May 2021 – By Another Road

I preached this sermon on Pentecost, May 23, 2021 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary texts cited are Ezekiel 37:1-14 and John 15:26-27

How do you usually feel when you come into church on a Sunday morning (or, in more recent times, when you happen to tune in from home?) How do you feel right now?

Excited? Encouraged? Or perhaps a bit tired? Burdened by the events of the week? Maybe on some especially challenging days you feel a little like those Israelites mentioned today in Ezekiel, the ones only recently brought back to life whose bones are dried up, gasping for the breath of life. (When my alarm clock goes off at 6, I usually feel exactly like that, but I never was an early morning person.)

What I find remarkable, and beautiful, and inspiring about you, however, is that you nonetheless come here each week, whenever you are able. You step through these doors and let your body and your heart and your mind get caught up in the words and the patterns of the liturgy. Despite all of the other things vying for your attention and your energy, you are here, in this place, doing this thing that nobody really requires you to do. Why is that? What is it that draws you here, to this particular church, whether for the first time or for so many times that you’ve lost count?

When asked that question some of us might say: the people; the beauty of our traditions; the music; the opportunity to rest and pray and reflect on our lives. At least some of those things are important for most of us here, but I would also offer that there is something even deeper at work, something we don’t tend to talk about very much in the Episcopal Church, but something that we ought to name and claim, especially today, on Pentecost:

You are here because of the Holy Spirit. We are participating in this liturgy, right this very moment, because the Holy Spirit has drawn us here. You are here because God’s Spirit is within you, and that Spirit is like a moth to flame, like a river returning to its source—this Spirit longs for communion with the Father and the Son, and has placed that same longing in you–a longing to know and be known, to hold and to be held.

‘Deep calls to deep,’ the Psalmist says, ‘at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have gone over me.’

And we are here, deep under the waves of liturgy, treading among the shafts light in these baptismal waters because we somehow know, under the ebb and flow of the prayers and the silences, that there is TRUTH here, a truth that is deeper than our institutional stumbles, a truth deeper than our human failings. A pattern of living, revealed in the ancient pattern of the liturgy: a pattern that contains a truth you will not find anywhere else, nowhere else in the world except within the enactment of this living Word. In the liturgy, unbroken in its offering since the time of the apostles, are the tools that teach us how to live out our daily life as God meant it to be lived.

This is Spirit-driven, Spirit-led work.

“Jesus said to his disciples, “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.”

This promise is fulfilled in the Pentecost account recorded in the Book of Acts, when the disciples were transformed by wind and flame from somewhat hapless followers of a beloved teacher into the undaunted, fervent agents of Christ’s mission on earth. And it was not just the Son of God, but the ongoing work of the Spirit of God that drew them into the lives THEY were intended to live—it was the Spirit that animated their mortal bones and caused them to prophesy and to see visions and to dream dreams. It was the Spirit that sustained their dedication far beyond the typically fickle, faltering enthusiasm we tend to give even the most worthy causes of this world.

And that same Spirit of truth, that same Spirit that swept over the waters at creation, that same Spirit that descended at Jesus’ baptism and at your own, that same Spirit is still calling out to you, still guiding you, still animating THIS community and THIS liturgy, still saying YES: God desires for you to be close, God desires for you to take your proper place in creation, God desires you to live in fullness, God desires you.

You.

God desires you so much, in fact, that God has made a home within you; God has fed you with his own flesh; God’s holy breath is on your breath as you offer up these ancient and eternal prayers week after week.

In short, we are here, friends, not because liturgy is just a nice ritual to enact on a Sunday morning, but because liturgy at its must fundamental is the very pattern of the Holy Spirit’s movement through creation, and we are being carried aloft on the Spirit’s wings, learning, day by day, how to fly heavenward.

I share all of this with you because I sometimes observe that, if we talk about the Holy Spirit at all in our church, we don’t tend to talk about the Spirit in connection to our experience of liturgy. Maybe it’s because we are so often focused on the Father and the Son, or maybe it’s because we think that too much talk about the Spirit might open the door to a level of exuberance to which we Episcopalians are not generally accustomed.

But be assured that the Spirit IS here, in candlelight and in quiet gesture and in the swelling note of song, the Spirit is here in the silence of your prayers and in the outstretching of your hand towards Christ’s body, and we should be encouraged, emboldened even, to name God’s dynamic presence in our liturgy, and to say to the world, to our neighbors and our friends and those who have fallen away from faith: COME, see what is TRUE. COME, see what the shape of love is. COME, see how God teaches us to embody, in this liturgical gathering—in this school of the Holy Spirit—the essential vision of a sanctified life: gratitude, praise, confession, lamentation, reconciliation, offering, receiving, communion, contemplation, joy. COME, and see, and live.

We ought not be timid or bashful about this. Because one thing I know is that there are countless people—some of whom you probably know quite well—who are desperately longing for the type of life we seek and strive for here. A Spirit-driven, Christ-shaped, liturgically-enriched life. There is no greater gift that we can give than to invite others into the practice of their truest, most beautiful humanity.

So when you think about why you come here, week after week, and what it is about the liturgy that draws you in, what it is that inspires you to give your heart over to Jesus, day after day, remember, it is , in part, because you are doing something essential here, something more than engaging in a pastime, something more than exercising personal taste. We are seeking and claiming LIFE. True life. Eternal life. Love-infused life.

The tongue of flame, and the wind, and the dove, and the water, and the bread, and the blood, and the unbroken song, and the unbroken prayer and the unbreakable bond: in the liturgy these things are present, they are given.

In the liturgy, the Spirit guides us into all truth.

In the liturgy, these tired bones–yours and mine–can live.

I preached this sermon on May 2nd, 2021 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary texts cited are 1 John 4:7-21 and John 15:1-8.

“Jesus said to his disciples, ”I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.“

—

When I was about 10 or so, I was given a role in a community theater musical version of Rumpelstiltskin. I loved doing theater in school as a kid, and I was so excited that I got to be on stage with adults and live musicians—I felt like I had hit the big time!

And I remember on the first day that the director told me that I was going to be the page boy, one of the king’s servants, and I thought, yup, this is my big shot—next stop Broadway, surely—and there was this big opening number where all the villagers were presenting gifts to the king—one person presented a ham, and another one brought some lemons, and another one brought a big basket of limes, and then the director said, “Phillip, this is where you come in,” and I thought, wow, do I get to sing a solo here, or give a dramatic monologue? And then the director said, “you don’t actually have any lines in this play; we just need you to pick up the basket of limes and carry them off the stage. Then you’re done.”

Yup, that’s it. That was literally the entirety of my part in Rumpelstiltskin. So, I carried that basket of limes offstage. Needless to say, no Tony award was forthcoming.

But honestly, I still loved it. And probably because it was the only scene I was in, I have never forgotten that particular musical number, where the characters were presenting the lemons and the lime–the fruits of their labors–hoping to one up each other, to impress the king, to win his favor and maybe to earn some bragging rights among their neighbors.

Maybe we can all relate to that impulse a little bit. Because on some level, in whatever context we might find ourselves, I think we all hope that we’re going to make a good impression. We hope that our fruitfulness, whatever that means for us—maybe our work or our pastimes or other manifestations of our personal fulfillment—is really going to WOW whoever it is that we think is assessing us. Our family. Our neighbors. Our friends at church. The people on Facebook. Maybe even God.

That sense of needing to be impressively fruitful can shape how we think about our faith, our relationship with Jesus, and it can affect how we interpret certain passages.

So, for example, in today’s Gospel reading we hear Jesus talking about being the vine and his Father being the vinegrower, and we are the branches who are expected to bear fruit, to bear MUCH fruit, in fact, so that we can glorify God…or else we’ll be burned up and thrown away into the fire. And if we’re accustomed to always thinking that somehow we need to be impressive to be of value, that sounds a little intimidating. like an ultimatum—be fruitful or else!

And so then in our anxiety we might start to act like those villagers in the play, eager to prove our worth:

God, look at these fruits, I mean, these are really impressive fruits, amazing fruits, I am so darn FRUITFUL, Lord, you just wouldn’t believe it. And no offense, no judgment, but mine are a little nicer than his fruits over there. I mean, look at these LIMES. Just look at ‘em. The Holy Spirit was really doing something amazing right here. So…I win, right? I’m the best one, right?

Now of course, we naturally want to celebrate the fruitful ways in which God is at work in the world—the blessings we receive, the ways in which we share abundant life with others.

But I want us to think carefully about whether our personal anxiety about being fruitful enough—which we might interpret at times as being saintly enough, as busy enough, as able enough, as successful enough—obscures what Jesus is really getting at here in this parable of the vine and branches. Because, I would offer, this is not so much a parable about God’s assessment or judgment of individual achievement as it is a parable about connection, about the divinely-perfected integration of heaven and earth.

“God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us,” the first letter of John says, and we need to take that quite seriously as we receive this image of the vine and branch. In Jesus, in the Incarnate mystery of the risen and eternal God, which we enter by our baptism, there is an inseparability between our life and God’s life. Just as the vine transfers nutrients and water and life force into the branch, so God lives in us. God’s life, God’s love—God’s very essence—is sustaining everything that we do, big or small, shaping our hearts, giving breath to our words, bending the limbs of our body as we move in the world.

“I am the true vine…abide in me as I abide in you…apart from me you can do nothing.” This is not a threat—it is an assurance. Christ is saying there is nothing you can do that is not already part of me, because we are one in love. I have given my life to you. We are connected. You are never alone. In me, no one is ever alone.

And this is a radical shift, even from the Old Testament imagery of Israel as the vine and God as the gardener, because now God has integrated God’s own life into the plant itself, so that it will never have to survive by itself.

Christ as the vine, as the one who sustains us directly, replaces the idea of fruitfulness as our offering TO God and replaces it with the idea of fruitfulness as God’s offering to US.

Abide in me, God says, let me offer myself to you, let me give you the fruits of MY spirit, so that you never need be estranged from me again. This is my love for you—to give you myself! Too long you have tended your own vines and trembled and wept at the insufficiency of your own meager harvest, but I tell you now that my life is your life, my harvest is your harvest. Rest and live in that knowledge. Rest and live in me.

This fulfills what the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” and “their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again.”

In our life in Christ, this is what is true about the universe: that we are one—one organism, one cycle of life and love. There is no need for anxiety, nor for competition. There is no falling short before the king’s throne. In Christ, you are already part of everything. You are already enough.

I confess, though, that even knowing this is true, there are days, especially after the exhaustion and despair of this past year, that I still worry, because, if anything, I feel a lot more like that withered branch in the parable, the one that is all dried up and gnarled, with seemingly no fruit at all.

In those times, forget the basket of limes; I don’t even feel like I have a single blossom. My prayers feel dry and my heart is heavy. And I wonder, sometimes, in that feeling of deadness and dryness—am I apart from God? Am I just a useless appendage to be cast away, as the passage says, “gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned”?

Because if we’re honest, there’s no shortage of dead branches in any of our lives and in our world at large—our failures, our squandered opportunities to love and care for one another, the burdens of our grief and the fear that our lives don’t amount to much.

But today, I want you hear those seemingly dire words anew, remembering, again, that God is love and nothing can separate you from the workings of that love. Nothing. You are part of love’s eternal cycle. And God is redeeming even those fruitless branches in our lives, those dead ends in our heart.

So yes, God is gathering dead branches and putting them into the fire, but God is tenderly gathering them, tenderly gathering up our grief and our brokenness. God is putting them into the flames, yes, but they are the flames of his transformative mercy, reducing that which has died to ashes, not to annihilate, but so that it might go back into the earth to fertilize the growth of new life. To God, nothing is dead forever. And nothing is ever wasted.

This is the truth of which you are a part. This is the Life that imbues your own life.

That will always be so, whether you are feeling abundant and confident, or whether you aren’t. Whether you are center stage, or whether you’re just standing in the wings with a basket of limes, wondering what the heck you’re doing.

What sweetness, what relief, and what possibilities for joy when we realize that fruitfulness is something given to us, not something proven by us. And when we realize that we are already known. Already acceptable. Already abiding on the vine, in God’s own life, forever.

Month: May 2021

School of the Spirit: A Sermon

Fruitfulness: A Sermon