church – By Another Road

Spectacle: A Sermon on The Transfiguration

I preached this sermon on Sunday, February 19, 2023 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, Indiana. The lectionary texts cited are Exodus 24:12-18 and Matthew 17:1-9, an account of the Transfiguration of Jesus.

I wonder if this has ever happened to you: you come to church on a Sunday for Mass, and the service moves you deeply—the music is transcendent, and the prayers are full of meaning, and maybe (we pray!) the sermon is even inspiring or thought provoking. And then you receive communion and you emerge out into the world, basking in the radiance of love and light and liturgy…

…and then someone cuts you off in traffic. Or you get home and your dog has eaten your favorite pillow. Or you have an email waiting from that frustrating coworker. Or you see the news and some dire, troubling thing has taken place somewhere. And suddenly all those warm feelings, those lingering memories of song and silence and candlelight collide with the less-than lovely-realities of life as it is.

If you know what I’m talking about, rest assured that you are not alone. It is, I think, a challenge shared by all worshipping Christians to experience the disjuncture between the glimpse of heaven at the altar—that ordered vision of life and eternity grasped in our prayers and rituals and hymns—and the decidedly messier truth of days spent navigating a fractured world.

This has been true for members of the Church for a very long time. The elaborate beauty and deep feeling we cultivate in worship is intentional. It reminds us of the beauty of God for which we long and the beauty of one another, too, which is often harder to sense amid the traffic and the emails and the gloomy headlines.

But the contrast between liturgy and life, between the transcendent and the prosaic, is not entirely by accident. It also has its roots in a rather pragmatic need identified by the early leaders of the Church.

A brief liturgical history lesson: In the 4th century, when the decidedly countercultural followers of Jesus suddenly found their traditions absorbed by the ruling elites into the power structures of the Roman Empire, a curious thing happened. What had been a grassroots, underground movement, subject to persecution and shaped by fervent commitment to an alternative way of being in the world, gradually became an institution for the powerful and the fashionable.

Whereas once baptism was more akin to the Mark of Cain—a seal of divine promise in the face of peril—it now became more like a badge of honor and access and status. People showed up to be baptized not because they necessarily understood how Christ had transformed their existence, but simply because it was the thing to do.

And as a result, the bishops and other church leaders decided that they needed a new way to make an impression upon these slightly passive, comfortable new members of the body of Christ. If they couldn’t compel them with the bracing possibilities of martyrdom or a new, radical communitarian ethic, then they would dazzle them into awe and reverence with liturgy. Spectacle would stand in where, perhaps, substantive conversion of life fell short. And so liturgy, over the years, become ever more elaborate, ever more majestic, to remind people that Church was not just a social club, but a sign of eternity.

Now I admit this all sounds a bit cynical, as if liturgy were a tool to play with people’s emotions. I don’t think that’s quite it. It’s just that we, as human beings, especially when we are enmeshed in myriad concerns, need potent reminders that another world, another way of being in this world is possible.

And the more our daily lives are entrenched in the predictable patterns of consumption and competition and zero-sum thinking, the harder it is to perceive the alternative. We, like those Roman converts, are deep in the valley of Empire, stooped over, scrabbling for our daily bread, and it takes the power of something bold and wondrous, a mountaintop experience, to draw our gazes heavenward, to remind us to dream again. And so we come here.

God knows this about us. God knows we need to be dazzled sometimes in order to believe. Perhaps that’s why mountaintops figure so prominently in the two theophanies—Godly manifestations—in our readings this morning.

Moses is called up the cloud-draped mountain where the glory of the Lord has come to meet him, “like a devouring fire…in the sight of the people of Israel.” It’s that last phrase that matters here—in the sight of the people of Israel. Remember, Moses himself had been in communication with God ever since the burning bush; he did not need to go up a mountain in dramatic fashion to trust in the word given to him.

But the people, newly released from the land of their bondage, uncertain about what was true and what was possible for them—it was for their benefit that God gathered like a cloud and burned like a fire. The spectacle reassured them that whatever Moses found there at the top of Mt. Sinai was Real with a capital R. It was God. It was the answer to their deepest fears and longings.

And then we have Jesus with James and Peter and John, on another mountain sojourn. Immediately before this, Peter has already confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of the Living God—and so his head already knows what is true, but Jesus, in his wisdom, knows that seeing is believing, and that the road ahead will be hard, and so now the disciples’ own eyes behold the Transfiguration of Christ’s body into the glory of the Lord, another spectacle, his face blazing like fire, like sunlight, like certainty.

Two mountaintops, two dazzling visions to imprint themselves on the memory and on the heart. Maybe we need these transcendent visions, just like we need our transcendent liturgies. We are creatures of sensation and feeling contending with a world that sometimes drains us of both, and so perhaps it is part of the strange mercy of God to to slay us with beauty so that we might survive for another day.

But here’s the thing we cannot forget, whether in our own experience of liturgy or in our reflections on these two texts: spectacle alone cannot save us. To be moved by beauty is not, by itself, to be transformed. Those church leaders of the 4th century knew this—they just hoped to make a big enough impression in worship to keep people engaged in deeper formation the rest of the time.

And Moses knew this, too, for he came down from the fiery mountain not with more bedazzlements for the people but with Commandments and instructions for how to build a real life, a real society worthy of the glorious vision.

And Jesus knew this, too, he knew that his transfiguration would soon be followed by his crucifixion, and that his disciples would need to build a living community based on an ethic of sacrificial, self-giving love, not just a pretty piece of performance art and some pious recollections. Because whether on the mountaintop or in the sanctuary, we were not made children of God and we were not given the glimpse of heaven’s perfect beauty simply for the enjoyment of a private holiness, but for the exercise of a public wholeness.

And these two things—beauty and responsibility, spectacle and sacrifice— must work together if we actually want to BE a transfigured people rather than people who simply admire the Transfiguration. We can love our worship, as all Christians in all traditions should, and we can give our hearts over to it on Sunday and give the best of ourselves to its enactment, but we will not be changed into bearers of the beatific vision until that day when our liturgy spills out into the streets and its fire and its light are no longer reserved for the mountaintop but instead become the flame we carry within us in the hard, dim, disordered, necessary work of everyday life, the work of loving the world into the newness life that God has ordained for it. Yes, even when we get cut off in traffic or get a troubling email. Even when the news is dire. Especially then.

Because although God can indeed be glimpsed in the mountaintop moments, and God is in the bread and the wine and is dancing in the flame upon the altar, and although God will continue to show us how wondrous, how beautiful, how spectacular is the glory of his presence in this place, it is in the unspectacular moments, the ones after the formal liturgy ends, the moments that make up most our lives, when we will see not just who God is, but who God has formed us into and what, we pray, his glory has wrought in us.

Are we radiating with his light? Are we helping build his just and peaceful Kingdom? Can all who see us feel both the power and the gentleness of our love, like a devouring fire, like a cool mantle of cloud?

When we do these things, and when the world can see these things, then on that day the true spectacle will not be the beauty of God alone, but of God alive in us. On that day, God’s glory will no longer be reserved for the liturgy, for the mountaintop, but will be everywhere. And on that day, the Transfiguration will be complete.

The Church is Crumbling: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, April 3rd, 2022 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne. The lectionary text cited is John 12:1-8, when Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus with precious nard.

Now, I don’t want to alarm anyone inordinately on a Sunday morning, but I have to tell you that the church is crumbling.

I’m actually not making a dire prediction about the future of the institutional church (plenty of others are doing that these days). I mean, quite literally, there are bits of Trinity’s building that are crumbling on the outside that will need a little maintenance. Fr. T.J. and I were walking back from lunch the other week when he noted a spot on the exterior of the nave that needs some repair to the mortar work. Such things are to be expected in a building nearly 160 years old, and don’t worry, the members of the Vestry are keenly aware of the ongoing project list to care for these old stone walls. It is part of our collective labor of love as stewards of this community for future generations.

In every age, as the ones entrusted with the care of the present moment, it is our task to keep an eye out for the cracks in the world around us: the broken bits of buildings and of hearts, the accumulating dust of neglect, the water streaming down in rivulets from leaking roofs and from tear-filled eyes. All of us, both building and people, get a bit tired and careworn eventually. All of us need tending. And so we patch each other up, we put mortar into each others’ broken spots, we carry one another and we carry on. This is our shared responsibility in life, as it always has been.

The tendency towards decay and disorder, whether in church walls or in other human endeavors, has a name derived from science. It is called entropy. The word was coined in the 19th century by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius, who was a leader in the study of thermodynamics. Clausius observed that the energy in heat-powered systems, like steam engines, was not all harnessed; some of it was lost and dispersed, no matter how efficient the system. This unavoidable tendency towards loss and disintegration of energy, he concluded, was the default mode of the material universe. In other words, entropy suggests that when left to their own devices, things tend to fall apart.

The idea of entropy has since been applied to many aspects of human life, not just physics. And intuitively, I think it makes a lot of sense, even in non-scientific terms. Ideological, cultural, and political movements change and decline over time. Relationships, when we don’t invest in them, drift apart. All the seemingly solid markers of fame, prestige, and strength that we might accumulate in our life eventually diminish. And, eventually, each of us will die and, as we were reminded at the outset of this Lenten season, to dust we shall return, to mix with the crumbling stones and the memories of a thousand generations.

Holy Scripture is full of the idea of entropy, even if it doesn’t name it as such—think of the Book of Ecclesiastes: “vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” Or the Psalmist, who says “those of high degree are but a fleeting breath, even those of low estate cannot be trusted. On the scales they are lighter than a breath, all of them together.”

The question is, what do we do with this knowledge? If everything in the universe has a tendency towards disintegration, towards chaos, towards loss, then why bother? Why not let the walls come tumbling down?

This is, essentially, the question that this Gospel passage from John asks us. It is the question that Judas and Mary of Bethany are both faced with in those final days leading up to Jesus’ passion and death, and their diverging responses are instructive for us.

First, there is Judas, who is outraged and offended by Mary’s display of deep devotion—the anointing of Jesus’ feet with precious nard, the intimacy of her hair wound around him in tendrils like branches clinging to the vine. Whether it is out of pure greed or, as I suspect, a whole host of more complicated emotions and motivations, Judas thinks all of this is shameful, wasteful.

I wonder, though, if this is not so much a matter of Judas misunderstanding what’s going on, but in fact understanding all too well what is about to transpire in Jerusalem. Perhaps Judas has taken Jesus’ prediction of his own death seriously. Perhaps Judas has already given up on him. Perhaps he has seen the cracks in the mortar, if you will, and is ready to walk away from the whole thing.

“Why was this perfume not sold…and the money given to the poor?” he asks, but there is bitterness underneath his words, not generosity. They are the words of a man who has given up on dreams, on love, on friendship, because the entropy of the world and the looming failure of Jesus’s mission has caused Judas to retreat into himself, into his own protective self-righteousness, into his own understanding of how things ought to be.

How hard our hearts become when we try to keep them from breaking. And so Judas decides to break Jesus, instead. He decides to tear down the walls rather than wait for them to fall.

If we are honest with ourselves, that same tendency is in each of us. Afraid of loss, we run away. Afraid of vulnerability, we slam the door shut. Afraid of being a fool, we become a cynic, with entropy the only news we have to proclaim to the world.

But then there is Mary of Bethany, who is sometimes conflated with Mary Magdalene, but in this moment we will let her be herself. Mary is not naive in her gift-giving. She, too, knows what is coming. She knows that Jesus is approaching an ending. She knows that the nard is costly, and that anointing her Lord will not prevent the pain or loss that is to come. But she does it anyway. She does it because it is what she can do. She does it because she loves him. She does it because she knows, in a way that Judas does not, that in loving someone, nothing is ever wasted.

Mary, and all of us who would follow in her footsteps, do not deny that death and decay are real. We are not ignoring the fact that things tend to fall apart, that chaos is always at the doorstep. We know that it is. We see the crumbling stones, and we witness the crumbling hopes of too many in every generation. But we show up anyway. We try to mend the cracks anyway, even if we are taken as fools, even if it never seems to amount to very much, because it is what we can do. It is what love requires of us.

What Mary knew–and what Jesus reveals–is that while entropy might be the most pervasive force in the universe, the most powerful force is love. It is only love that will dare to bind up what is broken. It is only love that can gather in what is lost. It is only love that refuses to give up even when things keep going wrong. And no matter how things disintegrate and scatter, no matter how our own lives fall apart, no matter if these walls do keep crumbling down, no matter if the entire universe breaks apart, God will always be bigger than our brokenness. God holds us. God refuses to give up on us.

And so we must do the same. What God has said to us, and what Mary says back to God, we must also say:

I will hold what is broken. I will bless it with my deepest tenderness. I will spend all of my love on the things that are doomed to decay, which is, in fact, everything. And though I may weep, though my heart might break at the seeming futility of love, I know in a way beyond knowing that it will all make sense some day. That it will have been worth it.

It is worth it. That’s the good news.

So if you get a chance this week, take a walk around the church building. You might spot the broken bits I mentioned or the places where the garden needs tending after a long winter. You might notice a crack in the plaster here and there. Our work continues, always. But notice, too, the patches, the repairs, and the additions of those who came before us—the small acts of care by generations of people, some of whom we will never know, but who did what they could even as the walls crumbled in their own time.

And perhaps, like me, you might offer a prayer of thanksgiving for those people–those with the heart of Mary of Bethany–for the sweetness of their offerings, the memory of which still lingers like perfume in the air. Perhaps, like me, you might marvel at the fact that because of them, and because of us still trying our best, despite the entropy of the world, we are still standing, and these stones are still standing, held together by love as much as by mortar.

And perhaps, like me, you will find strength in knowing this: that even if everything else turns to dust, this love will remain. It is the one thing that cannot break. It is the one thing that will never go away.

Home: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on August 15, 2021 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary texts cited are Proverbs 9:1-6 and John 6:51-58.

This past Wednesday the parish gathered outside in the garden (or the garth, as we call it) for a party to celebrate the beginning of a new program year here at Trinity—and, I think, to simply revel in the joy of being together after a very long and challenging year and a half.

I saw and heard so many beautiful things as I wandered around—friends visiting and reconnecting; some of our downtown neighbors who showed up and appreciated the opportunity to receive a hot meal from the food truck; the sound of music and laughter bouncing off of those old stone walls. It felt so good, like the love that we speak of and cultivate here in the nave of the church had spilled out into the streets.

If you were there, I think you have a sense of what I am talking about. And if you couldn’t be there, please know that you were thought of, that you were in a sense still part of things, because no matter the day or the week or the year, this place belongs to all of us who have loved it, to all whose lives have crossed this threshold, to all whose hands have tended to its care, whose feet have trod the well-worn path to the altar rail. And so, as we begin another season of worship, study, and service at Trinity, I say again to you what will always be true, every time you come through these doors, whether for the first time or the last: welcome home.

Now for some, the language of “church home” and a “church family” can come off as overly sentimental or disingenuous, an attempt to gloss over the broken parts of a complex institution, claiming a spirit of welcome and mutuality when what is actually expected is compliance and conformity. I know that many have been harmed in the past by those types of environments, and thus it is so very important here, in this place, that we mean what we say. That we come together in our diversity and difference and live as though there is space enough for everyone at this table, in this house of prayer, because God has told us that, indeed, there is. The door is open to every willing heart.

In today’s reading from Proverbs, the personification of Wisdom calls out to passersby, “you that are simple, turn in here! To those without sense…come eat of my bread.” In other words, no matter how foolish or stupid you are, you are welcome here!

And while I don’t know that that exact wording will show up on any of our parish event invitations, the point is this: we are all, in one way or another, lost, stumbling around, distracted and confused by both the complexity and the banality of our days, and we are all seeking the place that is home. The place where we don’t have to earn our sense of worth. The place where we are loved simply for being there, AND the place where we are invited to lay down our burdens and grow into the fullness of life.

This is that place. This community, this altar, this moment where our life encounters God’s life is that place. Or at least, it can be, if we will let it be. If we will show up and receive what is offered.

“Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” Jesus tells us today, and as much as we sometimes like to equivocate and dance around the bold claims of Christian truth, there is, in these words, a stark choice. Take part in the life of Christ, feast at his table, follow where he leads, or do not. But know that if you do not, you may very well spend the rest of your life searching for home in the wrong places.

Because your true home is not the house you live in. Your true home is not your political identity. Your true home is not your nationality. It is not found in the private realm made up of your hobbies and tastes and preferences. It is not even found within your “self” as we tend to use that word, the amalgam of your memories and thoughts and experiences.

All of those things are part of who you are, they all matter, but they are not your home. Your home is here, in the presence of the living, beating heart of God. Your home is beneath the loving, penetrating gaze of Jesus, who knows you better than you will ever know yourself. Your home is here, in the Sacraments and in the service of Christ’s body, the church—in the place where our individual stories are enmeshed with the stories of our forebears, the generations of those who came before us, who sat right where you are sitting, who knelt and stretched out their hands and received the bread on a thousand Sundays, just as you are about to do.

Here, among the great cloud of witnesses, at the Eucharistic center of creation, this is where you truly belong. So yes, you that are simple, turn in here. You that are lost, turn in here. Come home, no matter what you have done, no matter how long it has been. Come home!

And I don’t say all of this merely as a sneaky way to convince you to attend Mass more often or to join in all of our fall programming, though I certainly hope that you will, because I continue to be amazed by the transformation of the heart that I witness among those who engage deeply with prayer and study and fellowship in this place.

I want you to hear and know that this is our true home because we are living through a time when so many people do indeed feel lost—a time when the very idea of home and belonging are unraveling concepts—when it is easy to feel disconnected and divided and estranged from any sense of community, any sense of being a part of something greater than ourselves. People are desperate to find somewhere that feels like home, but they don’t know where it is.

Because maybe at times, you have felt that way, too, wondering: is there a place for me in the world? Does anything I do actually matter? In the face of so much uncertainty and loss and suffering, is there any sense to be made of this life? After all of my wandering, when will I arrive? When will I know that I am truly known?

These are hard questions to answer with mere words. There is no simple phrase or formula that makes everything in this life easy or clear. But there is this place, where we wrestle with the questions and we strive to live into the enfleshed, incarnate answer that we find in Jesus.

Because I guarantee you, if you stood where I stood on Wednesday and watched the little ones laughing and running in circles, like fish swirling through a pond; if you stood there and saw friends and families of every age and circumstance sitting together sharing a meal on the grass; if you sensed the solid and reassuring presence of this church building huddled there in the twilight, inviting you to rest against its warm stones; and if you can perceive the life that radiates outward, every moment of every day from the Body of God resting in this tabernacle, the Body that will soon be placed in your hands…if you have experienced these things, or if you can simply see how important they are, then you have already glimpsed the answer. The answer to everything. It is here. It has always been here, where God offers himself to you freely.

“Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed,” says Wisdom.

“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them,” says Jesus.

In other words, God is saying to you: Come, take all I have, take my very life, so that you can truly live.

Come, and eat, and know that you will never be a stranger here. Just come.

Welcome home.

In These Waters: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on January 10, 2021, the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. The lectionary text cited is Mark 1:4-11, wherein Jesus is baptized in the river Jordan.

Shortly before his death, two of Jesus’ disciples, James and John, come to him and make a request: “Grant us to sit,” they say, “one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” They sense, perhaps, that the time to enter Jerusalem is drawing near, that Jesus is about to take on the authorities, and they want to be in on the action, whatever it turns out to be.

But Jesus doubts that they understand what is actually about to happen. “You do not know what you are asking,” he replies.

“Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”

His question has been rattling around in my head the past few days as we drew closer to this feast day, and as I watch the news, full of the evidence of how rage and mistrust and fear continue to assert themselves in the affairs of humankind. Just like James and John, the world is still spoiling for a fight, still angling for a certain type of power, and still Jesus is asking: are you able to drink the bittersweet cup of humility, instead? Are you able enter into my baptism, instead–a baptism that mandates mercy rather than militancy?

I find it striking that Jesus points to his baptism so soon before his crucifixion—a reminder, for us, that the beauty revealed to him in the waters of the River Jordan—the voice from heaven, the descending dove, the love of the Father—is the very thing that propels him, ulitimately, toward a reckoning with the forces of sin and death. It suggests to us that one cannot behold the transcendent beauty of God and then simply accept the brutality of the world as it is. And once we’ve been called beloved, we begin to realize that everyone else is, too.

The direct line from baptism to the cross also suggests that Jesus’ belovedness as God’s Son, rather than being a protection from suffering, in fact propels him straight into the heart of the world’s pain, to engage with it, to be affected by it in order that he might transform it, not by the power of the sword, but by the force of mercy.

And so, as we think about our own baptism, we must contend with a mixture of exuberance and trepidation and trust, for it is no small thing to be claimed by the liberating, reconciling, transformative power of God, to be drawn up into its mysterious movement through the world, and to relinquish the still-prevailing assumption that might makes right.

Are we able to do this, as he does? Do we know what we are asking for?

I pray that we do, and that we can continue to ask for it together, to rely upon one another to pursue it, because if I have learned anything in recent days it is that our faith continues to be misinterpreted, it continues to be co-opted by people with agendas that have nothing to do with the love of God embodied in Jesus.

And it is up to us, imperfect as we ourselves might be, to bear witness to what God is actually doing in the world and how we ought to live into that. It Is up to us to proclaim, as those baptized into the undying love of God’s Son, that hate, and violence, and racism, and exploitation, and greed, and every other instrument of evil have no place in God’s dream for creation, no place in God’s emerging kingdom, no place in the lives of people who claim that Christ is Lord.

This is not about partisan politics, nor even exclusively about American society, though our values ought to impact our presence in both. But this is fundamentally a human issue. We affirm that to be baptized as Christ is baptized, to live as Christ lived, is to be human in the way God intended for us to be: connected, trusting, persistent instruments of peace. This is what we open ourselves to when the water washes over us, and when we recall that we are bathed in it still: we put down our guard, put down our pain and our past mistakes, and let the Spirit do the Spirit’s work in us.

And that work is always evolving, always responding to the present moment. That is why it is incumbent upon each of us as individuals, and as a church community, to discern how to live out our baptism. We have to ask ourselves: How can we be agents of peace, of justice, of reconciliation, here and now, in 2021, in Fort Wayne, in the U.S.? What does this time in history require of you and me?

I said in a sermon a couple weeks ago that “relationship” was going to be a key word for us this year, and that is more true than ever. Because one thing that this moment requires of us is that we resist the temptation to be spectators and instead become participants in the world around us.

It is very easy for me, especially when I feel tired and overwhelmed, to sit back at look at the world’s problems, at the fear and the despair and the anger that seems so pervasive, and to just hope that someone else will figure out what to do about it. That someone else will surely be better equipped to handle it than I am.

There isn’t someone else. There is only you, and me. There is only us.

And if we are living in Christ and Christ is living in us, we need to care. We need to stop observing from the sidelines and show up.

You see, the baptism that Jesus received from John—a ritual cleansing from sin—was something that he didn’t actually need. But he showed up and received it anyway because in order to embody love, he knew that he needed to stand in solidarity with those whom he loved, he needed to meet us at the place of our need—and now we must do the same for each other.

God expects each of us, just as we are, with our talents and our quirks and our histories and our hesitaitons, to engage in the struggle. To be part of the solution, even just a small part. Becasue every little act of mercy, every small turn towards peacemaking, every bond strengthened in our frayed social fabric is part of the cure for what ails the world—it is another drop of your baptismal water, offered back into the font of creation.

Later this morning, in our own font, we will baptize two more people, welcoming them into this community, and, more fundamentally into this holy, transformative, life-giving, life-demanding calling. And they, too, will embark on the same journey as the rest of us, the one that Christ inaugurated for us when he stepped into the river to give away everything, to receive everything. They are ready to accept for themselves what we have also been given: God’s love, flowing through us like water, like wind, like fire.

And it’s ok, in the end, if we don’t fully understand it, if we don’t know exactly what we are asking for, as long as we are willing to discover and live into what we are given: the answer that emerges from this moment, from this font, which will continue to roll down like mighty waters, to take shape, to run its course through the rest of our lives.

No matter how scary or uncertain the world seems to be, no matter how hopeless things might seem in the moment, we can do this. We can face it, we can sustain, because…we are His. He’s got us.

And in these waters, we come to see that He always will.

An Advent Poem

They say that Advent is
waiting
for Light in Darkness
for a bright white God,
Night-erasure,
Knowing.

They say that the world is
tired
dish-water gray and that
Salvation looks
much paler, bleach-bone
sanitized and safe:

But I have been caressed by
the Spirit
in a thousand tender shadows.
She whispers
dreams and visions
under moon and cave and cloud.

God is not afraid of the dark.
And so I wonder
If perhaps I shouldn’t be—

If maybe this Coming
in womb;
like night-thief
means that blackness is
Divine
And Love
Is an Unknowing, too,
a Hiddenness.

I wonder
if wonder requires
The embrace of deep
Unseen things—

I wonder, when I
meet the Son
if it will be less like
the sun
and more like a kiss
at cool dusk.
Eyes closed. Soft.
Like rest.

The Church that is Willing to Die: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on June 21, 2020 for the online services at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 10:24-39.

What does it mean to be the church in a time such as this? At this turning point in our national life, when old values, old practices, old ways of being are called into question, when the mythic landscape of American history is being challenged and reordered by pandemics, protests, and political turmoil, when certainties are few and far between, here and now we are urgently led to revisit this question: what does it mean to be the church? Who are we Christians in this fraught moment: this moment of lament, this moment of reckoning with the unjust systems we have built and sustained, this moment of questioning the bedtime stories with which we have comforted ourselves about blessing and destiny and progress?

What is the church now when the wind comes howling in through the open window, when the doors to the building are locked and the bottom drops out and we are falling, falling down into the gloom of an unknown tomorrow? What are we then? Who are we then?

For so much of our nation’s history, to be part of the church has been a designation of institutional membership, a cultural practice encoded in spiritual language handed down from generation to generation; an elegant packaging of some laudable core values, and a safe, enclosed space in which to work out the meaning of life according to those values. In this understanding of church as institution, which patterns itself according to the societal contexts in which it operates—the world outside the walls—there are usually a number of factions, organized along political, liturgical, or ideological spectrums, and whoever dominates in numbers or funding tends to dictate what we stand for and the ways in which we do so. It’s not that we ignore the gospel in this mode of church; it’s simply that the “good news” we share often sounds like the good news we want to hear, or more specifically, the good news that the powerful want to hear.

For many, being church in this way feels very navigable—it maps rather neatly onto the rest of our lives, it absorbs the language of the zeitgeist like a sponge, such that the progressive and the conservative, whatever those labels happen to mean in a given moment, have equal opportunity to bedeck themselves in Scripture and silk vestments, to continue their eternal struggle via the proxy wars of theology and church politics.

This is not a new thing, and perhaps, for much of our history, this mode of being the church felt sufficient for the majority of people. Since the peace of Constantine in the 4th century, when Christianity became legalized in the Roman Empire and later adopted as the religion of that Empire, there has been little distinction between the idealized values of citizenship and the core teachings of the sacred in dominant Western culture—especially for those of us who enjoyed the privileges and powers that such citizenship affords. The easy mix of civic and ecclesial agendas was simply a given. Church was, in effect, where you learned how to be a good and loyal participant in the realm, to support its structures, to promote the peace of the established order.

But established orders tend to fall apart eventually. Structures give way under their own weight. And what is the church, then? Who are we, then?

Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel:

Do not think that I have come

to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace,

but a sword. (Matthew 10:34)

Jesus’ words today remind us that there is another choice when it comes to understanding the meaning of the church—a choice that is unsettling, a bit scary even—one that looks nothing like the established order in which we are tempted to become comfortably numb. He describes the cost of following him in the starkest of terms—it is to give up family bonds, it is to give up one’s safety, to give up one’s own life, even, in order to find and participate in whatever strange, magnetic sweetness he seems to carry within himself. This is not a metaphorical invitation. It is quite serious.

To be church in this way—to relinquish, to descend, to die—has little to do with the striving and the strategies that characterize so much of public life in the West. It is, instead, an intentional upending, a deconstruction of those values, especially whenver they deny life and dignity to the least among us. For, as Mary proclaims, He has lifted up the lowly and the rich he has sent away empty.

To be the church that responds to Jesus’ invitation is to search for the cracks in the veneer of decadence, to find them and to tear them open, to name what is rotten underneath and, crucially, inescapably, not simply to name and to criticize, but to cast ourselves, with equal measure of grief and hope, down into the rottenness, down to the places where we do not want to go, down to where we will finally see what is true, what endures, what refuses to die, even there. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Here and now, in our present turmoil, some of that work has been done for us. The veneer is already cracked. Some of the rottenness is already exposed. But we still have to choose whether we will get down there and look at it. We still have to choose whether we will do something about it. Nobody will force us to, not even God; and the urge to look away, to go back to the old mode of being, will continue to be powerful. But what we decide will determine what sort of church we are part of. Are we an insitution of the present order, subject to the whims of history, or are we a community of disciples, of learners, of passionate lovers of God, seeking Holy Wisdom into the uncomfortable places she calls us?

Most days, I doubt that I have the strength and the courage to choose this latter vision. Most days, I just want to roll over and go back to sleep. It would be so much nicer to stay on the surface of my Christian identity, to let church function as an ornament, as a daydream where we talk about forgiveness and love in hazy terms without ever submitting to the fierce demands that such things actually require.

But then, always, there is Jesus, with his unsettling words and his compelling gaze that cuts through me like a sword. I see him looking back at me from the cross, forgiving my weakness, unimaginably patient with my fear. I see him in the faces of my homeless neighbors, my black and brown neighbors, my lgbtq neighbors, my conservative neighbors, my liberal neighbors, my neighbors of every background and belief, and I hear his voice:

Follow me. Follow me wherever it might take you. Follow me out past the church you thought you knew, out beyond a brittle, compromised peace, follow me out past certainty and cynicism, follow me into the heart of the world’s sorrows and see what lies on the other side of fear and lamentation. I promise you, everything real, everything joyful, everything good, is there. I am there.

If we listen to Jesus, if we really listen to him, what other choice can we make?

The Eternal Moment: A Sermon on Baptism

I preached this sermon on August 18th, 2019, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN, where I now have the privilege of serving as Curate. We celebrated the baptism of two infants during the liturgy, and the Gospel text cited is Luke 12:49-56.

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three.” (Luke 12:49-52)

I wonder if you have ever stood at the edge of a lake on a quiet evening, watching the sun bleed into the sky with a beauty so intense that you can barely speak?

I wonder if you have ever walked down a city street and perceived how the beating heart of each passer-by is deeply connected to yours, even if you will never see one other again?

I wonder if you have ever sat beside a person whom you love as they breathe deeply in their sleep, and you realize, with quiet amazement, what a gift it is to be able to love them, for however long or short a time you are given?

I wonder, in other words, if you have felt that strange sweet shock of being fully immersed in this collection of moments we call life.

And then, I wonder if, in those moments, you ever think of your baptism?

I don’t necessarily mean the day you were baptized—many of us who received this sacrament as young children have no memory of the actual occasion, save for a faded photograph, a christening gown, or a candle in a dusty box.

But do you, in your moments of deepest joy or longing, remember that you are indeed baptized? That your life was permanently changed by that moment of contact with water and oil and the Holy Spirit?

Do you feel, in those depths, that your baptism is an ongoing reality which suffuses the unfolding narrative of the person whom you are still becoming? Do you understand that your baptism has drawn you into a story so grand–and yet so intimate–that the God who is both Parent and incarnate Son has become the author of your days and the abiding Spirit who dwells within your heart?

I hope that you might. And, if you are not yet baptized, I hope that you hear these words as an invitation to contemplate the rich possibilities of such a life.

Today we celebrate the initiation of two beautiful little ones into the Body of Christ, and in so doing, we are also given the opportunity to recall our own incorporation into that Body— the opportunity to consider what it means to belong to Christ and to one another. To reexamine how baptism shapes the contours of a life—your life—and how the holy water streaming from the font, even now, seeps into the cracks of a soul— your soul—to drench you with the fullness of God’s love.

Because it’s easy to forget—or perhaps to never fully comprehend— how that water, that immersive torrent of life-giving water, continues to infuse you with its mystery long after the day it was poured onto your head. It is your lifelong companion, that baptismal water: flowing through your veins and leaking out of the corners of your eyes and freezing in the vapors of your breath on a winter morning like incense rising up to God.

As our Prayer Book states, you are “marked as Christ’s own forever” in baptism and thus its sacramental reality and its transformative power are always with you, always shaping the ways in which you are alive to this world, and pointing you towards the ultimate significance of the seemingly random, beautiful, sorrowful, mundane, holy events of your life.

The sunsets, and the city streets, and the bedside vigils: Christ is beside you in each of them, tending to you in each of them, because you are His, now, forever. And so each time you give yourself over to the hope and promise and heartbreak of life, you do so as one enveloped in His holy embrace, washed by His tears.

Jesus was deeply aware of this unfolding, enduring nature of baptism, and he tells us so in today’s gospel with words that hit forcefully, like a wave off the sea. He speaks of fire and division on this earth, frightening at first, but we might also perceive a note of distress and longing in his voice as he does so. Jesus is not angry and vengeful so much as he is frustrated—frustrated by his realization that the peace of God, the peace which passes all understanding, the peace which flows smoothly and swiftly like a river, is so often dashed upon the rocks of human frailty—the frailty of we who have a desperate need to take sides, to draw lines in the sand, to stand two against three and three against two.

The splendor, the majesty of God’s peace is sometimes too much for us to bear, and so we crucify it amongst ourselves—even in our most intimate, cherished relationships. He knows that we do this, and he knows how that division will impact his own journey.

“I have a baptism with which to be baptized,” Jesus proclaims. “What stress I am under until it is completed.” His is a baptism which must pass through the inevitable heartbreak of being alive, and loving, and losing—even losing his life. For Jesus, the anointed one who emerges from the chilly waters of the Jordan, that original moment of water and Spirit is not a victory or a resolution, but the inauguration of something as yet unfinished—the water still doing its work upon him, his body still caught in its current, carrying him towards Jerusalem, and Calvary, and the tomb, and beyond, into the fullness of his Father’s glory.

And so it is for us who share in his Body. Baptism, Jesus tells us today, is not a magical solution to life’s woes; it is not a ritual action that makes everything serene and safe. We who are baptized know all too well that the waters of faith remain turbulent throughout our lives. To be marked by these waters in baptism was and is, for each of us, the first, irreversible step of a new journey—Christ’s journey, and now, by the work of the Holy Spirit, our own, too—which we wade through together as fellow travelers.

Such a journey is never easy. It is not without discord and confusion. It will likely require sacrifices, some of them large, to be sure, but mostly a thousand small daily gestures of love outpoured, as we give ourselves away to each other in the same way that Christ gives himself away to us, on the Cross and on this holy table. That self-giving is the consummation of his baptism, and we must follow where he leads us.

That mutual giving, dear friends, is why we are here, generation after generation, in the Church. That is why our life together in this parish is sacred. That is why we rejoice at these two children joining the family of the baptized today. Our lives, and now theirs, have been swept up into the water of God’s reign, and we return again and again to this community to teach one another how to swim in it, and to carry one another when we get tired.

It won’t be safe or predictable. We are promised very little that is certain or secure in this life. And those moments like the ones I described earlier, in which we keenly perceive the fullness of love, the fullness of life—they are rare and fleeting.

But our baptism can never be taken from us. The abiding presence of Christ can never, ever be taken from us. And today, for these two children, and for us as well, this is the moment–the eternal, unfolding moment–when that is made abundantly clear. We will never be forsaken. We are Christ’s own forever.

We will continue swimming within the current of God’s love. We will continue navigating the rapids of our brokenness until the baptism with which we are to be baptized is completed. Until we stumble, laughing and crying and dripping wet, onto the shores of peace, where He is waiting for us.

Come to the water, little ones. Come to the water, brothers and sisters. It is your moment now, your journey now, and ours, and Christ’s, together, always. Let us remember how to swim and let us show you how. The water is deep and mysterious, but there is life here.

Step in.

Waiting by the Road: A Sermon

I preached this sermon today, October 28th, at my field-education parish, Christ Episcopal Church, in Alameda, CA. The lectionary texts are Mark 10:46-52 and Jeremiah 31:7-9.

Bartimaeus is sitting by the road out of Jericho and into Jerusalem. He is waiting: waiting in darkness, waiting in despair, waiting in hope. He wants to go, somewhere, anywhere other than this place, where he is forgotten, invisible, little more than a breathing corpse, a ghostly figure in a home that has become more like a tomb.

…

At this very moment, there is a caravan of 7,000 refugees—men, women, children—walking north from Honduras, fleeing poverty and violence, trying to get to Mexico City, or the US, or anywhere they might have a chance to survive—anywhere other than a homeland where they cannot feed themselves, where they cannot protect their children—a home that, for them, has become more like a tomb.

…

There are countless families grieving today—11 people dead in a Pittsburgh synagogue, yet another horrific episode in a seemingly endless torrent of gun violence. Lives, and bodies, and memories piled upon memories. We see the news, we feel fear and anger and helplessness, and sometimes we want to be somewhere, anywhere other than this time and place, where our beloved country, our home, has become more like a tomb.

…

And then all of the sudden, there is Jesus, passing by. He’s leaving Jericho, headed toward Jerusalem, on a mission. Bartimaeus hears that he is near, and from the depths of his soul he cries out—Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! This is the cry of a person who has nothing, who has been stripped of all presumption, all illusions of safety. It is the raw and urgent voice of Life itself, crying out to God for acknowledgment. It is a plea, a lament, and a demand to be seen.

The crowd tells him to be quiet, to keep the peace, to mind his place, but he will not—he cannot. Because at the end of the day Life is insistent. It asserts itself, no matter how much the structures around us try to squash it. Life speaks, and it speaks loudly.

Life says NO—we will not acquiesce to violence as the defining characteristic of our culture.

Life says NO—we will not be silent when leaders give in to corruption and complacency.

Life says NO-we will not sit in the dust on the side of the road and wait to die—we will get up, we will join the caravan, we will travel until we reach the place that God has promised for us, the one where, as the prophet Jeremiah tells us, all people are gathered together—those who are blind, those who can’t walk, those of us who are in labor, those who are Jewish, and homeless, and transgender, and everyone, everyone who cannot and will not be forgotten by God, because God SEES them, even when the world refuses to do so.

LIFE says we are on this journey together, and even though it might all look like shadow and darkness now, we will leave this valley of death where our home has become more like a tomb and we will spring up like Bartimaeus and we will throw off the cloak of our despair, and we will come forward, out into the light, out into presence of God who is the source of our life and the fulfillment of our longing.

Take heart! Get up! He is calling you!

…

And so Jesus asks Bartimaeus: What do you want me to do for you?

What do you want me to do for you? It is the question upon which our entire life depends. What would we have the Son of God do for us? The possibilities are infinite. We could ask him for an end to pain and hunger. We could ask him for consolation and courage. We could ask him for justice. We could ask him for peace. We could ask him to take us away from this place of death and towards the Kingdom of Life. And so we do, every time we pray.

But Bartimaeus knows what he wants, and it’s quite simple: he wants to see again. He wants to see the face of Jesus. He wants to see the dusty road and the people, he wants to see the world and get up and move in it, and in doing so to BE seen again by those around him, all those who have chosen to ignore him and told him to be quiet.

To see and be seen is to be in relationship, and to be in relationship is what it means to LIVE as God would have us live, rather than to merely exist. Bartimaeus knows that isolation is death, and he is not ready to die. In restoring his sight, Jesus heals Bartimaeus’ physical infirmity, but, even more importantly, he restores him back into relationship with the world around him. Bartimaeus’ home is no longer a tomb, but a place of possibility. With new vision, physical and spiritual, he joins the caravan to Jerusalem and walks toward Life.

We have been given that same vision—the vision of God’s dream for creation, the vision of Life restored to fullness in Jesus. And if the ever-mounting perils of contemporary life tell us anything, it is that this vision is precious, and often elusive. It is obscured every day by both tragedy and triviality. And so it is our responsibility, as Christians, to be the bearers—the stewards—of that vision. Stewardship is not about funding an institution—it is about ensuring that God’s vision of love and life will continue to be proclaimed in a world that often seems hell-bent on blinding us.

What would we have Jesus do for us? We, too, must ask him to see—to see the world as it can be and will be in God. We do that first by opening our hearts, as Bartimaeus did, and by asking for that vision to be restored to us, time and again, as we seek the face of Jesus. And then, having beheld that vision’s promise, we give everything we can give to it—our trust, our energy, our resources, our whole selves. We get up, and we go. We join the caravan. We follow were God leads us. This is the road you are invited to walk as part of this community, as part of Christ’s body. This is the road out of death and into life.

…

It has been a difficult week. And there will surely be more difficult weeks that we must face together.

We are sitting by the road out of Jericho and into Jerusalem. We are waiting: waiting in darkness, waiting in despair, waiting in hope. We want to go somewhere, anywhere other than this place, this home that has become like a tomb.

But take heart! Get up. He is calling you.

Preparing for Lent

The season of Lent is almost upon us. The preparations at Mirfield have me learning about some very old customs that are quite new to me. Today, for example, is Collop Monday. What’s a collop, you might ask? Apparently it’s a word that refers to bits of leftover meat, often bacon, which are traditionally eaten up on this day before the Lenten season of fasting begins on Ash Wednesday. The grease from the meat (at least, if Wikipedia is to be trusted) is then used to fry up the pancakes that are traditionally eaten tomorrow, Shrove Tuesday. Mmmm, pancakes.

All the students at the College went up the hill to the monastery house this afternoon to eat Collop Monday lunch with the brethren. It was a feast, although sadly no bacon to be found. BUT there was brisket, roast chicken, stuffing, and tons of dessert. Gotta get those calories in before the menu is pared down for Lent!

Lent is taken quite seriously here, and many of my classmates have been pondering what sort of discipline they are going to adopt starting Wednesday. If you have been part of any liturgical church tradition, you are probably familiar with the question, “what are you giving up for Lent?” The idea is that in the relinquishing of a particular habit, or in the adoption of a new spiritual discipline, we are creating space in our hearts to listen to God as we approach the commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection in Holy Week. It’s 40 days of soul-searching, and I could sure use it.

At Mass this morning the homily talked about how in our soul-searching we tend to bargain with God, usually petitioning for favors or for the cessation of misfortune. I do this all the time, frankly, even though I don’t necessarily think God relates to us in that way. I’ve been doing a lot of imploring to the heavens lately as I adjust to life over here and battle some inner and outer demons. Maybe you can relate.

Truth be told, I get really annoyed by people who sneer at anyone who prays with a desperate heart. “Well, he only prays when he wants something!” Come now, we all want something–don’t kid yourself that you are holier just because you pray at other times, too. The fact that we are compelled to cry out to God in any circumstance is a sign of grace to me; it just so happens that our need and our fear is usually the hollow space in which God can enter us, if we let God do so. (See Luke 18:9-14)

The challenge, at least in my case, is to remain open–to allow God to dwell in the space that’s usually cluttered up with the distractions and novelties that pervade my life. And so Lent is a little bit like spring cleaning for the heart; it’s an intentional effort to clear out some room and prepare a seat for the Holy One to come and abide with me as we wait together for new life to emerge.

I’m pretty sure what my Lenten discipline is going to be, but I’m going to pray on it a bit more between now and Wednesday before committing. If you’ve already settled on something for yourself, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

God bless you, friends. If you’re reading this, I am grateful for your companionship on this journey. I’ll write in a couple of days to describe the Ash Wednesday liturgy, which I’ve heard is beautiful.

Tea with the Monks

Sundays are a whirlwind at Mirfield. Mattins (morning prayer) at 7:30 with fellow students and the monks of of the Community of the Resurrection, then a sung Mass til 9, and then I dash off to my field placement church(es) in town: St. Mary’s in the center of Mirfield at 9:45, followed by St. John’s in the nearby village of Upper Hopton at 11:15. Four worship services before noon!

After Sunday lunch back at the College there is a bit of a pause when students are welcome to go up for tea in the large home where the monks live. I didn’t go my first Sunday and decided I would venture up today to meet some of the brethren (as the monks are collectively called).

A classmate and I got into a long conversation with Fr. Eric, who has been a monk with the Community since 1961 when he arrived at Mirfield as an “unwilling” young novice–he said that as a young man he felt the call to monastic life but he was resistant to it at the same time. He admitted that he even kept his luggage packed for the first three weeks at the monastery, ready (hoping?) at any moment to be dismissed and to go back to his regular life. And yet nearly 60 years later he is still there, still working out his calling, still seeking God each day in worship and contemplation.

Given my own struggles (see previous post) I was deeply comforted by Fr. Eric’s frankness. Do we ever really know FOR SURE that the thing we are doing is the only thing we could have/should have done? Whether it’s a career, a relationship, or any other major life decision, we always step into it with an element of blind trust, because we can never know how it will turn out. I asked Fr. Eric if he ever reached a place in his life where he ceased to struggle with his calling and he chuckled. “A retreat visitor once asked me if I ever questioned becoming a monk,” he said with a smile. “Before giving it much thought I answered her, ‘every day!'” He laughed merrily.

There are no guarantees when you commit to a relationship, even when it’s with God. There will be doubt and struggle, and sometimes you will question why on earth you are doing any of this. And when you think about it, God has no guarantees when entering into a relationship with us, either: we are fickle and resistant far more than we might like to admit.

Despite this, God remains committed, and that divine fidelity hopefully inspires our own faithfulness–to God, to each other, and to the loving commitments that we make in this life. Not out of a sense of duty, and not because we are free of doubts, but because we trust that fidelity itself is a transformative practice, no matter the outcome.

Fr. Eric then told us another story about an elderly monk who is visiting the Community right now from the northern reaches of England. He is not a member of their order, but he has a longstanding relationship with them. This particular monk lives alone on a mountaintop; he’s been there for years, waiting and hoping that some others will join him to form a community. Nobody has ever come, though, and so he lives as a de facto hermit. I was both fascinated and shaken by this image of a man waiting for a vision to come true despite all evidence to the contrary. What kind of patience and commitment must that take? Did he ever second guess his decision? How does he know that he should stay up on the mountain?

After the tea ended, with all of these thoughts lingering in my mind, we walked back through the garden towards the College building; the sun had set and the air was damp and icy. My classmate pointed toward a cluster of forlorn bushes and said that before I leave in June, they will be covered in roses. It was hard to imagine it then in the February twilight, but I imagine he must be right; the roses will arrive in their time. A few months from now, on a balmy night, the air will smell sweet and who knows what I will have learned. I can’t quite picture it, but I have to trust.