Tag: LGBT Christian

Questions: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, October 6, 2024 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary texts cited are Job 1:1, 2:1-10 and Mark 10:2-16, where Jesus is asked about the lawfulness of divorce.

I still remember vividly the day that my parents separated. It was Christmas Eve of 1989. I was six.

I have to say, there are some stories that just don’t need to be told in detail from the pulpit. What I can tell you, though, is that it was a story about two good, complex people who had tried really hard, who had faced a number of big obstacles, and who just couldn’t make it work. 

Such stories, when you live through them, leave you wondering: why do good and beautiful things break sometimes in this life? Why, despite all our good intentions, do things sometimes fall apart?

These are big questions. Difficult, honest questions.

One thing that is often said about The Episcopal Church, and something I love about it, is that we strive to be a place where we’re committed to asking good questions, and it’s a place where we admit that we don’t have all the answers. 

For so many of us who have found our way into this faith tradition, especially from backgrounds and communities where over-confident certainties were wielded like weapons, being able to ask and to wonder and even to doubt sometimes…well, it feels like coming up for air.

I’ve shared with you before that I found my way back to Jesus after years of wandering because I realized, finally, in this Church, that I didn’t have to have it all figured out in order for Jesus to love me. He just did. And with that realization, I could breathe. I could ask my hard questions without fear. 

As we study it, we notice that Scripture itself is full of all sorts of questions, too, though we have to admit that not all of them are created equal. Some are honest, and profound, and very brave, like the entire book of Job, which we heard the beginning of this morning. If you have ever read Job, is basically just one long-form, fundamental question: why is there suffering this world, and why doesn’t God do anything about it? 

We’ll be traveling with Job for the next few weeks in our lectionary readings, but I will give you a heads up: the power of this ancient book is not that it has some simple, easily digestible answer to that big question. Its power is that the book is brave enough to ask the question in the first place. It does not hold back. Job demonstrates that for all of us, wrestling with the inevitability of pain and loss is not anti-faith. It is a necessary part of faith. 

Because our salvation is not just a smiley face and a slogan that fits on a bumper sticker. No, true salvation comes to us through the deep questions we are willing to ask of God, of ourselves, and one another. It is born in those moments at 3AM when we have been stripped bare and are left on our knees without pretense–when we are finally willing to ask what we were too complacent or too afraid to ask before. This, as we will see, is exactly the sort of question that Job will ask, and it is the questioning that will transform him completely and save him. 

But in the meantime, today, we are faced with another sort of question—the one that is posed by the Pharisees to Jesus in todays Gospel reading. Yes, it’s the dreaded “divorce reading” that can make a preacher squirm when they realize it’s their turn in the pulpit. 

But here’s the thing about this reading—we can only approach it in a fruitful, truly Christian way when we acknowledge that the question that the Pharisees are asking is not like Job’s—it is not a thoughtful, bold, or honest one. They are just playing games. They are trying to lay traps for Jesus, guided by their own definitions of power and wisdom. 

The Pharisees already know the law about divorce. One of the only reasons they’re asking this question is because they hope Jesus will say something to offend the King or the Emperor and get himself in trouble. 

And with that it mind, it’s incredibly sad to me, infuriating even, that there are some corners of Christianity where this whole passage has been interpreted through the very same Pharisaical lens of power and control, as if purity were the point of the Gospel rather than what the Gospel actually is: solace for the vulnerable and the lost.

So we have to keep this in mind when we listen to Jesus’ response—we have to understand that he is turning their manipulative question back on them. He knows what they are up to, and so he responds with something they cannot argue against. It’s not a legal argument or a political claim, but a statement about something much more fundamental: a reminder about creation and its heartbreaking complexity. 

Jesus knows the reality is that in marriage, as in the rest of life, love can bind us together and it can also cause us to break and make mistakes. And when it does, it is a very sad and difficult thing, because God has always desired for us to find wholeness in our relationships with each other. But God also knows all too well the risks that love requires and, yes, when things go wrong, the damage it can do. But he seeks to console us in the wreckage, not pile on.

So Jesus, by undercutting their ploy, is, in effect, dismissing the Pharisees’ question and asking a far better one: you, who are so concerned with getting everything right, and with everyone else getting it right—when did you stop being honest about life? When did you forget that life is full of inexplicable pain and unkept commandments and unanswerable questions? When did you forget that the only true answer is to love each other as best we can, for as long as we can, until we can’t anymore?

Jesus acknowledges to his disciples something we know well: when there is divorce, there is pain and there is brokenness, as any of us who have lived through a divorce or who’ve grown up as children of divorce can attest. We don’t need church authorities to tell us that. We’ve already experienced the flesh of our hearts being pulled apart. We already know what it feels like to not be able to breathe.

But God’s posture in all of this, always, is to meet us in the middle of the mess and to say to us, my love for you is stronger than your broken heart and my dream for you is bigger than your shattered expectations. And if you have been divorced; if you have failed to keep your promises; if you did what you had to in order to survive; if you walked away to save your own body or soul; or even if you just made a mess of it all…so be it. Because Jesus loves a sinner. He invited them to his table. He said, come to me like a child, tear streaked and exhausted and hungry, and don’t ever let anyone tell you, ever, that you don’t deserve love. Even when you couldn’t quite make it all work on your own strength. Especially then.

And so I would say to those churches who use this passage against those who have been divorced, or who use any Scripture passage to condemn or exclude—I would say, God calls us to be saints, not Pharisees. God call us to be honest, imperfect people transfigured by grace. God calls us to stop playing games, to stop thinking faith is about knowing everything, and to ask real, heartfelt questions instead, like,

How do I leave this world better than I found it? 

What does being a disciple look like in this time and place?

When will I let go of all things that have burdened my heart for so long?

Who is Jesus to me, now, at this point in my life? 

Where do I see God’s Spirit at work, every single day, and how do I tell others about that?

God, help us to be a community where questions like this are what guide us more than any simplistic answers. God, lead us into a way of life where, instead, we become the answers to the good questions we ask. 

When we do–even when good and beautiful things break–we will realize once more that we can breathe.

Purpose, Passion, Practice: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, August 11, 2024 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, on the occasion of my one-year anniversary as Rector. The lectionary text cited is John 6:35, 41-51.

In a revelation that will surprise exactly no one, I was a theater kid growing up. My first big role was as an ice cream cone in the 2nd grade Christmas pageant at school. In 3rd grade, I was promoted to a Russian Baker in the Nutcracker; I rocked the chef hat but the dance moves eluded me. Then in 4th grade my big break came: I starred as the Nutcracker himself. 

This was a low budget production in a rural California elementary school, so my costume was made out of a long old white silk shirt of my mom’s that she fashioned into a sort of tunic with red tights, and God help me, somewhere there are photos of this. You wouldn’t ever catch me in such an over the top getup these days, but….well…*looks down at vestments* Nevermind!

Anyway, growing up, I loved theater so much—not just being on stage, but the immersive process and culture that surrounded it. The lore and the lingo and all the little traditions of theater people that go on behind the scenes. The bond that you form with the other people working on a production. The sense that, no matter what else is going on in your life—no matter how strange or scary or lonely things might be elsewhere—in this place, doing this thing, you know where you fit. In this place you have a part to play, both literally and figuratively, and other people have your back as your strive together towards a common vision. 

What a healing, even saving experience it was, as a nerdy, closeted kid, to be enfolded into a community and a way of life like that. 

If you were ever a theater person, you know what I mean. But if not, then still, I hope, somewhere along the way, that you have experienced your own version of a tight knit community of purpose and passion and practice. 

Maybe it was a team sport. Or music. Or another hobby or fellowship group that brings you deep joy. I’ve met devotees of bird watching and of stamp collecting and of long distance running and there’s always something so beautiful about the way their faces light up when they talk about this thing, whatever it is, that guides and sustains and challenges them. 

And then, of course, there’s church. And church can be complicated.

Now, I will tell you, that one of the primary things that led me to begin serving as your rector exactly one year ago was that, when I got to meet folks from the Vestry and the Search Committee, their eyes also lit up when they talked about St. Anne. I thought—YES, this type of joy and enthusiasm is what we SHOULD experience when we walk into the doors of a church on Sunday morning. 

But you and I both know that the church, more broadly, is not always this way. And in some corners of our society, it’s quite the opposite. It is a place where too many people, for a whole host of reasons, experience their faith not as a community of purpose and passion and practice but as some combination of duty, and fear, and anxiety. For them, church can feel like that bad dream people have where you’re on stage and the big spotlight is shining down on you and you forgot all your lines and you just know there’s a trapdoor that going to swallow you up. 

But here’s the thing (and it needs to be said out loud): the true purpose of church is not, and should not ever be like that. Church should not be a place that plays into our fears and anxieties. It can be a place where we acknowledge our fears and anxieties, of course, but it should not play into them. It should not exacerbate fear or foster suspicion in our conduct with others. 

When you’re a theater kid, you learn to overcome your worst fears and your stage fright because you know that you are part of something bigger than just you, that there is something beautiful worth putting yourself out there for…and church should be the same. At its best and truest, it always has been.

There’s a bit of this in today’s Gospel reading today. Jesus is under the spotlight, he’s been pursued by a group of folks who want to know how he’s going to perform for them, how closely he is going to follow the script of what they are expecting in a Messiah. And they’re not fully convinced. They say, “is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” He is not nearly mighty or impressive or well-connected enough to topple empires and lead us to victory over our enemies. 

And I get it. These people are afraid. They are hungry and tired and afraid. They want someone strong who is going to help them be less afraid of all the big forces in the world they cannot control. God forgive us, we still want that. A sort of typecast strongman messiah. 

But here’s the thing about Jesus—maybe one of the most important things about Jesus. He refuses to play that part, because Jesus refuses to let fear be the defining feature of the human experience. 

Just as God has been saying throughout all of Scripture (more so than anything else God says in Scripture): Do not fear. Be not afraid. Not because fear isn’t normal or natural—it is—but because fear is not the pathway to the answers we seek. The fearful, vindictive, vengeful warrior is not who God ultimately reveals himself to be, and it is not the role any of us were meant to play either.

If God—and Jesus as God’s Son—wanted to traffic in fear, he would have said to this crowd: I am the Warrior you have been waiting for. I am the one who will get rid of your enemies. I am the one who scorns the people you scorn and hates the people you hate. And they probably would have been thrilled!

But that’s not what he says is it? He says, instead, I am the bread of life. I am the bread of life. I am not a warrior, I am just bread. I am a warm meal at the end of a long day. I am  a table with enough seats for everyone. I am nourishment and kindness and a lively, earthy, sacred love. I am the one who is inviting you in to a way of life, not an imperial religion, not an endless series of wars both military and cultural. I am inviting you into a community of purpose and passion and practice. I am not going to play upon your fears. I want to see your eyes light up. 

Somewhere along the way, friends, much of the church lost that script, or decided to toss it out. They decided to stage a different sort of production, one that is more about power and control and influence than it is about love and justice and mercy. 

But what I love to see, and what gives me undaunted hope—both here in our parish—and elsewhere in the Episcopal Church—and in other parts of the so-called “declining” church—which, by the way, is really just the church getting back to its roots—is that we are reconnecting with that spark of fearless creativity. We are trying new things. We are laying down old prejudices and assumptions. We are asking good questions and admitting that we don’t have all the answers. We are doing it together.

To me that sounds like Jesus, and it is as delightful and delicious as the scent of warm baking bread. And, for me, it is as thrilling as those old theater days when I was a little bit afraid but I realized I was part of something bigger and lovelier and livelier than just me—that I didn’t have to go it alone anymore, that I belonged.

We belong, here. We belong to each other, here. All of us, in this community of purpose, passion and practice that is the church. That is what we are building together here at St. Anne. That is what we are going to welcome people into when they come through our red doors; and when we are out in the community; and when we are talking about our faith with our friends. We are going to say: this is what brings me joy and hope and peace and determination and compassion, and that is enough. That is what the Bread of Life, the Lord of Love, the great I AM came to help us do. 

You know it’s funny, the very last play I was ever in, as a senior in college—and I am NOT making this up—included a scene where I had to play a priest. God has a sense of humor sometimes.

But God knows, better than we do, the many roles we will be called to take on, and this, right here, is where we work to discover them. Not as theater people, but just as people. People made for the single greatest role ever written: ourselves, transfigured by God’s love, with light in our eyes.

Mercy: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, August 4, 2024 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a.

People sometimes ask the question, if you could have dinner with any one person, living or dead, who would it be, and why? And usually the answer we give is a celebrity or some other interesting figure from history—somebody fun or fascinating. Mine would probably be either Rowan Williams, the theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury…or Dolly Parton. And that probably tells you all you need to know about me!

But this morning I have a different question for you…and it’s maybe a little bit of a harder one: If you could make amends with any one person in your life, living or dead, who would it be? If you could sit down across from just one person and know that somehow, the breach between you could be repaired, the fence mended, the hostility put to rest…who would you pick? Imagine, for just a moment, what that would feel like.

Imagining such a thing can be a tender, even painful sort of moment…especially if we feel that this is not a realistic possibility. I can think of a few people who were once in my life that I wish, somehow, I could get another chance to say the thing I never said, or to take back the thing I did say. 

But that pang in the stomach, that sense of longing for reconnection…it’s good to be reminded of it from time to time. I would say it’s necessary, even, in our life as Christian disciples. Because that pang, that longing, is indicative of a fundamental part of our faith. It’s a part that we don’t talk about a lot, because it can get overlooked in our conversations about love or justice or wisdom or truth. And that fundamental thing is mercy. 

Mercy is an somewhat misunderstood concept. It is not just what a judge offers to a criminal, or some sort of favor bestowed the unworthy. It is far humbler, and gentler and more mutual than that. Mercy is the softening of the heart that takes place when we truly, fully see each other. It is the thing that makes reconciliation possible.

For me, mercy is like that feeling when your aching bones and tired mind sink into a warm bath at the end of the day, when there is nothing left to give or to prove or to hide. Mercy is like slipping under cool sheets and falling asleep beneath the untroubled, drifting stars. It is the remembrance of the fundamental kindness that holds all things and all people together.

And the desire to take part in mercy is what prompted you to think of that one, seemingly inaccessible person. It’s that part of ourselves that longs to say to the ones we’ve lost and the ones who’ve hurt us, I see now, I see YOU now, and I feel seen by you now, and so now let us rest in the silence of what we have seen, of the price that was paid, of what is forgiven, and of whatever it is that waits for us on the other side of regret. 

This sort of mercy is important. And it’s essential, actually, if we hope to begin to understand the Gospels and the many complicated stories that are given to us in Scripture. Without mercy, they can seem more like a series of vivid, sometimes frightening dreams. But with mercy—it all begins to make a bit more sense. 

For example, consider the reading from 2 Samuel. I promised you last week that we would get the rest of the story—David’s comeuppance after his seduction of Bathsheba and his plot to kill her husband. And today we see it. The Lord sends a prophet to David and, by way of a parable that contrasts mercy and hard-heartedness, he gets David to unwittingly pronounce judgment on himself. 

You are the man, the prophet Nathan says—you are the man without mercy. You are the one who has tramped on the vulnerable! You are the one who has forgotten who you are! Where is the old David, the one with the gentle light in his eyes? Where is the young shepherd who would not hurt even the smallest lamb? Where is the brave young man who stood up to terrible giants? When did you, David, decide that you were now a terrible giant yourself?

And, even though he has done horrific things, and even though he will eventually pay a dear price for them, David understands. He sees his failure. And he seeks God’s mercy. “I have sinned against the Lord,” he says, and this one sentence is the key to the story—the softening of his heart, the crack in his defensiveness, the one thing that makes healing and reconciliation possible again.

Without mercy, this would just be a story of a violent king and an angry God. But with mercy, it is a reminder that even in our worst moments, God refuses to forsake us. God will always call us back to the most innocent and compassionate and tender version of ourselves. 

Because sometimes that one person we wish we could sit across from and make amends with is simply an earlier version of ourselves. And in such moments, mercy begins with recognizing how far we have strayed from the person we thought we were, or the person we once hoped to be. 

Mercy, for David, is being able to look at himself and to say, I see now, God. I see YOU, now, God, and am seen by you, God. Every part of me: the terrible king I’ve become and the gentle child I once was. Come what may, let me not forget this seeing, God. Let me sing Psalms about this seeing. Let me not forget how you called me back to myself, how you reminded me that the best parts of myself are not lost entirely. 

My friends, if we hope to make any sense of the Bible, and of what it means to follow Jesus, and what it must look like to navigate the troubled times in which we live, I will tell you this: mercy is the key. Not being right all the time. Not being the strongest or the most impressive. Not winning the game or the prize, whatever that is. It’s just mercy.

Mercy is the only thing that will lead not just to change in our world, but transformation of our world. And it begins, as most things do, within each of us. 

If you are wondering how on earth to begin, or how to engage in the practice of mercy, here and now, I have a very practical exercise for you—one I read about in a book many years ago. It’s simple but powerful, and it goes like this:

This afternoon, or this evening, or whenever you have a few quiet minutes to yourself, I want you to call to mind that person you thought of a few minutes ago. The one that is distant from you. Imagine them, as vividly as you can, at their happiest or healthiest. Imagine them as God might see them, before the hurt, beneath the pain and fear. Imagine yourself the same, the two of you sitting across the table, both of you at your best. 

And then, just for a few minutes, imagine what you would say to them.

Maybe it’s, I forgive you. 

Maybe it’s, please forgive me. 

Maybe it’s, I don’t know how to forgive you just yet, but I’d like to someday. 

Maybe it’s, I know you tried your best. 

Maybe it’s just, I don’t understand why it turned out the way it did between us but I wish it were different.

And I see you, now. 

And I wish you peace. 

Maybe you can imagine them saying something back. Or maybe not. It’s ok either way.  

And then rest in the silence. And know that, somewhere, somehow, in this imagined conversation which is a sort of prayer, that a small seed of mercy has taken root in your heart and has been released into the world. 

Try it sometime. I’d love to hear how it goes if you do. And with practice, maybe it will even empower you to have a real-life conversation like that with someone when the time comes. And God will be glad.

Because what I believe, fundamentally, is that if you asked God who he’d like to sit across the table from and make amends, it’s you, and me, and all of us. God is hoping for some version of this conversation each week at this Eucharistic table, so that he can say to us, yes, I see now, I see you, now, I long to be seen BY you, that you might slip into my love like a warm bath and slide under the cool sheets to sleep an untroubled sleep. 

And then you will understand that this was always the key to every story, this was always the dream written in those silent, drifting stars, this was alway the word written upon your soul to call you back to yourself and to one another:

Mercy. 

Speak it, and practice it, and it will tell you all you need to know. 

Annoying: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, July 28, 2024 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary texts cited are 2 Samuel 11:1-15 and John 6:1-21.

Now, I tend to think that I was a pretty nice, friendly kid growing up—I liked being around people, including my mom and dad and my other relatives. But there’s a funny thing that happens to most of us, somewhere around the age of 14 or so—we suddenly want our parents and the rest of our family members to leave us alone. 

I was not a very rebellious teenager, but still, somewhere around that age, I became totally uninterested in what the rest of my family was up to. I couldn’t drive yet, and this was long before the age of smartphones, but I would still check out and close myself up in my room, reading books or talking to my friends on the phone or surfing the internet (the kind that you had to connect to on a landline). 

And yet, for some reason, my family would keep pestering me! My dad would knock on the door to tell me dinner was ready, or my mom would call and want to know how school was going. One time my grandma got mad at me because I had been on the dialup internet for so long that no one could make calls in or out of the house. 

I was just convinced that their whole mission in life was to cramp my style. The nerve of these people. Didn’t they understand that I was my own person, that I needed space to do exactly what I wanted to do, when and how I wanted to do it?!

If you happen to be going through that right now as a teenager, I want to say, you’re not entirely wrong. There is something really important about figuring out who you are as a person and how that might be different from the expectations of all the people around you. Figuring ourselves out takes time and trial and error and you need a little space to do that. 

It’s also true, though, many years on from 14, that now I would give just about anything to have my dad knock on the door to call me to dinner or to hear my grandma fussing at me about the busy signal on the phone. Maybe it’s just a function of getting older—the prospect of being on one’s own loses a bit of its luster. 

Nonetheless, it strikes me that our relationship with God is a bit like the push-pull of growing up and feeling both grateful for and claustrophobic around the ones we love. 

I know it’s very pious to talk about how much we love to spend time with God, and we say a lot in church about how wonderful it is that God came to be with us in the flesh in Jesus, how he will never leave us, how he is always there when we call on him. 

But in the midst of all of that, I think we need to be honest with ourselves: there is a part of us that might prefer for our Lord to leave us alone once in a while. There is a part of us that finds it awfully exhausting and burdensome to have the Way, the Truth, and the Life constantly knocking on the door, reminding us we are spending too much time closed up in our rooms, asking us to get off our phones and come out and be part of the human family. 

The nerve of this Divine Person! Doesn’t he know that I need space to do exactly what  want to do, when and how I want to do it? It would be so much easier if we could just stay in our own little world rather than contend with the real world.

In this week’s reading from the Old Testament, David is caught up in this tendency towards self-isolation, and unfortunately for him it comes at great cost. The implication of the text we heard today is that, as King, he should have been out there in solidarity with the troops who are fighting his battles, but instead he chooses to stay home and take advantage of his newfound royal power, using it to exploit and manipulate others for no reason other than his own idle satisfaction. 

If that reading made you uncomfortable, good—that’s the point. David and those like him are not our savior; God is. We will return to this story next week and we will learn the grave cost of his actions, but for now we simply see in David the terrible danger of cutting ourselves off from a sense of responsibility to the people around us—of assuming that God doesn’t care what we do with our time. David will soon learn that, like any annoyingly persistent parent, God does indeed care, and God is not inclined to leave us to our own devices forever, even when we would rather he did.

And, at the risk of sounding really impious, there is no greater evidence of God’s annoying, parental persistence than the incarnation of Jesus. He just had to come down and get up in our business. He just had to come knock on our door to tell us to get off the internet for a minute and open our eyes and look at each other and listen to one another.

Yes, God becoming flesh and walking among us and revealing to us the urgent necessity of embodying the Father’s love—let’s get real for a minute here—it’s beautiful and revelatory, but it’s also quite inconvenient. 

Because, Lord, I don’t want to love my enemies! Lord, I don’t want to relinquish my own ambitions and self-interest for the greater good! Lord, I don’t want to face the suffering of the world and realize that I am expected to actually do something about it. I just want to be left alone! Stop knocking on my door, please. Stop calling me up and telling me that I was made for something more. Just let me put on my headphones and talk to the people I like and leave the rest for someone else to figure out!

Thankfully God doesn’t listen to me when I say that, anymore than my parents or grandparents ever did. Because Jesus is, as God always has been, the one who says, no, it’s time you come and have something to eat. It’s time you rejoined the land of the living. It’s time you remembered that you are, indeed, part of a family—the family of all of creation—and while we all need a bit of solitude and self-exploration from time to time, you were not made to be alone.

Jesus showing up here in our midst, week after week, in the form of bread and wine, showing up to knock on the door of your heart, is not just a pretty idea—it’s a reminder of that frustratingly persistent tendency of God to never leave us be, to never give up on us, to wait for us, all of us, however long it takes, until we realize that this—this love, this way of life, this relationship with God and with each other—is what we needed most all along, at age 4, and at 14, and at 104. 

Because there will be a moment that comes for each of us, at a certain age, when we look up and realize that, like those disciples on the Sea of Galilee, we have been rowing our boat alone on the waves for a bit too long, and the waters around us are stormy, and we are far from home, and now we would give anything to hear our father or our mother or our grandmother’s voices instead of the howling wind. And then, quite suddenly, there is Jesus, coming across the water, saying It is I, do not be afraid. 

Annoyingly, stubbornly, blessedly, miraculously, he has followed us the whole way, out past our pride, out past our loneliness and bewilderment. He has refused to leave us to our own devices, even when we thought we wanted him to. 

I hope that, following in Jesus’ footsteps, I can be just as annoyingly persistent in my own commitment to caring for others and the world around me. I’d like to think that this is what are about here at St. Anne, that this is what we are celebrating today on St. Anne Day. 

I pray that, as we do this more and more and more, there are folks out there in our community who might start to say, oh gosh, there go those St. Anne people again, always inviting everyone to come to the table, always advocating for justice and mercy, always going on about how much God loves everyone, always trying to call us back into relationship with one another. When will they let up with all of that? When will they leave me to my own devices? When will they give up on that annoying, persistent hope in something better for this world?

Never, my friends.

I pray the answer is never.

Weeds: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, July 30, 2024 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Mark 5:21-43.

I am not an adept gardener, but I can always tell when we have reached peak growing season—it’s when those pesky weeds spring up through the cracks in the sidewalk. I plucked out several this morning on the walkway into church, likely nourished by this weekend’s rain. It’s the eternal struggle—we weed, God laughs. But I also admire the tenacity of those weeds! They seem to defy our best efforts to subdue them. Their impulse to grow is strong. 

Maybe they have something to teach us. Have you ever noticed that, throughout human history, our impulse towards growth and freedom also emerges most often in the summer? 

There’s the Fourth of July, of course, when we Americans were the proverbial weeds in the garden of King George III, but there was also the singing of the Magna Carta (which happened in June); and the storming of the Bastille in France (in July); and the March on Washington (in August); and the summer Freedom Rides of the civil rights movement; and the Stonewall riots and the Pride marches inspired by them; and the racial justice protests of 2020; and many, many other such moments when people had finally had enough and demanded something new… and they all unfolded in the long, hot, hopeful days of summer. 

I’ve been wondering this week why that is. It’s almost as though the human spirit comes alive, too, in this warm growing season with our own renewed, fierce determination to flourish, almost as if our souls were like stalks of summer corn, reaching up towards the infinite blue sky, determined to reach the clouds, to brush against the hem of eternity, to thrive unencumbered.

And you might notice that, in the seasons of the Church, we acknowledge this impulse too, adorning the altars and the ministers with green, the color of an insistent, stubborn vitality. After Easter and Pentecost, in the long green season of Ordinary Time, we are reminded that the Church, at is best, is indeed like a weed growing up through the cracks of empire, or like wildflowers growing in a forgotten ditch—it is the embodiment of the beautiful, humble, pesky aliveness of Christ that challenges anything and everything that would try to pave it over. 

And so, we, too, in the church, have our own summer revolutions. One of them is coming up in just a few weeks, on July 29th. Do you know what it is?

It’s the 50th anniversary of the Philadelphia Eleven, the first eleven women ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church on July 29, 1974. These women were indeed possessed of a fierce determination to flourish. They were not willing to wait for the church hierarchy of the time to drag its feet any longer, and so they found a few retired bishops willing to ordain them and they simply…did it. They went up to the altar and put on those green vestments, for they knew that they, too, were called to brush against the hem of eternity, and they said, now is our time to thrive, unencumbered. Call us a weed in the garden if you want, but we know what we are: fully alive.

And thank God for them. I would not be able to be the out and proud priest I am today if it were not for their courage to be the priests God made them to be. And thank God for all those saints and heroes of summers past who decided to grab hold of their chance to flourish. We need their witness now more than ever. 

In an age where it is especially easy to be cynical, or even despairing about our politics and our culture and our collective future, the examples of the Philadelphia Eleven and all the summer revolutionaries remind me that true change, true justice, true peace, are gifts of God, but gifts that must be claimed and grown and harvested if we want them in our own time.

And more often than not, these revolutions are initiated by those at the bottom of the power structure, those at the margins, those weeds in the garden who finally say: we have languished for too long. Now is our time to thrive. All of Scripture and much of human history is a testament to this.

A perfect example is our Gospel reading today. Jesus has been traveling around the countryside, criss-crossing the Sea of Galilee, calming storms and casting out demons and offering all sorts of signs of his power. And there is a particular woman who hears about all of this—a woman who, because of illness and poverty has been consigned to a meager, desperate existence. She is a woman who is tired of waiting for relief, tired of grieving, tired of bleeding and calling out for help while people look the other way. She is not dead, like Jairus’ daughter, but she is a ghost among her people.

But when she hears about Jesus, something shifts within her. Who knows, maybe it was summertime, maybe she was hot and tired and fed up with the way things were. 

But whatever it was, something deeper than despair, something stronger than cynicism or despondency arises within her and she says, “if I but touch is clothes, I will be made well.” If I reach out and brush against the hem of eternity and say, I too, deserve to thrive unencumbered, then it will be so.

And so she did. And so it was.

And I imagine her standing there, this unnamed woman, this patron saint of nothing left to lose, and what I realize is that, when Jesus says, “daughter, your faith has made you well,” he is not just talking about a cure to her illness—he is saying, you, my child, have tapped into the stubborn vitality that is at the heart of God. 

And by claiming the blessing long denied you, by asserting your inherent dignity, you have discovered the one thing that cannot be taken away, the one thing that rises up again and again like a weed, or like a stalk of summer corn—God’s life, God’s love, God’s wholeness, God’s humble, pesky aliveness, which is now my gift to you and all who have been told for too long that they do not deserve it. Receive it today, this love and this life freely given to you and for you, for this is the revolutionary truth at the center of creation. 

So I wonder, are we willing to be revolutionaries, too, St. Anne? Revolutionaries for the sake of love? It’s a good question to ask on the 4th of July or in any season, really. 

God knows we need to be, for our own sakes and for the sake of our neighbors. Like the woman with the hemorrhage, we may be bleeding and tired, but we do not have the luxury of languishing in despondency, no matter how gloomy it looks out there. Just like all those generations before us, we are called to be people with summer hearts, with souls on fire for justice, with bodies and spirits ready for the necessary work of liberation that arises in every age. And how we will engage that work is a conversation we must continue to have. 

We’ve made some strides already in our parish. But there is more we can do together, more we must do given the challenges of our time and the demands of our faith. 

Conversations are rising up among us about social justice ministries and creation care work and more proactive outreach to people who have been hurt by other churches, and more formation to equip us for ministry, and I am thrilled by all of this, and I encourage you to seek out these conversations and take part in them and then take part in making them a reality. Let’s brush up against the hem of eternity, and let’s pursue the vitality that is God’s gift to us, and let’s see what happens. 

Because we and the whole Church, when we’re at our bravest and our best, we are still that weed, growing up through the cracks; we are still that wildflower in the ditch, reminding people of what’s beautiful about this world, what is not easily killed, what it looks like to reach up towards the infinite blue sky, and to be fully, truly, stubbornly, miraculously alive.

And wouldn’t you know, it’s summertime. Signs of life are all around us. Sounds like a good time to grow.

Photographs

A sermon preached on the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, June 23, 2024 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Mark 4:35-41.

My fiancé, Matt, and I have been in the process of moving into our new apartment over the past few weeks, and combining all of our belongings and finding space for all of our stuff is an adventure. As with any time you move, we are realizing how much stuff we all carry around with us as we go through life. And some of that stuff can be pared down or donated or sold, but there are always those things that you hold onto, no matter what. And among these, probably for almost all of us, are boxes of old photos. 

I have a big plastic tub of family photos that I keep swearing I’m going to sort through and organize…and I’ve been saying this for the past 15 years. Every so often, usually when I move, I will drag out that tub and open the lid and gasp in horror at the mixed up stacks and envelopes. Then I close it up and slowly back away. 

But I could never give them up, of course, because our photos are valuable in a different sort of way than other belongings. They are like a pathway through the forest of memory that thickens as we grow older… a pathway that guides us back to other homes, other times, other faces, other versions of ourselves that would otherwise be lost from view in the shadow of the passing years. We pull them out to show others—and ourselves—all that we have known, all that we have been.

In my own collection, I see many things. Here is my mother, sitting on the back of a pony when she was two years old..land here is my father as a young man, laughing in his college dorm room…and here is my great-grandmother, her smiling face obscured by a wide brimmed hat in the summer heat, and here—oh goodness—here is a child that was once me, dancing on the sand on some forgotten beach, yelling something into the wind. 

Memories and mysteries, all of these photos. Perhaps we carry them with us, wherever we go, both to remind ourselves of where we’ve come from and to reassure ourselves that whatever we have become, we were also, this. And this, and this. And that life is, somehow, holding together all these layers, finding the truth not in any one picture, but somewhere in the sum of them, in the shape of what they reveal.

It might sound odd, but I think it’s helpful to think of Scripture the same way, almost like a box of jumbled snapshots. Because our sacred texts, too, are repositories of memory and mystery, and just like a single photograph, no single Scripture passage can ever reveal the whole truth about the life of God. Remember that when someone tries to cherry-pick a verse to use against…whomever. No, we must gather all of these verses together, all these little glimpses of God’s face, and ponder the bigger story they tell. 

With this in mind, then, I think the most striking image of God’s face we are handed this week is Jesus asleep in the storm-tossed boat, his disciples as panicked and furious as the sea itself. You can practically close your eyes and see it. So let’s pull that one out of the box and ponder it together, shall we?

It is dark. Bands of rain and wind are lashing against a small boat on a stormy sea. The disciples are looking at their teacher, sleeping in the tumult, and they are bewildered—they can’t begin to imagine why Jesus isn’t awake, why he isn’t helping them fix the situation, giving them direction, something, anything. And so they wake him up and, at a word, he uses his mighty power to still the storm.

Is it easy to see what’s going on here? Just a scary storm and a God who will make it stop? Look a bit closer.

As is often the case, there is much more to this image than what immediately meets the eye. Because it’s interesting—Jesus, after calming the wind and the waves, doesn’t look at them and offer soothing reassurance. He doesn’t say what we might expect God would say, “there, there, I fixed it for you, don’t worry, you’re fine.” 

No. Instead, a better Greek translation of his words to them might be, “why are you so timid? Do you not trust?”  And the Gospel says then, and only then, after the storm, that the disciples “ephobethesan phobon megan” — they feared with a great fear — not because of the storm, but because of the One who stilled it.

You see, in that moment, the disciples have a brief encounter with enlightenment—they realize, right then, that Jesus is more than just a sleeping teacher who can fix their problems—more, even, than the prophetic miracle worker they’d been following around.

You might say that it was as though a collection of old photos suddenly appeared before them, and for the first time they could really see Jesus—all of him—and there he was, sitting on the back of a donkey, escaping to Egypt with his mother. And there he was, laughing as a young man in the Temple, astounding the scribes in his Father’s house. And there he was, dancing on the sand of some forgotten wilderness, rebuking the temptations of Satan, yelling something into the wind. And there he was, too, even farther back, before time and image and memory itself, the Eternal Son, like light looking up from the brim of deep darkness–the original Creator of the water and the wind now riding with them on the waves.

And for them, in this moment, to see Jesus—to see all the images that make up who he is and what he is—is to realize that loving him and following him is not about fixing their problems..it is about re-creating the entire world in the image of Love.

We are the inheritors of that same encounter, you and I, that same collection of images. We, too, are reminded that Jesus will not remain the flat, convenient, utilitarian image that might suit us best. 

If we want him to appear as a mere teacher, we must also discover that he is Lord. And if we want him to appear as the victorious one, we must also see that he is the crucified one. And if we want him to bless our health and our wealth, we will also find that he makes his home among the poor and the sick and the forgotten.

And he is all of these things–this whole jumbled stack of images, this whole collection of memories and mysteries–not to make our faith an impossible task, but to make impossible our tendency to render God in our own image–our propensity to make God as small as our own fears and misgivings. He asks, ‘why are you so timid?’ because he wants the disciples, and us, to see that God’s love is so much bigger than we can envision, so much bigger than our fear.

And so, even now, this Jesus asks us— today, here, in The Episcopal Church; here, in the United States; here, on a planet on fire; here among all of us who have tried to be diligent, polite, welcoming people of faith—he asks us, as we fear that the church is shrinking and the world is raging and the ship is sinking, he asks again, Why are you so timid? 

Do we not trust that love is the strongest force on earth? Because it is.

Do we not believe that the world needs this good news more than anything else? Because it does.

Do we not feel that love raging in us like a storm of life giving water? Because it’s there, waiting to be set free. 

And all of this—the storm of love and the memory and the mystery, and the countless revelations of eternity—if it is part of Jesus, we must let it become part of who we are, too. We must let this undaunted, unfaltering, fearless type of love become the shape of us, the sum of all the images we are, the precious treasure that we can never give away, no matter how many years go by.

And maybe, if we were to look for this in ourselves, and in others, we would brush up against enlightenment, too. Maybe we would see that every person we meet also carries with them a box of old photos. That they were once two years old on the back of a pony, or laughing with their friends or dancing on the sand or shouting into the wind or smiling in the light of the sun.

Maybe if we saw all of one another, we would be less timid, less overwhelmed by the storms we are navigating, because we would realize that Jesus isn’t asleep while the world falls apart. He is dreaming a new world into being and inviting us to dream with him. A world in which, instead of fearing with a great fear, we will love with a great love

It’s a beautiful image, isn’t it? I think I’ll hold onto it. 

Troubled Water: A Sermon For Pride Month

I preached this sermon on Wednesday, June 12 at Lord of Life Lutheran Church, West Chester, OH for the Butler County Affirming Churches service of Healing & Affirmation. The Scripture cited is Mark 12:28-34.

When I was in the sixth grade, I had a friend…we’ll call him Chris. And in a particular way that maybe some of you can relate to, I had confusing feelings about Chris. All I wanted to do was spend time with him. I went over to his house to play video games even though I didn’t care one bit about video games. And I hung on every word he said, even though he wasn’t much of a conversationalist. I got nervously excited whenever he was around.

In my young mind, back in a time and place where “liking” other boys was not acceptable or even acknowledged, I interpreted these feelings as simply wanting to be “best friends” with Chris, and so I told myself that this ardor, this devotion, was probably what any two friends were supposed to share with each other. But I had to know…did he want to be my “best friend” too? So I decided that, clearly, the thing to do was to tell Chris exactly how much he meant to me…as a “friend.”

Back in those days (and I’m dating myself here) we had typing classes in a special computer lab in our elementary school. This was pre-smartphone, pre-internet, pre-everything. But on these computers, you could send little messages to someone at another workstation, like a very early version of email. And I decided that I was going to send Chris a really special message so that he knew what a good friend I wanted to be. 

And so (remember, I was in sixth grade, but I still cringe recalling this)…I decided to type out the full lyrics of the Simon and Garfunkel song “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and send them to him as an expression of my friendship.

Yes, really.

If you don’t know that song, look up the lyrics later, and I promise you, no matter what your sexual orientation is, you will be embarrassed on my behalf. 

So I hit send on this message and I was eager to see what he would write back. But…of course he didn’t write back. He didn’t say a word to me after that. And although, to his credit, he was never cruel, there were definitely no more invitations to come over and play video games. 

I realized then, as much as I could at the time, that I had gotten things mixed up somehow. The feelings I had were real, and true, and earnest, but all the cues around me said that they were something I should be embarrassed about, something that was unwelcome, and perhaps for the first time, at 12 years old, I understood what it was to feel like a stranger in one’s own skin.

Now, I know that unrequited affection and feelings of shame are not experiences restricted to LGBTQ+ folks alone, but I do think that, more than most, we are intimately acquainted with the great gap that can exist between the love we have to give and the desire of others to accept it. To express queer love and queer identity is to live with an ever-present sense of risk.

So many of us, whether in 6th grade or much later in our lives, have stood at the edge of our own troubled waters, looking for a bridge, looking across toward our childhood crushes, or our family members, or our churches, or our communities. And many of them are standing on the other side of the gap, too often refusing to extend a hand back toward us, turning away in confusion or embarrassment or worse.

And so we queer folks learn something important as we navigate this reality: we learn that love, true love, is never a guarantee in this life. It is something that must be fought for and claimed and created and protected, from within the deepest parts of yourself. 

We learn that love is not the prize for successfully assimilating to the dominant culture. We learn that love is not passive compliance with the accepted order of things. It is not medal you win when you meet everyone else’s expectations of how you are to live or be.

No, we queer folks know, firsthand, that love—love for ourselves, love for the ones our hearts and our bones and our flesh cry out to hold—this love can be costly. We know this because that is what you learn when it is a political act every single day to take your partner’s hand in public. You know this when it becomes a profound act of courage to put on the outfit that best expresses your identity or dare to name the pronoun that resonates most with your spirit. 

When that is your life, you realize that love is not just a nice feeling among pleasant people; it is something tangible and active that requires strength and vulnerability and the willingness to be misunderstood. The willingness to put yourself out there and sometimes to pay the price for what is deeply, wholly, inescapably true, even if it’s not popular or acceptable to those around you. 

It can be bewildering, sometimes, all of this. It can feel like you’re the only one who gets it.

But it’s interesting. You know who else had something to say about that real, hardscrabble, costly, risky sort of love? That true, inclusive, expansive, all-encompassing sort of love? Jesus.

Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus, the One who embodies divine mystery in his flesh. Jesus, who came as a teacher, as a Savior, as the champion of all who have been trampled upon and left behind. Jesus who was himself rejected and misunderstood and deemed a threat to the accepted order.

The Church has tended to forget this throughout its history, but Jesus, in the deepest, most essential heart of the Christian story, is the embodiment of a truth that any LGBTQ+ person could already tell you: that love is scary and it is beautiful and it is necessary and it is all-powerful, and that this love cannot be prayed away by those who don’t understand it. This love cannot be killed or stamped out by judgment or greed or patriarchy or empire or any of the other maladies that afflict us. 

Jesus lived and died and rose again to demonstrate that this type of unending, unyielding love of God queers the narrative about life—it troubles the conventional wisdom about the way things are, and who is included, and it reveals the extent to which God will go to rescue us from the binaries and the judgments that bind us. And God will go as far as it takes to save us from this, all the way to the grave and back again.

And if any Church, or anyone tries tell you that Jesus is anything other than this, then they have conveniently ignored this evening’s Scripture reading. 

In this passage, when Jesus is asked about the greatest commandment, he says it is this: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s it. Everything else we might do is secondary to this, and just as important, everything else we think about Christian faith must be interpreted in light of this commandment. As Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church likes to say, if it’s not about love, it’s not about God. Period. 

And if that is so, then what I would like the broader Church—our allies and all the rest—to understand is this: if you want to know about God’s love, if you want to understand what is meant when Jesus talks about love, I suggest that one of the first things you do is talk to your LGBTQ+ neighbors and friends and family members. 

Ask them what it has cost to simply be themselves. Ask them why they were willing to pay that cost. Ask them how they navigate the daily razors edge between love and danger. And perhaps when you do this, you will realize that what they are describing to you is, in fact, a reflection of Jesus’ own story—his own cost, his own love, his own danger.

You see, for far too long LGBTQ+ people have been thought of as the outsiders who ought to be welcomed inside the Church in the name of Christian love, when the truth is that the LGBTQ+ folks are the ones who have something to teach the Church and the world about what the love of Jesus actually looks like. 

Because believe me, we know all about crucifixion—we have watched our siblings be vilified and victimized, we have watched them bleed in the streets because they dared to exist openly,  we have watched them die forsaken in hospital beds. 

And we know all about God’s abundant forgiveness and grace, because we have so often been the ones who seek reconciliation with those people and institutions who refuse to extend any charity back to us. 

And we know a bit about resurrection, because although so many of us have tasted the despair of loneliness and rejection, we have been brought back to life by the power of music, of laughter, of solidarity, of chosen families, of mentors and drag mothers and allies and friends. 

And we know about building the Kingdom of Heaven, too, because alongside our allies, we are the builders and champions of inclusive, affirming spaces where all are seen and known and enough, whether in a church or in a protest march or on a dance floor. 

Yes, if anyone wants to know more about Christian love actually is, talk to a queer person. And then you will begin to see how, as Jesus always teaches us, you will see how the Reign of God indeed springs up in queer places, at the margins of power and privilege, not at its center. You will begin to see where the Spirit resides, how she emerges out of those troubled waters like a rainbow, like a promise, like a sign from heaven that says: even if no one else understands it, your love is enough. However mischaracterized, however rejected or rebuked or unrequited, your love is more than enough.

Because, my LGBTQ+ siblings, God is that very same love that wells up in your own heart and seeks to express itself through your deepest authenticity, come what may. Even if it is costly. Even if some people never accept it. And yes, even if your email full of sappy song lyrics never gets a response. God sings with you. God understands. And God is proud of you. So very proud of you for showing the world what love can be. Be proud of yourself, too.

Because the Pride we speak of, the pride that we have fought for and died for and chosen to live for, is not, as some might say, the rejection of humility. Pride is the dismantling of shame. Pride is the construction of dignity. And when you finally get what this Pride actually means, what it actually represents, what it actually signifies, it is a beautiful thing to behold.

Sort of like what Jesus talked about. Sort of like love.

Thank God for all the LGBTQ+ people, marvelously and perfectly made, who continue to show us what love is.

May your Pride be happy. And may it be blessed.

Lock: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, June 9 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary texts cited are 1 Samuel 8:4-20 and Mark 3:20-35.

Last week, while Matt and I were on vacation in Boston, we did a lot of walking. And of course we visited all of the famous sites in the city: the Old North Church, and Paul Revere’s house, and Bunker Hill, and all the rest. But we also ended up in some lesser known corners. I won’t say we were lost, but at the end of one day, we were trying to find our way back across the Charles River to the central part of the city. We came across a narrow little walking path that cut through a park and then over a series of concrete structures in the river. 

As we crossed over, I saw that it was a dam used to control the inflow of saltwater from the ocean and that it had a series of locks built into it to make the water navigable for boats traveling up and down the river. So we stopped for a moment to look. 

I’ve always found locks interesting—the kind for boats, not for doors—maybe because I grew up in proximity to the famous Soo Locks up in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where large cargo ships must pass through to get from Lake Superior to the rest of the Great Lakes. 

The basic concept of a lock, if you have never seen one, is that a boat, when it is passing from one elevation of water to another, enters into an enclosed chamber, and then water either flows in or out of the chamber so that the boat can rise or fall and then emerge safely on the other side at the proper elevation. They are elegant and ingenious in their simplicity, and you can find them all over the world, in all sorts of settings.

But as we looked down into these locks in Boston, I was surprised to see one little boat, just floating there in the chamber, in the still water, with nobody on board. Now, I am sure there was a perfectly mundane reason for this boat to be left there, but it struck me as a rather forlorn sight, almost as if the boat had been abandoned, mid-journey, trapped between the river and the sea, left to sit alone in this chamber of somber, motionless water, surrounded by gray cement walls, waiting for someone to claim it and release it. 

And, as it happens, that image of the boat trapped in the lock came to my mind this week as I was reflecting on our Scripture lessons—probably because I was thinking about the price we are sometimes asked to pay for safety and for belonging.

Just as that boat was suspended in motion, confined to a safe place that it was not meant to stay in forever, so, too, I think, we can find ourselves trapped in proverbial locks—ones that we have constructed for ourselves or that we’ve drifted into unwittingly—and in those moments we need to be reminded that we were meant for something more.

Consider: in our first passage from the Book of Samuel, Israel wants a king. They want a king because they are a bedraggled and storm-tossed people; they are weary of being vulnerable, weary of having to trust in the guidance of a God whom they cannot see. They want to be like other nations, they want to be ruled by the sort of king they can comprehend, the kind who will put them on the same level as their adversaries. And so they enter the lock. 

But Samuel warns them—and warns us still: beware of hiding yourselves within the stone walls of an earthly king’s protection, because you might get stuck there, stifled and crushed by the very safety you once craved. That’s why Samuel says, in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day. Personally and politically,God will let us build up all the walls we think we need, but it will also be up to us to dismantle them when we realize we’re trapped inside. All of history seems to be us learning this lesson over and over again. 

Because now, as then, God wants us to remember that the human heart and our common destiny was not meant for small spaces, intellectually, socially, or spiritually—we were created for for expansiveness, for mutuality, for the practice of a love that is broad and deep, the kind that ultimately cannot be contained by fear. 

If our life is something like that little boat in the lock, then God is not found in the walls around us, hemming us in. God is instead the living water rising up beneath us, the bracing current flowing from the depths of time, the One saying, come out, be brave, sail upon the ocean of light, see where the wind of the Spirit carries you, and fear not, for I am with you in every cresting wave.

And, speaking of the Spirit, we must also deal with this morning’s Gospel, which can, again, read as one of those passages that locks us in, with all of this talk about blasphemy and unforgivable sins, and Jesus rejecting his mother and siblings. What does all this have to do with the good news of God’s broad and deep love?

Quite a lot, actually. And here, again, the image of the boat and the lock helped me think about this. 

I think the Church has too often read Scripture as if Jesus himself was the keeper of the lock rather than what he actually is: the ocean that lies beyond it. We have too often imagined Jesus as if he was the heir of King Saul rather than the Son of God. We have entrapped him within the limited nature of our cultural and political imagination, as if he wants to rule over us like any other king. But he does not.

He is, as God was with Israel, as God has always been, the One who warned us against the seductive promises of tyrants. He is the God who wants us to leave behind the locks we have built up, who wants us to open the gates and break down the walls and break open our hearts and unfurl our spirits and cross the sea with him toward a farther, more promising shore.

And that is why, in today’s reading, he rebukes the religious authorities who condemn his healing and his casting out demons all because such things challenge their narrow understandings and harden them against the infinite compassion that is the true power of God. And this is why Jesus rebukes his family’s efforts to restrain his ministry, too. They want to keep his mission quiet and still and respectable like the water pent up in a cement chamber, rather than let it be the raging torrent of mighty waters that it actually is!

Jesus wants them—and us, now—to see: all of the systems and structures and institutions in the world, even the most cherished and fundamental ones, can turn into stifling dead ends if we hide within them, if we resist the outpouring of love and justice and mercy that is the true purpose of being alive.

And until we realize this, until we claim this as God’s true purpose for us—to leave the lock, to brave the waters, to give our lives over to the blowing wind of the Spirit—then we are indeed at risk of blasphemy against that Spirit, which has nothing to do with taking the Lord’s name in vain, but is the serious risk of living our lives in vain—of never letting God transform our hearts and our world. That’s why Jesus came among us. That is why we must set out; that is why our hearts must be set free.

Can you accept that you are loved so deeply and unconditionally that you are indeed free? Are we out there telling others in our community that they are loved that deeply and unconditionally, too?

They need to hear it. Because a lot of people are hurting, and they need to know that the Gospel is, in fact, good news for everyone and everything, without condition or exception. No cement walls. No tyrant kings. Just a river flowing toward the open water, and a wind that will carry us home. 

If we do nothing else in The Episcopal Church and here at St. Anne, I hope that we will realize this and help others do the same. I hope, in this moment in our world when there are so many big questions and deep hurts, that we will understand: the time for waiting behind the walls is over. It’s time to get out there, and show the world who Jesus actually is, and see where his love takes us.

The gates of the lock are open. 

Let’s go. 

Wake Up: A Sermon for Pentecost

I preached this sermon on Pentecost, May 19, 2024, at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH.

I actually don’t remember my dreams that often, but every so often I have a really strange or stressful one. You know, the sort where you are caught in some embarrassing situation and you can’t get out of it, or everything starts crumbling apart and you fall through an opening in the floor, or some scary monster is chasing you and you can’t quite get away. I once had a dream where I opened my mouth to speak and marbles kept pouring out of it. Hopefully not a subconscious commentary on my preaching prospects today.

But if you have ever had a stressful dream or a nightmare, then you also know that strangely pleasurable pang of relief when you wake up with a start and realize, blessedly, that everything is ok. You are safe. The walls are not falling down around you. The monster wasn’t real. You can speak the words you need to speak. 

And so you catch your breath in the soft pre-dawn gloom, and it’s true, the world to which you’ve awakened may not be perfect, it may carry its own tangible shadows and fears, but it is solid and real, and the sun is rising, and it will somehow be ok. This is the relief of waking up. 

And this is why, I think, that in many of the great spiritual traditions of the world, coming into the proximity of divine truth is also often described as “waking up.” We employ the metaphors of sleep and dreams and wakefulness in talking about our experiences of God because we know, instinctively, what it feels like to be jolted into an awareness of what is real, to find safety and purpose in the things that we can actually hold onto, the things that endure, versus those things that are confusing and illusory and which fade like dreams, like the moon at daybreak. 

It might even be said that the entire spiritual journey of humanity is one made in the direction of “waking up” and comprehending, as much as our mortal minds can, what is True with a capital T and to cultivate within ourselves the place where that truth can take root and flourish and bear fruit and not be crowded out by nightmares and delusions. I think that this is the case no matter who you meet, no matter who you are, no matter how you understand God. 

Notice that I am deliberately speaking in very broad strokes here about human spirituality, and not specifically about a Christian spirituality—not yet. That is intentional, even if it’s maybe a bit daring to do so on Pentecost, one of the major Christian feast days of the entire year.

But Pentecost is a very unusual feast day, and if we take it seriously, it demands more from us than a passive acknowledgment of one moment in the life of Jesus’ disciples recorded in the book of Acts. It would be easy to gather and to sing some hymns about the Holy Spirit and wonder what the tongues of fire looked like and then go on about our business til next year. 

But what if we were meant to do more than that today? What if Pentecost was meant to wake us up to something entirely new, something very real and enduring and transformative about the God whom Jesus embodied?  

Because here’s the thing about Pentecost: it is, perhaps more than any other feast day, a categorical statement that the gospel does not belong to us. Let me say that again: the gospel does not belong to us. At least, not only to us.

Because the true gospel of love that Jesus initiated cannot be contained or controlled or wielded by anyone, including the churches that bear his name. It is universal, for all people, not in an imperialistic sense where we will compel others to be like us, but simply because the movement of love, the movement of the Holy Spirit, is everywhere, in everything and everyone. This was the radical revelation and invitation of God in Christ, fulfilled at Pentecost: to wake up to the good news that God’s love is free to all people. And then to act like people who are awake.

Nontheless, we have spent over 2,000 years, in various places and times and cultures, fitting the message and the mission and the death and the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus into a sectarian or institutional framework. And of course we would. We’re only human. For all we know, the apostles were drafting an organizational chart in the days leading up to Pentecost. 

But then something happened. Something so strange and wild and free and destabilizing that even the account of it in Acts doesn’t make a lot of sense. All we get are metaphors: a sound like a rush of violent wind. Divided tongues, as of fire. People speaking in languages they don’t even know. It honestly sounds more like a strange dream, except in this case it wasn’t. They were not asleep, and they were not drunk on new wine. They were awake. Maybe for the first time in their entire lives. And in the speaking and the praying and the blowing of the wind and the burning of the flame something became apparent that had not been before:

That whatever Jesus had been doing, whatever he had been trying to teach them and pass on to them and invite them into in his risen life, it did not belong to them, or to any one group. This gospel was not a secret teaching for the elect, it was not an exclusive invitation for the chosen, it was not a blueprint for the power of one nation above all others. It was the Spirit saying to all of creation:

Wake up! Wake up and see that I love all of you, that I love everything, that everything is nothing but love! Wake up, children of every nation and creed and language and color and class. Wake up and see that the good news is you were made for blessedness, you were made for communion with your Creator, you were made to stand at the threshold of heaven and earth and to let these things rush through you like a fire, like a gale, like the light of the rising sun! 

The Gospel of this love does not belong to you, and that is what makes it good news. It is for Israel, but not only for Israel. It is for the Gentiles, but not only for the Gentiles. It is for the rich, the poor, the healthy, the weak, the lost, the found, the mighty, the marginal, but it does not belong to any one of them alone. It is for the gay, the straight, the trans*, the young, the old, the urban, the rural, the liberal and the conservative, the partisan and the cynic, but not for any one of them alone. It is for the human, the beast, the soil, the stars, the rivers, the wood, the stone, the deep ocean and the immeasurable depths of the cosmos. It is for all of them, this gospel. It is for all of us.

And on this day, on this strange and beautiful day, we have a choice: we can either wake up all over again and rediscover our calling to a universal, boundless, borderless, indiscriminate care and concern and fellowship with everything and everyone. Or we can keep dreaming our restless dreams about a God who is more concerned with perpetuating cultural warfare and the histories of violence and loss to which we have become accustomed. 

But I will tell you, I am weary of those terrible dreams. I am ready to wake up and see what is real, to speak clearly, to seek what is possible if we let the gospel be what it is, as dynamic and fluid and liberated as the Holy Spirit, belonging to no one and thus belonging to everyone, everywhere, always, revealing how we all belong, how are all beloved, how everything is possible if we dare to act like it is.

This morning we are baptizing baby Oliver and baby Thea into all of this. And as we witness their incorporation into this life, into this story, into this community, what I hope you will remember is that, on a fundamental level, what we are talking about in baptism, and what we are talking about on Pentecost, and really on every Sunday we gather, is not only being part of a church, but also about being part of everything. 

It is about recognizing our kinship with every face we encounter, and with the night sky, and the vast earth, and the creatures that dwell therein. It is about giving something of ourselves over to everything else, just as Jesus did—something of our life, and labor, and heart—so that we might wake up, with a start, and yet with a strange pang of relief, to realize that life is neither a strange dream nor a private nightmare to endure, but something solid and real and interconnected and whole, and that the sun is rising, and that somehow, in the end, everything will be ok. 

For there is a God who is bigger than everything, who burns with love for you; there is a Spirit who is closer than your own breath, and this Spirit has come, in wind and fire and gentleness to say one, necessary thing as you toss and turn in that gloom just before the dawn:

Wake up, dear one. Wake up.

Books: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, May 5, 2024 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is John 15:9-17.

If you didn’t already know this about me, now you will—and I’m not ashamed to admit it, because I am surely in good company with others in this room–but…I buy too many books. I can’t seem to help myself. 

My partner, Matt, will attest to this, as will my mom, who I am pretty sure passed this problem on to me. New, used, it doesn’t matter—if I am out and about and I pass by a bookshop, I have to go in. I have to peruse. And more often than I should, I find yet another book that I absolutely need to buy it right now. *Right now.*

Never mind that I have a teetering stack of books on my bedside table most of the time, all in various stages of consumption. Never mind that I have a wall of books behind me in my office. Never mind that I have donated so many books to local libraries, every time I have moved, that I could have probably started a library of my own. It’s not my fault they keep publishing so many good ones!

Books are just so interesting. So many good ideas, so many stories, so many important histories and lessons to digest. I think my all-time record purchase, one time when my mom and I took a trip to Florida and stayed near a used book store—was 22 books in one visit. They probably only cost me $10 or $20 in total, but still. A little embarrassing. As to whether I read all 22 of them cover to cover…no comment. 

These days Matt just gives me a knowing look when a small Amazon package shows up at the apartment door or when I make a sabbath day visit to the local book shop. He knows what he’s in for in the future, God love him. 

Now, despite my insatiable appetite for books, I will admit that it can get a bit overwhelming when it comes time to actually pick one to read and stick with. Hence the big stack by the bedside.

But every so often…you come across a book that just draws you in. If you are an avid reader, you know what this feeling is like. The plot or the writing style just envelops you, and suddenly you are not interested in scrolling on your phone or watching Netflix or anything else—you just want to devour this book and see what happens next. It is truly one of the most pleasurable experiences in life. And not only because you are being entertained or educated, but because you are focused. All the little annoyances and worries and wonderings that clutter our minds fall away for a bit and you are part of a new and different world with each turning of the page. 

If it’s been a while since you found a book like that (or a film, or a piece of music, or whatever it is that captivates you), I hope that you do so soon. I hope you remember what it feels like to surrender yourself to the ideas and possibilities of another world. 

Because, although there are always more books to collect, there is a certain rest, and peace, and, paradoxically, a freedom, in committing fully to just one: one story, one thing, over all the other ones beckoning from the proverbial shelf.

And speaking of stories worth committing to, this morning Jesus arrives at the central theme of his own story. “This is my commandment,” he says to his disciples, “that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” 

This is my commandment. This is it. This, right here, is the purpose of the Gospel stories. This the purpose of the entirety of Scripture. This is the purpose of everything; the beginning and the endpoint of creation. Love one another as I have loved you. 

And I know we spend a lot of time wondering about and debating the meaning of existence, but here’s a spoiler alert: your life is about loving one another. Just as God, incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, has demonstrated that love in the flesh. 

Your life is about proclaiming this love and practicing this love. That’s it! That’s the one story, above all others, that we were meant to read and internalize. And we can spend our lives reading a thousand other books or exploring esoteric philosophies, looking for countless other hints about what it means to be alive and to live well, but I guarantee you, we will always come back to this: love one another.

“I have called you friends,” Jesus continues, “because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father.” All the secrets of the universe, all the origins of creation, all the big questions about why and what and how and when—it’s all just summed up in this: love one another.

I think, in some ways, we are convinced it must be more complicated than that. We imagine there is some secret library, locked away, waiting to be discovered, that will reveal a more complex, surprising answer to why we are alive on this earth. We construct a bunch of ideological theories and political dividing lines to explain things. But our faith reveals to us that there isn’t some big secret. There’s just this. Love one another. It’s almost embarrassingly simple.

Now I understand, of course, that this does not mean that the actual living out of our lives is always simple. How we choose to love one another, how we wrestle with the challenges of love and the sacrifices and the losses it occasions and how we navigate the many temptations to choose something other than love—thes are all stories that are still being lived, still being told and written down and passed on. 

But to be a Christian, to be a disciple of Jesus, is to say: no matter what my own story is, no matter how hard or complicated it gets, and no matter what other stories I encounter in this big, diverse, sometimes scary world, there is ONE story that is the key to understanding all the rest: love one another. 

And it is to say: this is the one story that I will choose over all the others on the shelf, and I will find rest and clarity in choosing to believe that loving one another is all that will be left when the last word has been written at the end of time. 

And this is the story that we will keep on telling and living out here at St. Anne, as best we can, week after week, year after year, because you know as well as I do that the world is still, always, desperately in need of such a story. 

For all the cultural impact of Christianity in our history and society, it seems too often that a lot of people who claim to follow Jesus have lost the plot of what he was actually talking about. They decided somewhere along the way that his story was about purity or power, not love.

But while we may not know everything, this much we do know and this much we proclaim: God is love and love is God and no one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life like an open book; to become engrossed in the story of the love we share; to forsake all the side plots and distractions, because we know that love for one another is the only story worth telling. It is the only one that makes sense in the end.

If it’s been a while since you felt a love like that, I hope that you do so soon. I hope you remember what it feels like to surrender yourself to the ideas and possibilities of love.

Now, I will probably never read all of the books on my shelf in their entirety. I will probably keep buying more books. Matt, I pray, will be patient with me.

But what I take comfort in is that, even if I never get to read every story written, I already know the resolution to all of them. We catch glimpses of it here every week, in the bread that we eat, in the reconciliation we pursue, in the songs we sing. All beautiful fragments of the one true story. 

And not to give away the ending entirely, but I promise you this: it’s good news.