms available. The old way is not the best way, nor is the new way. The best way is the best way, and those ways will come from both what is new and what is old. “Therefore,” he says, “every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

These are parables of the kingdom. They are clues, not answers. They are just a taste, not a meal. They are meant to tease one with a possibility which, when inquired into and grappled with, can unfold into the kingdom itself.

Amen.

Sermon
7 Pentecost • July 19, 2020
Genesis 28:10-19a • Psalm 139:1-11, 22-23 • Romans 8:12-25 • Matthew 13:24-30. 36-43

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

Friends, we human beings are always looking for something better. We are unlike dumb animals, who do not have the gift of language. They accept their lot without question, for without language there can be no questions. But we who have the divine gift of languaging—the ability to represent the past in words and, like our Creator, to speak the Word and create the future we would like to have.

We would like to have something better than our present circumstance, something better than our past. So Jacob, in the First Lesson, has been sent by his father Isaac to get a wife from among his relatives back East. Isaac and Jacob are living in Canaan, but Isaac does not think the women there were worthy—better to go to relatives, of whom they can be certain.

On his way, the sun seta and it seema good to stop and get some sleep. So he lies down, with a stone for a pillow, and sleeps. And a dream comes upon him of a ladder, reaching from that place up into heaven, with angels of God going up and down the ladder. And then God appears, standing beside him, and makes a commitment to him, a promise that the land on which he is sleeping will become his. God will give it to him and his descendants. And he promises to stay with him until he comes back to settle on the land he’s been given.

Now, promises are about the future. A promise puts into words something that does not yet exist, and creates it as a possibility, not yet a reality. A promise is a possibility backed up by a commitment, and you can hear God committing to the fulfillment of the promise in the dream.

Jacob’s current situation is not good. You will recall that, through deceit and cunning, he stole his brother Esau’s birthright and the blessing of his father which would make him the head of the family when the old man died. Esau was not happy with him, and threatened his life. Jacob’s current situation is not good.

Jacob needed a different future, a better one than the mess he’d so far made of his life. The dream was about that better future, the gift of a new possibility for him and for his children’s children—God promises that “the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.”

Paul expresses something of the same idea when he contrasts our natural state as human beings, enslaved to our present circumstances, beset by difficulties, hounded by health issues and uncertain economic times. But here is the future that Paul sees as possible: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”

Paul’s vision of the future expands beyond the personal to the Universe: “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God … We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves … groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”

The promise that both the Book of Genesis and St Paul hold before us is the promise of a vastly better future and, amazingly, one that will be brought forth through us. We—you and I—are the vehicles by which the new creation, the bright new future will be manifested. Both Paul and Jacob were blown away by the possibilities that God has in mind for us.

Paul counsels patience when all we have is hope, not the reality. But we need to have the hope, the possibility of the bright future.

I was listening the other day to a small group of Episcopal clergy, expressing doubt that their parishes would survive, given the economic difficulties that the shut-down has visited on them. They could see no possibility, no hope. Yet without hope, there cannot be a bright future, and hope is something that only they can create.

Good Shepherd will survive. That is my promise and my commitment. We certainly face challenges, and I certainly do not have all the answers about how we will survive and prosper. But we do not have to know how the future will happen—only that it will happen. And not only will we survive, we will prosper!

Amen.

Sermon
6 Pentecost • July 12, 2020
Genesis 25:19-34 • Psalm 119:105-112 • Romans 8:1-11 • Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

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

Jesus leaves the house where he was staying and a crowd gathers to hear this man who is gaining a reputation as an engaging speaker. The crowd surrounds him, too many for him to be heard on the fringes. So he gets into a boat and pushes our a little from the shore. You may remember how loud it was in the swimming pools when we were little. Sound carries very well across water. So Jesus sat in the boat (teachers always sat in those days) and told a story or two.

We like entertainment! We like a good story. There was no television then, no radio, no books, no newspapers, even. There were community storytellers, of course, and wandering preachers who, like the tent revivalists in the American experience, came for a couple of days to hold a revival and then left. Jesus was like that, and he capitalized on people’s hunger for entertainment. He told stories.

We remember stories, and we can repeat them. They stick with us so that we can chew on them to extract whatever meaning we can find. He was speaking to country folk, farmers and men in the trades, housewives and parents. They knew what a sower is: the farmer who takes a basket of seed into a plowed field and flings them across the furrows—broadcasts the seeds in the time-honored method of planting grain.

But all soil is not the same, and some fell on the path which was hard pavement, trodden down by human and animal feet. And the birds saw the seeds lying helplessly exposed and ate them up. Other seeds survived to sprout, but had no deep roots since they were on rocky ground. The sun shriveled them up and killed them before they had a chance to produce grain. Others were choked by weeds, which steal all the moisture from the soil and cover them so no sun reaches them, and they die.

But some seeds fell on good soil and produced many times their number. Here is the miracle of farming. One grain, if it gains roots and is watered sufficiently, and has enough sunlight—one grain of wheat can multiply prodigiously. Just out of curiosity, I googled the question: “How much wheat will one seed produce?” The response was, “On average, there are 22 seeds per head and 5 heads per plant … 110 seeds per plant.” Just as Jesus said, a hundredfold at best, and others less.

He may have gone on to explain the meaning of the story. but not necessarily. In Mark’s Gospel, for example, he just lets the story germinate on its own in the minds of his audience, explaining it later to his close disciples. But good teachers have different methods for different times and this may have been one for parsing the story, for taking it apart to see the meaning. “Guided inquiry,” this is called.

The story is about the word of the kingdom. Some hear it and, because it is not easily heard, dismiss it—not out of disrespect, but just because they were distracted by what Jesus calls “the evil one.” In the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “deliver us from evil.” But the original text says, “deliver us from the evil one.” The evil one is those distractions that divert our attention and keep us from learning about the kingdom.

Others actually get the meaning of the word of the kingdom, even become enthusiastic about it, but after a while, when it gets costly or troublesome, they forget. They are those whose rocky soil did not allow deep roots to grow—enthusiasm soon fades.

Similarly, seeds sown among the thorns are choked—in human terms, being harassed by cares and trouble, or hearing the siren song of great wealth, the word of the kingdom gets lost in the thicket of worldly concerns.

But some seeds hit the ground for which they were intended, the good soil, well-watered and sun-warmed, and they produced many fold.

Notice that Jesus is not trying to get us to improve ourselves. He is not encouraging us to be anything other than what we already are. He does, however, want us to wake up and seen the reality. “Listen!” he says. Pay attention! See the reality of how the good news that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” gets lost with some people, and others are enthusiastic until it gets hard, and some are a blessing to many.

We in America live with the principle that all people are created equal, and there is some truth to this great American maxim. Yet it is also the case that vast inequalities occur among us. Some are huge contributors to society, and others are a drain on our common wellbeing. That’s just the way it is; that’s just the truth of it

The power of seeing clearly, however, is what Jesus is depending on. When he teaches, he shows us truth, reality as it actually is. Why? Because the truth allows for transformation. The truth alters us, all by itself, shifts us without our having to do anything. We do not have to fix ourselves once we see the truth of ourselves and the world around us. The power of the truth does the heavy lifting; seeing the truth turns us into the heavenly beings we were created to be.

Amen.

Sermon
5 Pentecost • July 5, 2020
Genesis 24:34-38. 42-49. 58-67 • Psalm 45:11-18 • Romans 7:15-25a • Matthew 11:16-19

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

Again, welcome back! If you’ve been wondering what church will look like in the future, this is it. A combination of zooming and in-person participation will likely be the norm for the foreseeable future. Social distancing and wearing masks will probably last for a year or so—a vaccine, at the earliest, will be produced in January and it will take six months to get most of us immune to the virus. So that means next June before we can again have Good Shepherd’s marvelous coffee hours. This is my optimistic estimate.

The good news for us is that we have discovered how to have close relationships via the Internet. Who knew! I never would have thought it possible, yet we are still church, in every sense of the word. And for that I am profoundly grateful.

In today’s Gospel Lesson, we find a compilation of five distinct sayings of Jesus, parables that Matthew has grouped together in the midst of an ongoing story.

“To what will I compare this generation?” he asks, and then answers his own question with a vivid description of sulky children, kids who just don’t want to play. His group wanted to play “wedding,” but they wouldn’t have it; then they tried to play “funeral” and they wouldn’t play that game either. To play is to be engaged, to connect, to participate, to listen. Unless one is willing to listen, the good news cannot be heard. Because the notion of the kingdom of heaven is difficult to get under one’s belt, it requires being engaged in the inquiry. And “this generation” wouldn’t play. Do you get the sense that Jesus is sad about the resistance he is encountering? Do you hear his disappointment that they won’t listen?

The next saying makes a similar point—whatever he and his old master, John the Baptist, did was interpreted to discredit them. John was an ascetic, living sparsely with no comforts. It was used as evidence that he was possessed by a demon—why listen to a crazy guy? Jesus did the opposite, using dinner parties as the venue for his teaching, and they called him a drunkard and a glutton—why listen to a depraved person? They found excuses to not engage, not to do the work of learning how to see the kingdom.

Matthew adds another line to this saying, one that I suspect was originally a stand-alone. But it fits. “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” he says. This is a version of the saying with which he warned his disciples against false prophets. How can you tell who should be listened to? “By their fruits you shall know them.” Just look and see the results; that will tell you clearly everything you need to know. Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.

The third saying deals with how it is that the Gospel is so hard to grasp. Thinking is hard work. Notice that we are always having thoughts; there’s a conversation going on all the time in our minds—“roof brain chatter” the Asian gurus call it. Notice also that these thoughts we are having are all familiar thoughts—opinions and judgements and things we long since figured out. This is not thinking; it is having thoughts. To think is to create something new, and that is hard work. Interestingly, that is what infants do all the time. They think. They collect sights and sounds and feelings, and then work out what they mean.

“I thank you, Father … because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” If we will return to being an infant, to wondering what on earth is going on, what can things mean; if we will shed our already-knowing, our freeze-dried explanations, the infinite wisdom that we have accumulated over a lifetime; if we will become as a little child—the Father will reveal all things. Our smarts will not save us; only our open-minded listening.

The fourth saying sounds to me like Jesus musing, almost to himself, about his relationship to the Father, and the work he has been given. “Whatever I have, it has come from the Father who knows me. And my job is to show the Father to those whom I choose.”

And finally, the fifth saying: This has come to be known as the “Comfortable Words.,” and they used to be part of the Eucharist every Sunday as I grew up. It is an invitation and a promise. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” This is addressed to each of us, for no one is free of heavy burdens. The invitation is to come to Christ for rest. How to get the rest? “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.”

The yoke that Jesus is using as a metaphor is a wooden pole, shaped to go across a person’s shoulders. It is used to carry heavy burdens. Jesus is inviting us to replace our burdens that are weighing us down with his burden. This burden is a commitment to love and care for others, and to learn from Jesus. It is an invitation to come before him as an infant, open to learning what the world cannot teach. “For I am gentle and humble in heart,” Jesus says, “and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Amen

Sermon
4 Pentecost • June 28, 2020
Genesis 22:1-14• Psalm 13 • Romans 6:12-23 • Matthew 10:40-42

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

In today’s Gospel Lesson there are two distinct sayings of Jesus. Both sayings have the word “welcome” in them, and I suspect that is why Matthew put them together. But they make quite different points.

First, he addresses being welcomed by another person. It is not as simple as it might seem. He says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

For example, when we receive a phone call from a salesperson, and we like their pitch and welcome the call, we are welcoming not only that person but also the company they work for, the company that sent them. Perhaps you remember the Fuller Brush Man, who went door-to-door selling household goods, and was usually welcomed. Welcoming him meant that you were also welcoming the Fuller Brush Company that sent him.

It’s the same idea here, except that there is another one involved—the Father. This is the chain of “sendings”—God sends Jesus, who sends us. To welcome us is to welcome Jesus, which is to welcome the Father.

Jesus speaks elsewhere of a similar chain, this time of love. “As the Father loves me, so I love you, go and love one another.” Everything flows from the Father, through Jesus, to us, and beyond to whomever we deal with. Whether loving or being sent, it all cascades down from the Father.

I suspect Jesus is saying that we can have confidence. Others will discover God just by welcoming us. We are, after all, ambassadors of God; to welcome us is to welcome the God who sent us.

The second saying of Jesus in this passage speaks of rewards. We are often told by very wise people that to do good without the expectation of a reward is where virtue lies. Altruism—doing good for the sake of doing good—is the best way to live, some have told us.

We even have a lovely hymn that begins, “My God, I love thee not because I hope for heaven thereby…” This is a pretty sentiment, indeed. But it is not very faithful to the gospel. Whether you love God hoping for heaven, or you love God because you hope God will make you rich, or you love God trusting that he will protect you, or you love God because you are afraid not to—what counts is that you love, not the motivation.

This is equally true in human relationships. Whether you avoid killing that irritating motorist because you fear the law, or because you love humanity—neither motivation makes any difference. What counts is that you refrain from murder. Please, I know you are not murderous! I’m just trying to make a point, that what you do is what matters, not your motivation.

G.K. Chesterton famously said, “This is the greatest treason, to do the right thing for the wrong reason.” Nonsense! What counts is doing the right thing, whatever the reason.

Human beings, people like us, actually do act in the expectation of some benefit for ourselves or for those we care about. How could this possibly be wrong—it is reasonable and appropriate to expect a reward as the result of our actions. And so it happens. Smile, and you are likely to get a smile back—a reward. Yawn, and you will get a yawn back—a reward.

Jesus is never a moralist. He never tells us how to be good. “You have the Law,” he says, “obey it.” And he just doesn’t have anything more to say about being good. And indeed, we do know right from wrong; we know the laws, the statutes. the ordinances, and the canons; and we also know all those unwritten codes of behavior that we learned at our mothers’ knees.

Instead of being a moralist, telling us how to be good, Jesus is interested in our profiting, and in our being rewarded. Profit is about increase. Jesus is concerned “that we may life, and that more abundantly.” The good news is that it’s possible to be truly alive, lively, overflowing with vitality.

Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.” This is not necessarily very good news. Prophets, those who see and speak the bald, unadorned truth, are not always well-received, even today. The prophets before Jesus, and Jesus himself who was also a prophet, were usually persecuted. This is not the kind of reward that we would welcome. But the true reward of the prophet is the ability to live in the truth, not the mist of mythology or story. And if we welcome true prophets, true truth-tellers, we likewise will have the clarity of the prophet. The same is true of the righteous—those who do right; they receive the reward of a clear conscience.

And he says, “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” Here is the great leveling of the Gospel—God is no respecter of persons and all will be treated equally, whether great king or little child. To contribute to the aliveness of another, even a little child, even so little a matter as a cup of cold water in the heat of the day, is to receive the kingdom of heaven.

Amen.