life – By Another Road

Bus: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, September 21, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Luke 16:1-13, the parable of the dishonest manager.

My dad didn’t always have that VW van I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Before that, when summertime came around, we had to get back to the family home in Michigan some other way. And once, when I was probably in the second grade, we took a Greyhound bus all the way from northern California to the Upper Peninsula.

Now, have you ever ridden on a Greyhound bus? Have you ever ridden 2,300 miles cross-country on a Greyhound bus? Let me tell you, that trip is not for the faint of heart. Hard seats, barely any air conditioning, and back then people still smoked cigarettes on board. We only stopped for a few minutes at a time at run down bus stops and gas stations and other places at the frayed edge of human comfort.

When you make such a trip, though, you discover a kinship with the folks riding next to you, because all of you are united by the one fervent desire of anyone who is on a long-distance bus: to get home. At every stop, people were speaking of home, remembering home, wondering how much longer it would be to get there.

Those of us on the Greyhound were not out for a pleasure ride or a sightseeing trip. Most all of us had been somewhere else, far away from where we wanted to be, and now we were doing whatever it took to get back.

And sometimes you face desperate circumstances. One night on that trip, in the middle of Des Moines, Iowa, our bus was hit by a drunk driver. Thankfully nobody was seriously injured, but the bus was, and so my dad and I found ourselves in a downtown station, bleary eyed and stranded at 4 in the morning with no money. It’s been over 30 years, but I still remember that pit in my stomach, the rising tide of panic.

We are all just trying to get home in this life, friends. In one way or another, we are all just trying to get home. Some of us have a fairly comfortable time of it. And some of us do not. But beneath and beyond the material circumstances of our lives, that desire to get home, to find a home, to build or reclaim a sense of home—this is what unites us.

I wish we could see that more clearly, especially in divided times like these. I wish we could understand that while our opinions and our ideologies may vary, our basic desires usually do not. We’re all just people on the bus, driven by the memory of a particular porch light, hoping it’s been left on for us if we can ever get back to it.

As it so happens, Jesus came to help us get back home, in every sense of the word. But first—and I think this is a core goal of his teaching ministry—Jesus wants us to see that we are all on the trip together—this long, surprising trip, with its many perils and compromises. And so we arrive at today’s parable.

Now, I will fully admit, this Gospel passage is a tough one. The story, the motivations of the characters in it, and Jesus’ message for us all feel a bit confusing, even contradictory. We are told that one cannot serve God and wealth as two masters, which is easy enough to understand, even if it’s difficult in practice.

But then we are also told to make friends by means of “dishonest wealth.” Why would the Son of God tell us such a thing, sounding more like a rascal than a Redeemer? This is not “Scary” Jesus, but it is Crafty Jesus, speaking to us with an irreverent wink.

Whenever I come up against a perplexing passage of Scripture, I try to remember my two guiding principles for how these texts should be read: first, through the lens of love. And second, as I have said before, is to read Scripture from the margins—through the eyes of those people and places which exist out at that frayed edge of human comfort.

And when I do so with this parable, what I notice is how the manager—crafty though he may be—is really just a man with a desperate need to find a home.

“I have decided what to do,” he says to himself, probably because he has no one else to turn to. I have decided what to do. I will figure out how to get someone, anyone, to care whether I live or die. I will figure out how to find a home that won’t be taken from me.

How lonely he must be! And this dialogue with himself—this broken man trying to survive—this, for me, is the heart of the parable.

Because note, first, that we don’t know if he actually squandered any property—just that he was accused of doing so by someone with more power than him. And we can’t quite tell whether his subsequent choices were immoral, or resourceful, or subversive, or some combination of these.

But what we do know about this manager, much like the character of the Prodigal Son, (which is, by the way, the story just before this one in Luke), and what we might even begin to empathize with is that, when faced with the breakdown of everything he thought he could count on, the manager discovers, in a flash, the only thing that actually matters in this life. He discovers the one thing we all seek, in the end: to find that one porch light that might be left on for us. To get home, however far we might have to go to get there.

And so he tries, however imperfectly, to do just that. I don’t know if I admire him, but I see him. I understand him.

Because I think it’s safe to say that every single person on that old Greyhound bus had a lot in common with this manager. We were all people without much money, all having to face down our frightening sense of need. We were all people who felt the urgency of getting to a place where someone would finally open the door and welcome us in.

And guess what: that hungry urgency of homegoing—the kind that leads you down lonely highways, the kind that keeps you going through peril and fatigue, the kind that makes you do surprising things—that, that is part of discipleship. That is part of following Jesus, who called tax collectors and dined with sinners and who, I am fairly certain, would also be quite comfortable with bus stops and the people who rely on them.

Because it’s not a pleasure ride or a sightseeing trip, this Christian path through life. It is the long, necessary journey through our failure and sinfulness and on towards home, back to God. It is late nights and lonely gas stations; it is grace and compassion and cigarette smoke; it is extravagant hope and deep hunger. That is the truth of this Christian journey. Every story Jesus tells us reveals that this is so.

And if we don’t pick up on that in his stories, well, it’s time to read them again, with love and from the margins.

So here’s what I’ll ask of you today, whether you have ever ridden the Greyhound or not: don’t judge the manager too harshly, or throw up your hands at the complexity of his story. We are all a tangled mess of crafty and caring, after all.

Just see him for who he is: a fellow traveler on the bus with you, with his own mistakes and missteps, his own private failures and desperate choices, just like yours or mine, just sitting in Des Moines at 4AM with his head in his hands, wondering what he’s going to do next and when or if he will ever be home again. Some times, that’s all of us.

And if that inspires a bit of tenderness in you, a bit of compassion for the many imperfect ways people have to survive in this world and the ways that God loves us and welcomes us regardless…well, then perhaps the parable has done its job after all. Perhaps Jesus has met us, again, as he tends to, at the frayed edge of human comfort.

On that bus trip, we did finally make it to Michigan, by the way. But in a bit of a twist, we didn’t get there on the Greyhound. After the accident, we were stranded. So my grandpa got in his old truck and drove over 500 miles to Des Moines and brought us home with him. The porch light was indeed on when we got back.

And you know, I’m fairly confident that’s what heaven would feel like for me if I ever get there: the light on and the door opening, and the One who just looks and me and says, long trip, huh?

And I’ll say, Lord, you have no idea.

And he’ll say, maybe with an irreverent wink, actually, I do.

What Else?: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, August 3, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The congregation celebrated a baptism and the lectionary texts cited are Hosea 11:1-11 and Luke 12:13-21.

I love a baptismal Sunday. I may be biased, but there’s nothing like a baptism to remind us what life truly is—they get us in touch with the fundamentals of what life is actually about.

We start with water—that most fundamental of elements. And then there are families gathered, in all their joyful complexity—also fundamental. And there’s hope, and maybe a little bit of nervousness and distraction, all fundamentally normal things to feel. And there can be some tears, too, and that’s perfectly ok. Tears accompany us through all of life’s fundamental moments, after all.

Because most of all, there’s love. The love of community. The love of the ones who share life with us. And the love of God in Christ, that fundamental love which holds all the rest of it together.

Now, you may be surprised to learn this, but no classes or studies are explicitly required in The Episcopal Church before a person gets baptized. Not because we don’t care about learning, but because it’s really quite difficult to put into words the fullness of what baptism is—how it renders within us a new creation; how it ends us; how it begins us again each day; and how it ties us inextricably to Jesus, he who is the kite on the wind of God, and all of us the slightly terrified tail of the kite pulled heavenward into storms and rainbows and other untold wonders.

See, we fall into metaphors with baptism, always. It’s hard to put into words. So we just sort of dive into it and then spend our lives trying to figure it out.

And one of our best efforts at this, I think, is something we will recite in a few minutes. It’s called the Baptismal Covenant, which sounds a bit officious, but is really just our attempt to put words to what baptism has wrought upon us after the water is put away and the tears are dried and all we are left with is the strange sense that a threshold in our heart has been crossed.

And what the Baptismal Covenant says, in so many words, is this: baptism is the point of entry into real life, the way God intended it to be. It describes those things that help us be truly alive, things like prayer and fellowship and learning, and also a particular posture toward the world: one of humility and service and justice-seeking. The Covenant suggests that, as Jesus showed us, these things are the way into an encounter with unending life, right here, right now. You might call it Big Life, capital B, capital L.

We get baptized so that we can put this Big Life on for size, sort of like when we were kids, slipping into our parents winter coats. The idea is that we might, with God’s help, grow up to wear it fully ourselves.

See, always with the metaphors.

But it’s good, it’s very good that we would try to put all of this into words on happy days like this, and maybe especially on harder days, when the world or our own lives seem to look nothing like the Big Life we dreamt of—when we find that, after all these years, we are still children crying in our parent’s winter coats, waiting to feel like a grown up. On those hard days, we need some words to call us back to ourselves and help us begin again.

And if kites and winter coats are all just a bit too much of a stretch for you, never fear, I’ve got one more metaphor inspired by this week’s Scriptures, so stick with me. It’s this:

Baptism is a question. It’s a question planted in our hearts. A simple, two-word question we are invited to carry through the rest of our life. And the question is, “what else?”

Here’s what I mean.

In today’s Scripture readings, we first have this astounding passage from Hosea.

Like any good prophet, Hosea is giving voice to God’s inner dialogue, God who is so upset with ancient Israel, so angry and disappointed at the way they’ve turned out—how selfish, how wayward, how lost as a people. God’s wants to know: when will you grow up? When will you understand what life is about? Do I have to keep punishing you to make you see?

And then, God has a revelation of His own. He says to himself:

When Israel was a child, I loved him.

It was I who taught Ephraim to walk.

I took them up in my arms.

I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?

How can I hand you over, O Israel?

In other words, God says, no, no, no more heartbreak. No more floods that destroy and wars that avenge. No more winter coats that never quite fit. My children, my people, my beloved, my own—what else? What else can we be to each other, you and your God? What else can I do to help you grow? What else can heal the cracks of this broken earth and make it flow with streams of righteousness rather than rivers of blood? What else? What else?

For I am God and no mortal. I will not come in wrath.

I am so tired of telling you to follow me, to love me or else. So instead I ask, with hope and tenderness: what else?

And for those of us who follow Jesus and perceive the truth of him and make him our own Lord, that “what else” is our baptism into his life. He who comes in something other than wrath. He who came to the River Jordan to be baptized himself, to show us what real life—God’s life—actually is. Tears and storms and rainbows and untold wonders.

Which is why this parable that Jesus shares with his disciples—it’s not just some moralistic rant about storing up material wealth. Most of the people originally hearing this had few material resources anyway. No, this is Jesus, God, staring deep into us, we terrified souls attached to his heaven-bound kite, unsure whether we are ready to be carried away by him on the wind of the Spirit. We who think we can make ourselves safe and sound so as to hide from real life, and it is God saying,

You fool! You blessed, silly, beautiful, scared, foolish children of mine, stumbling in your winter coats. This very night, this very moment, right now, with every breath, your life is being demanded of you. And I will help you live it! Trust in me! Trust in this! Let me bathe you in my love!

And I know that you are scared, and I know that the world is disappointing and cruel sometimes, and it might seem easier to look away, but to be baptized into this life is to ask what else is possible for us? What else might we do together, you and I? What else might we be to each other, God and neighbor, heaven and earth, forever and now, bound up together in this one glorious kingdom that wells up in our midst like water in a font?

What else might be waiting for us if we shared in life together, you and I? What words might we speak to one another then?

Baby Noelle, today we will splash a bit of water on you, and it will be cleansing and it will be tears and it will be aliveness and danger and it will be more than we can ever express.

And we will cradle you close and gently tie you to the tail of that luminous kite, the One who will carry you across the landscape of your life, forever. And it will be grace, and it will be mystery, and it will be good and hard and more than we can ever understand.

But we will stand with you, and for you, and we will speak that Covenant made for us and by us and in us since time immemorial, in the best way that we can, with the imperfect words of our hearts. We will grow up into it together.

And then all of us, Noelle, you and I, and everyone who has ever been baptized into life as it really is—we will dry our tears, and we will hold our loved ones, and we will go to the threshold and look out into the complicated world that waits there, and we will begin again each day with God’s simple question:

What else?

And the answer, whatever we make it, will be our life.

Facing It: A Sermon

About seven weeks ago, as most of you know, I found myself in a place I didn’t want or expect to be. There are so many other things that Matt and I thought this summer would be about, but we had to accept that my surgery and its aftereffects were, in fact, was what was happening instead.

Every so often, you come face to face with life as it actually is, and you can’t hide. You can’t escape into your plans or your platitudes or all the comforting narratives in your head. There comes a moment—and it is a hard, holy moment—when all you can do is surrender to the truth that’s right in front of you.

This doesn’t always come as bad news. Yes, for some of us, this sort of moment shows up in crisis. But the immediacy of life comes through in wonderful ways, too: when you fall in love, or see the sun dip into the sea, or hear your children laughing, or taste the perfection of sweet summer corn on the cob.

As followers of Jesus and as sacramental people, any and all of this is an opportunity. Our faith tradition teaches that whenever you surrender to the truth of things, whenever you can drink of the cup that is right now, whether bitter or sweet, you will taste God. Because God is found precisely in those places where there is nothing to hide from anymore—where you are, at last, here, actually partaking in life. This is what Jesus modeled for us every single day.

For me, several weeks ago, that moment of surrender was when they were wheeling me in for surgery. I’d said all the goodbyes and I love you’s, we’d prayed, and I had to go. And as they rolled me down those cold dim hallways towards the operating room, I found myself some mixture of terrified and very, very present, thinking, here I am. This is my life. I don’t know what comes next, but there is nothing left to hide from now.

I am grateful for what came next. I am grateful for the love and prayers that sustained us. It is so good to be back—back with you, back with Matt and with our families, and back into this life with its sunsets and its summer corn and the thousand other small tastes of God.

But I’ve been watching the news of the word, of course, and I know it is also a life that remains full of the complexities we all face: complicated, risky and uncertain, populated by all those proverbial wolves.

I have been reflecting, lately, on how challenging it is to actually face the fullness of the world we live in—how much easier it is to stand safely behind the shelter of our opinions and our ideologies and our internet comments and our brittle certainties, like children playing hide and seek with truth. Meanwhile the world burns. It burns with pain, with longing for a humanity that will no longer hide from its collective responsibilities.

Speaking for myself, I am hoping to do less hiding and more facing.

Because that’s what Jesus wants for us. It is, in many ways, God’s fundamental expectation of us: to face the world, to love it for what it is, to name what is broken in it, and to surrender ourselves fully to its healing, holding nothing back. If we are not willing to try that, however imperfectly, we are not practicing Christianity, not really.

To that end: in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus commissions a large group. He rounds up 70 or so people—a meaningful number in the Bible, by the way, which evokes the idea of wholeness, fullness, completion— and he sends them out into the villages of the surrounding countryside to bear witness to the nearness of the kingdom of God. And they must do so without money, possessions, or even shoes. Not my favorite method of weekend travel.

This list of instructions might sound arbitrary, but it is not. Jesus has very good reason for the 70 to go forth in this way—because he wants them to know what it feels like to stop hiding behind anything—he needs them to face and to receive life just as it is.

He wants them—and us—to be able to answer these questions, honestly:

How will you carry yourself out in the wilderness places, where you can rely on none of the usual comforts?

How will you stop thinking you can do all of this on your own strength?

How will you stare down your demons, so that you might bravely face the demonic and destructive forces at work in the world?

How will you surrender to the nearness of the Kingdom of God within you, so that others might find it, too?

Despite what some current perversions of the Christian faith claim, the answer to these questions has nothing to do with money, or force, or power. We are the sheep, not the wolves.

So yes, first, lay down your purse, Jesus says. You cannot buy the substance of your life. It will come to you freely, on its own terms, as a strange and unexpected gift, as a seat at the unexpected table where nothing can be bought or sold. Wisdom is understanding that we are all beggars at the feast of creation. Receive what is given to you.

And then lay down your bags, too. Your possessions, yes, but also your “baggage”—your assumptions and your gripes, your enmities and your cravings and your uncritical allegiances and your worn out old stories that serve no one anymore. Because if you don’t, you won’t ever see what’s actually in front of you, and we won’t ever do the work that needs doing right now. Do the work that is given to you.

And finally, take off your shoes. Discover reverence for this moment, the place you are in—it is holy ground. It may not be the place you wanted to go. But “Here I am, Lord.” Here I am, in the hallway to the operating room. Here I am on Sunday morning with my doubts and my desires and my scars. Here I am in the United States in 2025, with my gratitude and my tears and my determination that we do not squander the dream of our forebears.

Here we are, with all these questions and hopes and fears, without anything but ourselves to give, trusting that, like Jesus, ourself is exactly what we are meant to give, for that is what the Lord loves most of all. Give back what has been given to you.

So here’s what I am wondering today:

What will it take for us to step out like the 70? What do you need—from me, from this community—to do the thing you’ve been hesitating to do, to face the thing you must face? What will nourish us for the road ahead, with its wolves and its sunsets and its sorrows and its summer corn?

Whatever that thing this, you need to name it, and I want to know about it, and we need to figure out how to help each other face it. It may begin with laying a few heavy things down—our assumptions and our resentments and our complacencies and our “we’ve always done it this ways.”

But if we’re not working on that here, as a community that carries on the legacy of those 70 liberated wanderers— whose names are written in heaven and whose lives blessedly became something other than a game of hide and seek—if we’re not doing that, then I don’t really know what we’re doing. And as I’ve been reminded recently, our time together is precious. I don’t to waste a moment of it.

I don’t know about you but I’m feeling a call toward all those wild, thin, courageous places where Jesus sends us—no purse, no bag, no shoes. Just a new heart. Those places where you can taste God.

They’re in the dim cool hospital corridors where all you have is a prayer under your breath and a sense of surrender to right now. In the invisible currents of mercy and sacrifice that undergird our worship and our service and our public witness. In all the moments when you can really, truly look at yourself and your life and your neighbor and, yes, our country—all that we are and all that we are not—and still say: yes, I choose to face this. I choose to not give up on this. I choose to keep trying for the good of all this. I choose to love this.

When we do that, wherever we are, then the proclamation once spread throughout the villages is still alive: the kingdom of God has come near.

Indeed, it was always there, just waiting for us to face it.

By Another Road: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, January 5 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 2:1-12, the journey of the Magi to see the baby Jesus.

Some of you know that I post the text of my sermons each week on a little blog site I created several years ago. I’ve always loved writing, and it started out as a helpful way for me to share some of my early sermons and reflections with a few family members and friends. It has transitioned into, I hope, a convenient way for anyone to go back, if they want to, to see what exactly I was attempting to say on any given Sunday—whether because you found it interesting, or perhaps because it made no sense at all. I make no promises!

It is the humbling labor of a preacher each week to launch out our words as an offering to the community we serve and out into the universe as an offering to God. We hope, at best, to leave behind a small impression—which can feel like trying to skip a stone on the surface of the sea.

But I digress. The blog where I post my sermons and skip my stones is titled By Another Road, and folks have asked me on occasion why it’s called that. Well, in this morning’s Gospel reading, you have your answer. I took it from Matthew’s account of the Magi (or Wise Men) who, after visiting the baby Jesus and having been warned of King Herod’s nefarious intentions, decide to travel home “by another road.”

On its face, this little phrase is just part of the plot—the Magi literally have to go home a different way in order to avoid an awkward or dangerous conversation with Herod. They’ve accomplished what they came to do, paying homage to this newborn king, and now they slip down a back road to their own homelands.

But for me, at least, this phrase, by another road, always meant something more. Maybe it’s because, for various reasons, I have known what it feels like to be “other” myself. When a person feels different somehow from those around them, you come to know what it means and what it costs to walk a road through life that some people cannot—or choose not—to understand.

This can be many things. For some, this “other road” is tied to an identity we carry with us; for others perhaps it is shaped by our personal or family history, or our physical limitations, or the unexpected responsibilities and challenges that life has visited upon us. The more I live and serve as a priest and hear people’s stories, the better I understand that we are all traveling “by another road” of one sort or another.

And what I became convinced of at a particular point in my walk with God, and which I fervently believe is the basis of our faith, is that the story of following Jesus is less about conforming ourselves to one straight and narrow, conventionally acceptable path, and instead is about opening our hearts and our eyes and our minds to recognize how God is present on every road we must travel. And that God is present, too, on the roads we do not recognize—the ones walked by people very different from us.

The point of being Christian is found not so much in which road we take, but how we travel. Are we going gently and justly? Are we helping others along the way? Are we stopping to notice the beauty of the world around us and giving thanks for it? Are we treating those whom we meet as adversaries, or as fellow pilgrims?

To travel by another road, ultimately, means seeing the world as the Wise Men did after their encounter with the Christ child—once they decided to opt out of whatever political intrigue they’d been drawn into. It is to see the world no longer as place of transactional relationships and personal ambitions, but as a network of winding paths—all our pasts and futures and sorrows and dreams, all converging, ultimately, beneath the star of Bethlehem, in the flesh of God, and in the humble gifts we offer to one another…all of us skipping our stones on the surface of the sea.

And to be a follower of Jesus is to commit to walking whatever road we’re on as if all of this is true and worthwhile. Because in every worship service and in every act of service to our neighbor we affirm that it is—that God was born into this world to bless every pathway we have stumbled upon, and even to journey by another road of his own, to the Cross and beyond.

Now, I’ll admit that the idea that there isn’t just one road, one perfect way to “do” this Christian life, and that—heaven help us—there might even be holy pathways for people who look or love or live differently than us— might be a bit disorienting, even offensive to some. So be it.

But I’ll tell you—it’s this realization–that God was with me on my own road, that Jesus wanted to walk with me just as I am–that saved me, and continues to save me every day of my life. And I suspect, because you have found a sense of home at St. Anne, that might be true for you, too.

Because the other thing I love about the story of the Magi is that they, themselves, discovered in their encounter with Jesus that it was ok to be different. They were not Israelites. They weren’t part of the in-crowd in this story. And yet God, as a child, welcomed them as any child would—full of love and trust and wonder. These Magi were enough, just as they are; they were loved and blessed not because of the particular road they have traveled, but simply because they have come. And so it is for you.

I hope we learn something from all of this. And so, if I could ask you to do two things, my dear friends, at the outset of this new calendar year, it would be this:

First—take some time to look at the road you’re on, whether in this past year or maybe for your whole life. Maybe it’s not perfect. Maybe it’s been hard. But I want you to kneel down and bless that road, and bless the body and soul that has carried you on it.

I want you to trace a cross in the dust of this road you’ve been walking, trace a cross over the story you’ve been carrying in your heart, over the questions you’ve been asking, over the fears you’ve been fearing, and I want you to say to yourself, God is on this road with me. Jesus is on this road with me. And so I will travel it with my head held high, with a sense of love and purpose and care, because like any other road, it is made sacred by the journey.

And second—take some time to learn about the road someone else is walking. Maybe someone close to you whose life just doesn’t make a lot of sense to you. Or maybe someone you’ve lost touch with. Or maybe a community of people whose life experiences differ greatly from yours.

In whatever way you can, whether through conversation or study, try to understand the road that they are walking. Maybe you can ask them those questions I suggested last November: What do you love? What do you fear? What do you hope for? And another important question one of you added to that list: What can I do to help?

Because the Epiphany that we speak of this time of year—the Epiphany of God’s revelation in our midst—is not just about the news of Jesus born in Bethlehem all those years ago, visited by wise men and feared by kings.

No, the Epiphany is also that God is still here with every one of us, no matter which road we’re on—the winding roads and the dangerous ones; the placid pathways and the ones cut short; the long hauls and the dead ends.

And we are now the ones who must be Wise Men and Wise Women and Wise People, putting one foot in front of the other, following that star, bearing our own particular gifts, so that kings and tyrants might yet tremble in the face of love and peace and mercy, both in the form of a child and in the ones who seek him—the ones, like us, who dare to travel by another road.

A road which, no matter where it goes, always leads us home.

Unimpressive: A Christmas Eve Sermon

I preached this sermon at the 2023 Christmas Eve services at St. Anne Episcopal Church in West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Luke 2:1-20.

All of us probably have a story or two about a Christmas gift that we received that wasn’t quite what we were hoping for. Something in the wrong size or style, maybe, or some odd item that we don’t know quite what to do with. It’s bound to happen at some point, of course, because we are all just people doing our best to know and to provide for one another, and sometimes we miss the mark a bit. That’s life. It’s ok.

But 4-year old me did not understand this quite as well. 4 year old me, I must confess, had a very particular expectation of what a Christmas present should look like. And so it came to pass that, when I was in pre-school, I had to learn a tough lesson during our classroom gift exchange.

I was only 4, but I remember it vividly. Every student brought in one gift to give, and they were all placed in a circle around the Christmas tree. And then, sort of like musical chairs, we all got in a circle around the tree, too, and when the music started, we started marching around it, and when the music stopped, whichever present was in front of us was ours to open.

Well, the music started, and off we went, and I was eyeing all the various packages and boxes under the tree, getting more excited by the moment. And then the music stopped, and there in front of me was a big box, beautifully wrapped, big enough to be a board game or a whole set of toys. I thought, this is looking good for me!

And then, all of the sudden—immediately to my left, the kid next to me swooped forward and grabbed that big present and ran off with it. I can still feel the indignity of it! And all the other kids grabbed their presents and ran off, too, and before I knew what to say or do, there I was, alone at the tree with the gift that the little thief next to me didn’t want.

It was a very small little box, wrapped in some crumpled paper.

And I stood there and opened it up and it was a tiny little plastic bear, the kind you could stick onto the end of a pencil.

I was FURIOUS. I will admit to you now that I stood there in my Christmas sweater and I cried sad, angry tears, and I refused to be consoled. Whatever had been in that big box was supposed to be MINE and now all I had was this stupid little plastic bear. My parents tried to tell me something about gratitude, but I wasn’t having any of that! I didn’t get it. Not then. Not yet. All I knew is that I thought I was going to get something big and shiny and instead I had this tiny, unimpressive little thing in my hands.

…

I think a lot of life is like that little plastic bear. We carry with us so many big hopes and expectations of what will be, what ought to be, what WE ought to be, and then the music stops and we look in front of us and instead we are only given what is, and we are who we are, and things might look a little dimmer and dingier and smaller than we imagined. Even Christmas, bright and lovely though it is, can feel like that, sometimes, depending on what we’re going through, what the year has brought (or taken) from us.

And when that happens—when plans fall apart, when we lose what is precious, when the world turns out to be a messy and complicated place where joy is sometimes snatched out from under us—well, maybe we all shed a few sad, angry tears in those moments, too. And that’s life. It’s ok.

But here’s the thing about Christmas, about the Christmas story, in particular—the one that we just heard retold a few minutes ago about the birth of a baby in Bethlehem, and the frightened shepherds in the field and the new mother pondering this strange, small gift she now cradles in her arms—here’s the thing about all of it:

It is good news for us precisely because it is unimpressive. Surprising, unexpected, even miraculous, yes, but on the surface, by all outward appearances, the nativity of Jesus is entirely unimpressive.

We forget this, too easily perhaps, because our traditions and our music and our associations with the holiday are all so beautiful and rich with meaning, as they should be, given that we know who Jesus turned out to be. But if we pay close attention to what is actually told in the narrative itself, the bare facts underneath the wrapping paper and ribbons, it’s a rather simple little story, that can be summed up like this:

A young, unwed mother gives birth in a tiny town of no great wealth or prominence. She is in crowded quarters because her fiance’s family is of modest means and so she has to place her newborn into a makeshift crib. A few ragtag men show up in the night telling a story about a strange vision they just had out in the fields. The family members, or whoever happens to be around, are surprised by this odd visit. Maybe they believe them; maybe they think the shepherds are off their rocker. We don’t really know. Then the shepherds leave. And that’s it.

The night is quiet, and the baby slumbers, and the world spins on.

No palaces, no proclamations from the king, no processions or parades or parties in the street, no big board games wrapped under the tree. From the perspective of any passerby in Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus is completely unimpressive. God is born and heaven unites itself with mortal flesh and the One who is mightier than any emperor is in our midst…and yet still the animals must be brought in from the cold and hungry mouths must be fed and everyone still goes to bed with backaches and unfinished to-do lists.

The coming of the Messiah is small: small like a child sleeping in the night, small like a little gift wrapped in crumpled paper, small like real life can be, all the average moments that are too easily overlooked in the quest for bigger brighter, more impressive things. And although the years go by with their ups and downs, and although sometimes we cry sad, angry tears and it’s hard to feel grateful for what we are left holding, still he comes in the night, still he waits for us look down and behold him. Still he invites us to appreciate the difference between grandeur and grace, and how those two things rarely resemble one another in this life.

This is the good news of Christmas: that God came into our midst in an unimpressive way because God works primarily through unimpressive, normal, struggling, imperfect people and places and things. Which means that, no matter who you are, no matter what you have done or not done, no matter who you love or how you have failed to love or how love has eluded you, no matter the doubts and the fears and the wounds you carry, no matter whether you are famous or forgotten, God still seeks to be born in you. God seeks to live and move and have his being in your ordinary, unimpressive, perfectly normal life.

And he is small enough, humble enough to fit wherever there is space. Wherever you can make a bit of room in your heart, he is content there—content to be the small, unexpected gift that will transform our understanding of everything if we will let him.

And if we do, then what we will see, as I could not on that Christmas long ago—clutching that tiny plastic bear—is that the things which will endure in our memories and in our hearts when all is said and done, the things that will teach us how God desires for us to live, how to be grateful and joyful no matter what, are the small, unimpressive things—the things that come wrapped in crumpled paper, the gifts we did not expect or perhaps even want, but through which God comes to us and abides with us and reveals the simplicity of his message: that love, though it be small and vulnerable, is the most powerful force on earth.

May tonight, and the humble story that we tell, and the humble lives that we have been given, come together as a sign to help us understand this love.

Because Christ is born on this holy night, unimpressively, with unimaginable grace, for you and for all. He has come to be with us, just as we are, whether you are laughing or crying, whether life has been a delight or a disappointment. He has come as the tiniest, most surprising and precious gift, waiting for you when the music stops, waiting for you to pick him up and behold the truth: that God is in the small things. That we will be saved by small things. That whenever you hold even the smallest bit of love in your hands and in your heart, you are holding him.

Mountaintop: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, September 24, 2023 at Saint Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Philippians 1:21-30.

Sometimes it feels like you have to possess superhuman capacities to face the enormity of the world’s challenges. In times of social strife or of personal distress, we might look at inspirational figures from the past, looking for some guidance about how to live bravely and well through times such as these.

But it can also feel, for me at least, like those inspiring saints of ages past must have possessed some otherworldly insight or giftedness to do what they did, to face what they faced. And I find myself wondering how on earth they found the strength, what secret wisdom must have guided them.

On April 3, 1968, one day before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his final public address in Memphis, Tennessee in support of a sanitation workers’ strike. It’s referred to as his “Mountaintop” speech, and in case you’ve never heard it, or if it’s been a while, here is the final, unforgettable piece of it, where King said,

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

What is striking for many people about King’s final message, of course, is the sense that he knew, on some level, what was about to happen, that he somehow foresaw the end of his own journey.

But it’s not King’s seeming anticipation of his own death that I find the most compelling thing about this speech. It’s that he seemed to be at peace with it. It’s the way he stood in that perilous moment speaking something that sounds a lot like joy, a lot like hope. And not a naive sort of hopefulness that assumes everything will turn out fine. No, it sounds like the deep sort of hope, deeper than fear, the hope that knows how, even if everything goes wrong, even if the worst possible thing happens, that even then, there is a well of goodness underlying everything that will never run dry. The kind of hope that says even though my life may end, and my eyes may close, the vision endures, for

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming Lord. And I’m happy.

But then I think about the small anxieties that sometimes clutter my own life, and I look around at the big anxieties of our age, and I hear that opening prayer we offered, the one that says not to be anxious about earthly things, and I think—I’d sure like to know what that feels like. I’d sure like to know how Dr. King got to where he was on that April night. And although, God willing, none of us will ever face the danger he faced, I wonder what it would take for the rest of us to experience that deep kind of hope, that peace, that tenacious belief in the well of goodness, even in the face of our own hardships.

Is such a thing only for the saints and the heroes? Or is there some way that we, too, might travel up to the Mountaintop?

I think there is, and St. Paul helped me see it this week in his letter to the Philippians.

It’s interesting, in this passage we heard today, Paul sounds a lot like Dr. King; he, too, seems to possess a peace and a hope even as he is suspended between the possibility of life or death. He says,

I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.

Whatever else we might say about Paul, we know that he was a passionate person, deeply engaged in the life of the world. But death was on his mind, because he likely wrote this letter from prison in the final years of his life. He was put there by the Roman authorities, and while it was his ardent desire to be reunited with the various faith communities he had founded, there was surely a part of him that knew his chances of doing so were slim.

Like Dr. King, he was a man hunted. But also like Dr. King, he was a man haunted by possibility, who had glimpsed something on the proverbial mountaintop. He had glimpsed something and he insisted that what he had seen, what drove his entire mission, was not for a select group of wise or superhuman people, but for everyone, everywhere. It was the key to his hope, his peace, and his courage.

What was it?

Well, it was Jesus, of course, but more specifically, it was the revelation that in Jesus and through Jesus, God’s wants us to know that we are in this together. You and me and God and everyone else, we are in this together. We don’t have to face this alone. We are one people. We are one creation, redeemed by the one Living God. We are part of one story, and it is a good story, a story that begins in love and ends in love.

And though we are diverse, and though we each face our own choices and challenges and fears in each generation, it is this essential unity that holds us, that sustains us, and that places upon us the responsibility of caring for one another, loving our neighbor as ourselves, because fundamentally they are.

And although they don’t state it explicitly, what you will notice beneath the words of Dr. King and beneath the words of St. Paul is that they are able to face those big, frightening things, those questions of life and death and loss and hope, simply because they knew, deep down, that whatever happened, God would not abandon them nor would God abandon the story that has begun.

And when you know you aren’t alone, then you can face anything. That’s why we come here week after week. That’s why we keep challenging ourselves to build more fully the Beloved Community. That’s why we pray for each other and lean on each other through good times and bad, all the way to the end.

You, and me, and everyone we’ve ever loved, and everyone we’ve ever hated, and everyone we’ve ever lost, and everything that has ever been and the God who made it all—we’re in this together. And that’s it. That’s the Mountaintop. That’s the simple, world-changing, heart-transforming truth that sustains the saints but is also available to every single one of us, even in our anxieties. And even when we face death.

Catching a glimpse of the promised land is not a private revelation for the few—it’s everywhere. It’s as close as looking in your neighbors face and realizing: we belong to one another. It’s as close as looking down at the earth and realizing: we belong to one another. It’s as close as listening to God in the still moments and in the frightening moments and hearing God say to you: we belong to one another. In life, and in death, and beyond, we belong to one another.

Let’s keep building up a community here at Saint Anne where that is what it means to be the church. Let’s keep discovering what it means to belong to one another, and then to go out into the world and discover that ultimately we belong to everything. Maybe, if we do, we too will say, even at the end of our days:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. And I’m happy.

Born Again: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, March 5, 2023, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary text cited is John 3:1-17, wherein Nicodemus visits Jesus at night.

When I was born, my parents were living in a log cabin on the California coast. I went back to see it many years later, and it was nothing fancy, but it was nestled among tall trees, eucalyptus and cypress and and Monterey pine; and the breeze off the ocean would stir the leaves beyond my nursery window, like a lullaby.

Now, I was an infant so I don’t actually remember that, but I would like to remember. I would like to be able to remember how the first sounds I heard in this world were my parent’s soft voices and the wind in those trees, both speaking gently, assuring me that the world was a good and green and generous place, and that being born, being part of all this, meant being held, being found, being loved from the very first breath.

Of course, I don’t know for sure, but I want to imagine it like that. I believe that it was like that.

The memory of being born and being nurtured (assuming we were fortunate enough to be nurtured) is something, it seems, our minds can’t hold onto. Some researchers call this “infantile amnesia,” and they suggest that we don’t remember our earliest days because we are still becoming, our sense of self is not fully developed at birth; there isn’t quite yet a “me” to do the remembering.

And spiritually, I think this makes sense. When we are born, we emerge from the deep darkness of the womb in which we were first formed and nourished and known—we come by night, as it were, our infant body a bearer of the hidden, unspoken, unbounded mystery from which all life springs forth, a fragment of the fabric of creation that only gradually learns how to recognize its own unique shape.

And so as we grow, we learn how to exist, and thus how to remember. But there is always that inaccessible part of us, the hidden origin point, the life before remembering, when we were indeed born, and held, and (God-willing), loved from the very first breath, and even before. It’s there, but we can’t quite recall how it felt.

I sometimes wonder if our long search for the fullness of love in our life is rooted in that hidden memory, lost to time, retained only as a shadow, an impulse in our yearning hearts: yearning to know what it actually feels like for the world to be a good and green and generous place. Yearning to be born again, if only to reclaim the experience of being that seen and safe.

And Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

So often Nicodemus, in this story, is regarded as someone who doesn’t get it. A Pharisee coming by night, still learning how to remember good things, drawn toward the life he perceives in Jesus, but missing the full truth of his teachings whether because of fear or suspicion or simple confusion.

But I don’t hear suspicion in Nicodemus’ question. And I don’t hear confusion. I hear longing. I hear a bit of sadness, maybe a flicker of hope.

What if his question is in earnest: How can anyone be born after having grown old? Tell me.How can I get back to that place and time when the wind sang in the trees and a face smiled at me simply for being here, for breathing? How can I get back to when love was free and true, when it was unconditioned by the bitten fruit, by snakes in the garden, by mistakes and ulterior motives? How can I get back to that, the time I long for, but can’t quite remember? I want it to be possible, but how?

How can anyone be born after having grown old?

Because Nicodemus, like most of us, is a man who has lived through many seasons. He knows his own pain and the pain of his people and the long pain of the earth. He sees the passing of time looking back at him in the mirror, he sees how the years escape and don’t come back, how death looms, how it waits to greet everything that lives. While birth, with all is hopefulness, is a stranger to us, a face long forgotten, unfamiliar, inaccessible behind the veil of memory and time.

Or is it?

Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above,’ Jesus tells Nicodemus. ‘The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.’

It is lost on us in the English translation of the text, but Jesus is speaking in layers, here, not in riddles. And so I would argue that he is not trying to confuse Nicodemus or chastise him, but rather he is trying to reveal something deep and multi-faceted about his purpose. Because the Greek word for ‘wind’ used here, pneuma, is also the word for ‘Spirit’, and this word is connected to the Hebrew word ‘ruach’, which also means ‘breath.’ Wind. Spirit. Breath. The animating forces of God and the breaths we take and the breeze off the ocean: they are all connected, all bound together in Christ.

And so Jesus is saying, do not be astonished that I am talking about being born again, about finding a way back to the unreachable memory of where you began, for I have come so that your breath, your life, will be caught up in the eternal Spirit of God, in the windstorm of heaven, which is not bound by time or space.

And you do not know where your breath, your life, comes from or where it goes. So who’s to say that you can’t go back, that you can’t experience the unconditional love by which and into which you were born? Who’s to say the trees can’t sing a lullaby to you once more? Who’s to say you can’t be held and found and loved by your mother, by your Father, breath by breath? Who’s to say that you can’t remember, for the first time, what it is to be born, what it is to know that you are part of the fabric of creation?

Jesus says, you can. Jesus says, this is why I was born. Jesus says, you may have grown old, but you need not perish. Jesus says, follow me, abide in me, and you will know a love so real and pure that it will indeed feel like being born again.

For the Son of God has come to make all things new, including you. He has come as midwife, as cradle, as sustenance, as song, to birth you into a new creation. He has come to remind us what we could never quite remember: that we are born, and born, and born again each day into the loving arms of a Divine parent who sees past our mistakes, who has no ulterior motives, who is good and green and generous and who will never let us go.

And when we fall, he will help us be born again. And when we grow old, he will help us born again. And when we die and return back to the deep, dark mystery from whence we came, he will help us be born again, this time everlastingly, to stand among the rustling trees alongside an ocean of undying light, the Spirit and the wind and our breath moving as one.

For God so loved the world. For God so loves you.

Of course, I don’t know for sure, but I want to imagine it like that.

I believe that it will be like that.

The Cup: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Maundy Thursday, April 14, 2022 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne. The communion cup, which had been suspended in our parish during the COVID-19 pandemic, was restored at this service.

There isn’t a general confession in tonight’s liturgy, so allow me a bit of time for a very minor confession of my own. While I generally try to embrace material simplicity, there is one area in which I have grievously failed, and it is this: I have an embarrassingly large collection of cups and mugs in my kitchen at home. Far more than any one person should have. Perhaps you can relate to this. When I open up my cupboard, there they are, stacked on top of one another, balanced precariously, mismatched, the designs a bit faded in spots, but comforting—a jumble of memories.

There is the juice glass I used to use every morning as kid visiting my grandma’s house. There is the coffee mug from a monastery I visited when discerning the priesthood. There is a cup that my mom and I picked up while driving Route 66. There is the 175th anniversary coffee mug from Trinity Fort Wayne. There is a wine glass I bought in Europe. There is yet ANOTHER coffee mug that I don’t especially love but that was given to me by someone whom I do love. You get the idea.

In terms of problems to have, it’s a very silly one. But it reminds me that there is something very evocative about cups. For some strange reason we are drawn to them; they mean more to us, somehow, than just a receptacle to hold a beverage.They hold memories, too, they tell a story about where we come from, the things we have seen, and what our life has been about. When we bring them to our lips, we kiss the past and we hold a part of ourselves. The cups reveal, in some small way, who we are.

Maybe that’s why it has been so disorienting, these past two pandemic-shaped years, to have no cup offered during the Eucharist. The Church decided, out of an abundance of caution, to suspend this aspect of Holy Communion, and while we’ve certainly been on solid theological ground receiving only the bread during this time, I admit I have still felt a bit lost at sea without that other component of the Eucharistic feast: the common cup shared among us, the sweetness on the lips, and those words that satisfy our deepest thirst: the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.

It is fitting, deeply fitting, then, on this Maundy Thursday when we remember and celebrate Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist, that the common cup is returning to our communion offering. This evening when you come forward to be nourished by Christ’s body in the form of bread, the chalice of his blood will be offered to you as well, and if you feel comfortable doing so, you are invited to drink, and remember what this particular cup reveals about where we come from, the things we have seen, and what our life together is about.

But this cup that we drink from is special, it is singular, because unlike the mugs and the glasses stacked on our shelves, each holding our own private histories, this Eucharistic vessel also reveals something essential about about God’s history, about who God is and what God has done. In truth, the Eucharistic cup is God’s cup first and foremost, not our own. It bears the story of God’s journey alongside and among humankind.

In the Hebrew Scriptures the prophets and the Psalmist speak often of the cup: the cup of consolation, the cup of wrath, the cup of trembling, the cup of astonishment—a cup that holds the strange mix of grace and fury that is God’s complex and unfolding relationship with the world. And tonight we come to realize that it is this same cup that Jesus must reckon with in Gethsemane—Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Ultimately he does what God has always done: he accepts the cup as the price of loving his wayward creation, drinking in the sweetness and the bitterness of his solidarity with the children of the earth.

And so I imagine that if we were to go to heaven and rummage through the cupboards, we’d open them up and find, in quiet repose, this one cup, ancient, gleaming, heavy with significance, hallowed by its use, held aloft at a thousand feasts, emptied out upon a thousand battlefields, stained with the blood and the salt-tears of our Creator. The same cup that, in the mystery of Eucharistic grace, is handed to us on this night, that we might take hold of its heavy glory. No longer God’s cup alone, but also ours.

“I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,” Paul tells the church at Corinth, recounting the words of Jesus at the Last Supper—a meal, of course, at which he himself was not present, but which, we must conclude, he must have come to know as part of the all-encompassing, all-consuming revelation of Christ he experienced on the Damascus road.

Paul understood, somehow, in the lifelong aftermath of his conversion, that this particular meal, this particular bread and cup, reveal the truth about God’s deepest self—and that as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we are taking part in God’s own feast—the banquet prepared from the foundation of the world. In so doing, God’s story, God’s sustaining life becomes ours as well.

And so, tonight, like the disciples who gathered in the lamplight of the Upper Room, we glimpse salvation upon this table, and we drink from this cup—the cup of memory, the cup of sorrow, the cup of laughter, the cup that holds the fermentation of finitude and eternity, the cup that holds ALL THINGS in the costly covenant of love—we drink from this cup tonight for Jesus’ sake because he drank from it for our sake. He drank it to the dregs, knowing what it meant to do so, knowing that living also means one must die, knowing that it was worth dying for us in order to live for us.

All of that significance, all of that history, all of that costliness, all of that promise, all held in a single sip. A sip he now asks us to take as well, so that at last, we might know him for who he is.

…

I know all of this is true, I know it is real, but I cannot really comprehend it. And yet, like you, I will hold that cup in my hands, I will receive it with wonder and gratitude, trusting that even if I never really understand the mystery of death and life, even if I never understand the depth and breadth of God’s love, at least I will know what it tastes like.

And that will be enough.

For as we will discover repeatedly throughout these holy days, words can only take us so far. Ultimately we must do a thing for it it be real. The feet must be washed. The bread must be broken. The cup must be poured out.

These actions are both a question and their own sort of answer, because they are the pieces of God’s story that speak best for themselves, like a cupboard full of jumbled vessels, passed down, love-worn, inexplicably precious, infinitely capable of holding our own stories—the old stories, the ones we are living through today, and the story that God, with us, is only now beginning to tell.

Tonight is the night that story begins, again.

Drink it in, beloved children of God. Drink it all in.

No Regrets: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, March 6, 2022, the First Sunday in Lent. The lectionary text cited is Luke 4:1-13, Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.

We inhabit an unsettled moment. That statement is true on many different levels, but in this instance I am referring to something deeper and more elemental than the news headlines. I am thinking instead about the changing of the seasons that accompanies our entry into Lent in the northern hemisphere. Amid the turbulent moods of early spring, when we are caught up in the vacillating space between ice and dewdrops, between dirt and blossom, between the cradle and the Cross, there is a keener sense perhaps, of the fertile mix of decay and growth that characterizes our lives on this earth. On Ash Wednesday, the cold mud of winter was imprinted on our brows, and eventually on Easter Day we will convulse with joy among the fields of lilies, but for now we are held in the tension of the time-being, suspended in the middle of frost and flower, mortality and miracle.

Lent is the pungent season when life and death speak to one another. Too often we keep these two realities isolated in separate corners of our minds, so it is good for us to listen to their conversation over the next several weeks, to notice how life and death layer upon and fertilize the other, both in the Liturgy and in the world around us. Lent is when this life—the delicate, earthy existence we have been given—is brought into clarity and focus by accepting its brevity and, indeed, sometimes its cruelty and brokenness. But it is also a season for celebrating that life, for rediscovering the urgency of living deeply and well while we have the chance, before it is too late, and we go down to the dust once more.

There was an article that became popular online several years ago, written by a hospice nurse. In it, she reflected on the conversations she’d had with the countless people she’d cared for in the final weeks and days of their lives, and she shared the top five regrets that people expressed as they prepared to die. They were as follows:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

And while these five regrets might not be true for every person in every time and place, I think they are striking, because they point to the heart of the things that matter when everything else falls away, when there are no illusions left to hide behind, when the wind blows cold across the bare fields and we remember the trace of that muddy cross on our brow. We might say they are the insights of a Lenten spirit, from the passage between life and death, the unadorned space between the seasons of the soul.

And they reveal that when we die, the thing we might grieve the most is simply that we never allowed ourselves to truly live. That we didn’t connect with others. That we didn’t connect with our deepest selves. And that, having been tempted by other distractions, we might face the great mystery of eternity without having deeply savored the great mystery of now.

God knows this is our struggle. God has always known this. And that is why, I suspect, we see the same struggle woven through God’s own life among us in Jesus. Consider today’s gospel passage from Luke, when Jesus is compelled by the Holy Spirit to enter the wilderness and submit to the temptations that humanity has always faced—the temptation to control our own destiny rather than trust in God’s providence, to adorn ourselves with the false security of power and prestige and material comfort; to laud safety and strength rather than vulnerability and humility.

These were the same temptations that Israel faced in the wilderness and again when they reached the Promised Land. They are the same temptations that each of us must contend with in our own particular way. And if and when we succumb to them, the result is the same—disconnection, distrust, inauthenticity, the cultivation of a brittle and strident spirit, and then, at the end, a litany of sorrows that might sound something like:

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. I wish I’d expressed my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

But Lent is an opportunity to pull back from this trajectory in our own lives. And Jesus, in a Lenten moment of his own in this Gospel, shows us how to do so. He faces the temptations of the devil—those temptations to pattern his life in self-serving ways, to become something that he is not, and he chooses, instead, to be exactly who he is, exactly who his Father wills him to be. Which is to say, he chooses relationship, he chooses simplicity, he chooses depth, he chooses trust, he chooses love. And the words he speaks are a ray of light burning away the frost, a budding promise to us, even now, as we wait for the spring:

One does not live by bread alone.

Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.

Do not put the Lord your God to the test.

Simple, ancient words, drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures. True words. Words that are almost like a death, in that they remind us of the fleeting nature of most of the things we fixate upon and obsess over, and instead call us back to what is eternal. These are the words that allowed Jesus to stay focused on who he was, and they can do the same for us whatever our journey looks like. They are the words that invite us to a life—and a death—that is the opposite of regret.

How do we get there? How do we live as Jesus chose to live? How do we die as Jesus chose to die?

1. Have the courage to be yourself. Abide deeply in the love that is inside of you, the love that God gave you to share with others.

2. Don’t work so hard, at least not for the things we usually give away our lives for. Work for God’s kingdom, and rest in knowing that you don’t have to do it all by yourself. You were created for wonder and praise more than you were for achievement.

3. Express your feelings. Jesus certainly did. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable, to be wrong, to show your weaknesses, because they are part of what will save you. We worship a God who was crucified before he was glorified.

4. Stay in touch with your friends, and with all of the important people in your life. They are the most likely place where you will experience the love of God firsthand, and are thus the true treasures of this world.

5. Let yourself be happy. Let yourself love this imperfect world, whether it’s deep winter or glorious spring or the messy middle with all of its unanswered questions. Let yourself be dazzled by the mystery of existence, by the mystery of God’s love, embrace it while you live, and then you will regret nothing, because you will experience everything.

This is the life Jesus chose in the wilderness. This is the life he invites to choose. And this is the strange, holy, in-between season where we must make our choice. This is Lent.

And so here we stand, with a trace of mud on our brow, leaning into the light; children of the broken earth, children of God. Tempted, yes. Stumbling, sometimes. Seeking, always.

But loved, always loved, in death and in life, in winter, and in spring, and in the glorious mystery that is beneath and beyond all seasons.

And with a love that powerful, that eternal, that true, there is nothing to regret.

The Island: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, February 13, 2022 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mishawaka, IN. The lectionary text cited is 1 Corinthians 15:12-20.

I spent most of the summers of my childhood in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where my dad’s side of the family lived for generations. Now here in Mishawaka, you all live relatively close to Lake Michigan, so you have a good sense of the beauty of the Great Lakes, and if you have ever gone way up north, you know how rugged and beautiful it is on the shoreline of Lake Superior—rock formations and dense forests colliding with the open expanse of the water in its many shades and moods.

And although there are any number of places along the shore of Lake Superior where one might be struck by its wild beauty, there is one particular spot we would visit as a kid that always stayed with me—the type of place that impresses itself upon your psyche, such that you might recall it out of nowhere while absentmindedly washing the dishes or just before drifting off to sleep at night—a pleasurably haunting memory, a dream, a landscape pregnant with unspoken meaning.

It is a rocky, forested point of land, stretching out into the lake, with a small sandy beach at its tip and then, across a churning channel of water, an island—so close that you can see it clearly, and, when the waters are calm, even dare to wade across to its shore. I have a distinct memory of doing so, by myself, as a child—scrambling through the water and ending up on the other side, giddy with freedom—just a couple hundred feet from the mainland but a world apart.

The point of land, the channel of water, the island—the image of that place stayed with me through many long and parched seasons of my life—chronic illness, the uncertainties of young adulthood, the sudden death of my father and, then, later, my grandparents. And although I had not been back to visit Michigan for nearly a decade and hadn’t been back to the lake for even longer than that, when I moved to Indiana nearly three years ago to serve at Trinity Fort Wayne, one of the first things I did was make the long drive north through the landscape of my past, through the mining towns and the forests. Eventually I ended up at Lake Superior, and I found the point of land again, and I walked out to the edge of it.

What struck me, though, was how deep the waters were this time—choppy waves and wind blowing in off the lake, no rocks visible to scramble on, no chance of crossing over. All I could do was stand and stare at the island, that childhood dreamscape, so close, but just beyond my reach.

As we grow up and grow older, we tend to experience life as a sort of expanding distance from the solidities of the past. Sometimes we are grateful for that increased distance, and other times we mourn it, but either way, I think that there comes a time in each of our lives when we stand at the edge of what we know and glimpse the islands of youth and memory as beloved, yet inaccessible kingdoms. And we might despair how death consumes what was once so present to us—the places, the faces and the voices of another time. And perhaps we start to believe that this is simply our portion in a fragile and fleeting world.

But there is another choice. There is another way to see this.

“How can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?” Paul asks the church at Corinth. “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.”

Apparently there were some among the Corinthians who accepted that Christ indeed had risen from the dead, and that this was a miraculous act of God, but they could not accept the idea that all of the rest of us were destined for the same undying life. In a world where it is self-evident that everything and everyone dies and decays, perhaps it felt foolish to them, naive, even, to claim such a possibility. They were content, it seems, for Jesus to be the inaccessible island, beautiful to behold but not part of their actual lived reality—not a place they themselves could ever dare to venture.

But Paul will have none of this. For he understands that we are not just people who have beheld the resurrection of someone else, of Jesus, but we are, ourselves, resurrection people. Where Jesus goes, we go too. And if the chasm between where we stand and where he has risen seems impassable, that is because we have still bought into the lie that death wins. It does not. Not any more. With Jesus, death is not the last word of any story. “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied,” because then we have missed the actual endpoint, the actual telos of following Jesus. Follow me, he says, not just through this world but onward, onward, “further up and further in” as C.S. Lewis wrote, to the undying life of God that makes everything possible.

I think sometimes as good, reasonable Episcopalians, we are hesitant to really lean into this paradigm of resurrection, of life eternal. We don’t want to think so much about heaven that we discount the beauty and the urgent need of this world. But the danger is that we go too far the other way—that we become so focused on our present reality that we forget that we are inheritors of the resurrection—that another world is not only possible, it is promised, and it is already making itself known in our midst.

And when we see that, it changes EVERYTHING, because death is no longer the precipice over which our love inevitably vanishes. Death is no longer an impassable, stormy channel separating us from God’s life. For God’s Son has calmed the waters, he has made it passable. And so the island beckons once more; its golden shores are a place we were meant to stand; the kingdom beyond death where Jesus stands, welcoming us back into life.

What does this mean for us, here and now, to be Resurrection people? It means that we can be people of joyful courage. We don’t have to stand wistfully on the shore, mourning what once was. Because to believe in Resurrection is to believe that nothing is truly lost; that every good thing is still possible. Even when we are poor, hungry, grieving, or lonely, even when the world is changing, even when the church is changing—every good thing is possible. This is our proclamation and our practice.

And here at St. Paul’s, and down at Trinity Fort Wayne, and in every parish and faith community that comes together in the name of Jesus, we have an opportunity to practice at this together—to practice being Resurrection people. Everything we do in our faith communities—serving, donating, tending to one another, worshipping, studying, feeding, mending, advocating—all of it is a way of saying yes to God’s aliveness, it is a step out into the water, confident that we can reach the other side, that that Divine life awaits us, as long as we hold onto each other and keep our eyes on Jesus.

I know it has been a long hard couple of years, but don’t turn back. Don’t give up. We can get there.

I haven’t been back up to to Lake Superior since that day, and I don’t know if or when I will make it there again. But I think that the island will remain in my mind’s eye forever—a reminder that I have a choice—that life can be viewed either as a wistfully inaccessible, passing dream or it can be viewed as a promise that lies on the other side of death. Every day, with God’s help, I mean to choose the latter. I mean to choose the promise.

And perhaps, one distant day, when the waters have been stilled forever, I will cross that channel and stand on the other side once more, and life will feel new, and nothing will be lost, ever again. Perhaps that’s where we’re all headed in time. I pray that we are.

And on that day, Resurrection will be not just a promise glimpsed far off, but the ground upon which we stand.