Month: August 2023

Seen: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on August 27, 2023 at Saint Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary texts cited are Exodus 1:8-2:10, Romans 12:1-8, and Matthew 16:13-20.

Some years ago, there was an essay published in the New York Times and it was tantalizingly titled, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This.” Now, I admit that I was rather skeptical when I saw that title; it sounded like one of those ads you see on the internet, offering “one weird trick” to make you look ten years younger or to regain your lost hair. As you can see, I have not generally taken advantage of those ads.

But being single at the time, I was intrigued by the idea of a surefire method for finding love, so I read on. The author, Mandy Len Catron, described a study done in the 90s by psychologist Dr. Arthur Aron, which suggested that significant levels of connection between two people could be achieved very quickly by asking one another a series of 36 vulnerable questions over a 90 minute period. After asking all of the questions, according to the Times essay, you were then supposed to gaze into the eyes of the other person for *exactly* four minutes and…voila. Love.

If this sounds a bit far-fetched to you, I get it, though for the record, in both the original study and in the essay, some marriages did emerge from this initial moment of connection. So, hey, you never know. Dating is tough, you have to get creative. 

But romance aside, it does make sense to me that there would be a unique sort of potency in the combination of knowing and seeing someone with great intentionality. So often, we only casually consider the people in proximity to us, even the ones we are around a great deal. We know their names, maybe some of their hobbies or associations, and their general appearance, but how often do we look, really look at them? How often do we seek to know, really know, something substantive about their inner life or their memories or their dreams? For that matter, how often do we strive to see and to know ourselves in that way? 

It can be a little scary, if we’re honest, to know and to be known on that level. Maybe we fear that if someone actually sees us as we are, all of us, every mistake, every quirk, every wrinkle, we will become less lovable in their eyes. And maybe we fear if we see others in their fullness, we won’t know what to do with it, we won’t be up to the task of loving them in the way they need. 

I’ve been on both sides of that equation. I think of the times when I have been hesitant to share my story and my identity with others for fear of rejection. And I think of the times, whether in my hurry or my hard-heartedness, that I haven’t looked into the eyes of that person seeking assistance on the street, my gaze downcast, hiding from them, hiding from our shared humanity. Maybe you’ve experienced these things as well: opportunities missed to be seen, to see, to experience the connection that only comes from open eyes and open hearts.

But we learn in Scripture time and time again that the flourishing, the healing, and the salvation that we seek can only be found when we dare to look and to be looked upon, in that space of mutual recognition, both with our neighbor and with God. 

In our Exodus story, it is the willingness of the midwives to see the beauty and the humanity of the Hebrew children that gives them the courage to defy Pharaoh’s edict. 

And St. Paul is encouraging a certain type of self-disclosure in the letter to the Romans when he invites the faithful to ‘present [their] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” offering up not just the parts of themselves that seem impressive or strong or unmarred, but the totality of themselves, their creaking bones and their broken hearts and their unanswered questions, to let all of it be placed upon the altar of life, where God in Christ will see it all, and hold it all, and render it all into something beautiful. 

But part of the strange and lovely mystery of the gospel is that the work of seeing and being seen is not humanity’s alone. Because in Jesus, God’s own life is laid out for us to see, it is placed on the altar, too, that we might know him and render something beautiful from divine self-disclosure. 

And so God stands before us with his own list of vulnerable questions, his own desire to look us in the eye for four minutes, or maybe forever, to give us a glimpse of his eternal longing for us. 

This is what we encounter in today’s Gospel passage, in that all important question on Jesus’ lips, perhaps the most vulnerable question that God has ever asked of humanity: Who do you say that I am? 

Who do you say that I am, my friends, my children, my infuriating and precious creation? Who do you say that I am, now that we are face to face? Am I another prophet? Am I another king? Am I a projection of your own desires? Am I an instrument of your political agendas? A benefactor to meet your needs? Or do you see, do you know, do you feel the way that it is much more than that, do you sense how heaven erupts in the space between us, the way that an undying love weaves in and out of every question I ask you and every story I share? Do you understand who I am and how far I have come in order that you might understand? 

And if you understand, can you love me? Can you love me back, as I love you? 

Who do you say that I am?

And Peter, on behalf of the other disciples, on behalf of all of us who would follow, says, 

You are the Messiah. You are the Son of the Living God. 

You are the One we’ve waited for. You are the Love of our Lives, you are the Love of Life itself. Yes, we understand.

And I like to think that Jesus smiles in that moment because at last God knows what it feels like to be seen. 

If we want to know what heaven on earth can look like, how we might participate in it day by day, this moment is instructive. For if the God of the Universe came to be with us in the flesh, that we might see and know and name him as our own truest love, then perhaps our interactions with one another should reflect this. 

Perhaps, on the most basic level, our discipleship begins simply by looking, really looking, into the eyes of the people we encounter—the familiar ones and the strangers, the friends and yes, even the enemies—especially the enemies—and saying, yes, I see you. I see you. At the very least I want to see you. And while I’m at it, let me show you something of myself, too, and maybe in that brief moment of vulnerability, when we behold each other, something new will begin to take root in each of us, something that feels a little bit like falling in love, even if only for a moment. It’s like one weird trick to change the world. 

You might be wondering if I ever tried the experiment in that essay. Sort of. Matt and I have asked each other some of the questions, and they’re really good. The four minutes of eye contact still feels a little daunting to me. 

But it has reminded me that one of the most fundamentally important things we can do, and one of the bravest, is simply to see what is, and to love what is, and to believe that we, too, are worthy of being seen and loved. Because if you look closely enough, no matter whom you meet, you will always be looking into the face of the Holy One, if you choose to recognize him.

Just like the essay said, to fall in love with anyone—or really, to fall in love with everyone—do this. 

Do-Over: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, August 20, 2023 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 15:21-28, Jesus’ interaction with a Canaanite woman.

Have you ever looked back at some moment in your life and wished you could have a do-over?  I know that it’s popular to say things like “no regrets” and “everything happens for a reason,” but if I’m perfectly honest, there are plenty of things I would change if I could. Some of them are a bit trivial, like my questionable fashion choices in high school (though some of these, as I approach 40, already seem to be coming back around).

But some of the regrettable things are a bit harder and heavier: the things in my life done and left undone, the things said and left unsaid. They jangle around in my memory like a set of keys—keys for doorways that can no longer be opened—tarnished and jagged and yet hard to throw away. 

Truth be told, though, I am mostly ok with that. While I don’t think it’s helpful to myself or anyone else to wallow in regret, I do think there is value in remembering what has not gone well, what has been broken within us and broken by us, because it informs how we can make different choices in the present and on into the future. 

This is true not just for individuals, but for communities and nations, too, all of whom must reckon with the more painful aspects of their histories if they ever hope to unlock the shackles that bind their greatest ideals, to liberate their deepest and most beautiful dreams. 

We don’t get a do-over, exactly, but we get an infinite number of opportunities, as long as we live, to do better, to discern and to grow in wisdom, informed by our past but never imprisoned by it.

And this not just a sort of humanistic self-improvement philosophy, but the fundamental arc of Scripture, a story of promise and regret and repentance and redemption, a story which is itself filled with the messy choices of people and of nations wrestling with a Divine presence and power only partially understood, and yet who are drawn, always, always, into a new revelation of the breadth and the depth of God’s infinite power and unfailing ability to redeem our complicated histories.

I’ve been pondering all of this about do overs and doing better because, I think, it will help us wrestle with our challenging Gospel text this morning. Not solve it, but wrestle with it. 

Let’s just name the hard thing up front: Jesus is, to say the least, not kind to the Canaanite woman; he associates her and her people with dogs, and seems uninterested, at first, in healing her daughter. And we could, as many have, spend a lot of time wondering whether he was having his own regrettable moment or whether he was, in some opaque Divine way, testing the woman’s faith. Given who Jesus is, neither of these two choices is particularly easy or comfortable. 

But it is also good for us to step back and consider that for the disciples, and even for the original hearers of Matthew’s gospel, the truly remarkable thing in the narrative is not Jesus’ commitment to the children of Israel, nor his verbal sparring with the woman, but the fact that, ultimately, she is a Canaanite who receives God’s blessing. 

For if Israel’s troubled collective memory is a set of old keys, their relationship with the Canaanites is a particularly heavy and sharp one—the Canaanites are the people who originally inhabited the Promised Land, they were the ones displaced and slaughtered by Joshua’s armies, they were among the ones subjugated by the Kingdom of Israel and even now, in Jesus’ time, under Roman rule, the Canaanites are still a people whose name evokes that strange mixture of pride and fear when we encounter those whom we have othered past the point of recognition.

And all of this, all of this spilled blood and rage and this faded ghost of empire is heaped upon the Canaanite woman—this woman who has surely knelt at her child’s bedside, eyes brimming with tears, praying for her to make it; this woman who shouts in the street; who cries out for help; who boldly kneels before Jesus and seeks her daughters survival. She is a woman of unquestionable courage, but as a Canaanite she is also a symbol of all that Israel has wrought, and all that they have lost. No wonder they want to silence here and send her away. We often try to ignore those who remind us of our own wounds.

But there’s something we have to understand about Jesus, something which both explains and underscores the significance of what happens next, the fact that he doesn’t send her away. 

From the very beginning, when he was born as the Son of David in Bethlehem, Jesus has carried both the burden and the promise of Israel within his flesh—their chosenness and their chastening. We might even say that throughout his life, Jesus has embodied and recapitulated the original story of Israel.

And thus, Jesus, like Israel, is exiled into Egypt and then brought back; and like Israel he is sent into the desert to be tested and formed; and like Israel he bears out the weighty tradition of the prophets in his teaching and his miracles. And in all of these instances, he gathers up the glory and the pain and the belovedness of his people to bring it into an ever deepening level of Divine intimacy, knitting Israel’s story of liberation into the very fabric of creation, that it might become everyone’s story, in every time, in every nation.

Which makes his encounter, today, with the Canaanite woman, all the more significant, because we cannot forget that Israel’s history, its journey, is political and territorial, not just theological. And so now Jesus stands here, as Israel once did when they crossed with their armies to the other side of the Jordan, he stands here once again holding the life of a Canaanite in his hands, bearing the ancient grudges and the ancient fears of his people on his shoulders, and….he lays them down. 

He lets this mother’s love, and her faith, and her fierce determination change the story. O Woman, he says, great is your faith, and while the past cannot be erased, somewhere a new has opened, and suddenly the Kingdom of Heaven is bigger than Israel alone, bigger than any one nation. And while the children of the ones who spilled each other’s blood cannot get a do-over, they can do better. They can tell a new story, a story in which the daughter of a Canaanite is as beloved and valued as anyone else, and in which the only conquering power is mercy, and where the only Promised Land is the one big enough for everyone. 

Can we tell that story, too? Can we show the world what it looks like to do better, even if we can’t get a do-over on the most painful parts of our own history? Can we lay down our own ancient enmities and fears and misplaced nostalgia so that the best of who we have been might inform who we yet might become? These are deeply personal questions as well as collective ones for our church and for our world. 

But the good news of the gospel is that the answer is always YES. Yes, there is something on the other side of regret. Yes, there is something on the other side of failure and fear. Yes, there is a place where we won’t need all those old keys jangling in our pockets after all, because in that place all the doors will be flung wide open, and no one will be shut out, and everything that has been lost will be found and made whole.

Call that place what you will: call it the Kingdom, call it the new Creation, or call it Canaan; by any name and by God’s grace we’re heading to that land of promise together, and when we arrive, I suspect it will feel like this: waking up to a mother’s face, brimming with joyful tears, saying, my child, all is well. I am here. You made it.

Love > Chaos: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on August 13, 2023 at St. Anne Episcopal Church in West Chester, OH, on the occasion of my first service as Rector. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 14:22-33, when Jesus walks to the disciples across a stormy sea.

Anyone who has ever moved, whether across the country or the globe, or even just across town, knows that it can be an experience of utter chaos. And although I was determined, back when my call to St. Anne was finalized, that for once I would have an incredibly organized and orderly moving process, and that I would have all my boxes packed weeks in advance, life had other ideas. A confluence of events, both planned and unplanned, conspired to find me, just several days before the moving truck arrived, drowning in piles of books and papers and boxes and yet more books, questioning why on earth I ever felt it necessary to acquire three separate copies of Shakespeare’s complete works and a cardigan sweater collection large enough to rival Mr. Rogers (you’ll see those in the fall). 

One evening, as I sifted through the clutter and felt a rising anxiety that it all might rise up and swallow me whole, like Jonah in the belly of the fish, I opened a box of old papers and came across a collection of cards and letters, mostly from college days, some even older than that, and I started reading them. There were birthday cards from my late father; letters my mom sent me when she was living in Africa; postcards from old friends I haven’t seen in years. And as I sat there, reading through them, reminded of all the places I been and the people who have loved and cared for me so well along the way, I looked around at the disorder of my apartment and my life and I had a feeling of clarity, of reassurance, that yes, even here, even in the midst of change, in the midst of upheaval, love would sustain me, just as it always has. 

Those moments of chaos, both large and small, are no stranger to any of us, I’m sure. No matter who we are or where we come from, there are turbulent seasons of life, when the safe and familiar fall away and we are left out in the open, unsure of how to navigate, or even just how to keep our head above water. And it is perhaps quite natural for us, in such moments, to assume that the resolution to chaos is its opposite: order. safety. calm. Once I get everything in my life in order, then it’ll all be ok. Once I get all my books and cardigans stacked and sorted, it will all be ok. Somewhere, over the rainbow, just on the other side of the chaotic present, there will be a moment where life makes perfect sense and nothing is complicated.

There’s just one little problem—that perfect order which we seek never quite comes to pass. Someone gets sick, or an unexpected bill comes along, or the person we expected to stick around says goodbye, or we simply have too much to do and not enough time. And the waters rise, and we feel, once again, like the forces of chaos are stronger than our best laid plans. 

Surely the disciples felt a bit like this when they were out in that boat, battered by the storm on the sea. In the passage just before this, Jesus has just miraculously fed over five thousand people, so they’re all feeling pretty good about themselves, and then he says, take that boat and go over to the other side, and that seems straightforward enough for a group that includes some fishermen. But then the storm comes, and Jesus is nowhere to be found, and they are tired, and afraid, and the forces of chaos, both literal and proverbial, the dark and restless deep, the cresting wave, the rising anxiety, seems ready to overtake them, and any pretense of control, of order, of safety, is carried away on the howling wind.

And then, suddenly, in the midst of the chaos, there is Jesus, walking towards them on the water, saying do not be afraid, saying, take heart, saying, do not be afraid, saying come. 

And I think it is crucial–if we are to understand what this gospel might be telling us about navigating the chaotic storms of our own time and of our own lives–it is absolutely crucial to note that Jesus does not make this invitation to step out of the boat after he has calmed the wind, but before. He speaks from out of the whirlwind, as God did to Job. He is, in effect, saying to Peter (and thereby to us) come out and walk with me on the troubled waters; come and stand out here, where there is more beauty than there is safety; out here where there is more meaning than there is order; and know that I have come to you, across the sea, across the waters of eternity, not always to make things simple, but to make them true.

For it is here, in that space where nothing is familiar and yet where everything is possible, where a hand reaches out to guide us into the unknown, it is here that Jesus reveals good news for anyone frustrated by the inescapable complexities of life: that the true opposite of chaos is not order. The true opposite of chaos is not safety, nor simplicity. It is love. The opposite of chaos is love. 

For when things fall apart, as they sometimes do, and when things get messy, as they often will, whether in our personal lives or in our families or communities or in the world around us, when the piles of problems and to-dos loom up and threaten to swallow us whole, it is love that will reveal itself, even in the midst of the chaos, like an old letter in a moving box, like a hand clasping yours in the darkness, like the Son of God holding us close within the roar of the sea. It is only love that is more powerful than chaos, not because love eliminates chaos, but because chaos, no matter how hard it tries, cannot eliminate love. Chaos can wreck our best laid plans, but it cannot drown out love.

And you know this already, each of you and all of you together, surely. Because the divine spirit of love is alive and strong at St. Anne, and I have already heard from so many of you how that love has sustained you through occasional seasons of change and challenge in your lives, just as it has through many seasons of joy. 

And I know in my heart that we are embarking, this day, on a new season of joy together, but I am also comforted by the reminder that even when we must face and solve challenges together, even when things get a little complicated or confusing or messy, as they sometimes do, it is that love—love of God and neighbor and of one another—that will carry us through any storm.

And it is that kind of love—the wild and free kind that is undaunted by chaos; that doesn’t hesitate to get its feet wet; that doesn’t mind troubling the waters for the sake of justice or navigating the unknown for the sake of spiritual depth—it is that Jesus-type of love that this world needs so desperately right now. And that’s the kind of love we’re going to continue cultivating here and sharing with everyone who comes through these doors and those beyond this place who need to hear about what happens here. Believe me, they need to hear about it.

Because how marvelous it is that the God of the universe, the Lord of all creation, the One who breathed over the swirling waters at the morning of the world, is coming to find us, still, on this very morning, undeterred by any storm, unstoppable, unimaginably determined to love us, saying, sighing, singing, roaring that invitation into the wind:

Take heart. 

Do not be afraid. 

Come.