sermon – Page 2 – 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.

Worth It: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, September 7, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH, which was observing its “Faith in Action” ministry celebration. The lectionary text cited is Luke 14:25-33.

I mentioned “Scary Jesus” a couple weeks ago, and it seems he’s back with us today using very strong language to tell us something fairly self-evident: often in life you have to count the cost of something and decide if it’s worth it, whatever “it” is. But sometimes…sometimes you just can’t know in advance if it will be worth it, or how, but you know you have to do it anyway. And that’s when things get interesting. That’s when faith begins.

So, for this Faith in Action Day we are observing, here’s a story, in three parts, about determining the worth of things.

Part 1:

It was love at first sight.

My father saw it sitting there in the parking lot with a bunch of other used vehicles, bathed in the promise of a perfect spring morning: a gleaming, goldenrod, vintage VW van—the kind that, when you see it, you feel lighthearted and adventurous, and you swear you can hear Hotel California playing on some distant radio, and you feel that open road unfurling from some point of origin within your deepest self. Oh yes, it was love, and he was all in.

Never mind that he didn’t have much money. Never mind that the old man selling it was vague on its maintenance history. My dad saw that van and he knew he had to get it, he knew that it could carry us long and wondrous distances: California to Michigan and back again, or even farther, maybe, all the way to the promised land.

And so he plunked down some cash and, a few weeks later, once I was done with school, we threw what we had in the back and headed east, ready for anything. Well, maybe not anything.

Because the first time we made a quick stop, a few hours from home, the van wouldn’t start. And we were stuck in a rest area outside of Willows, California, on a 90-something degree day in June, unsure how to keep going.

I don’t remember exactly how he figured it out—this was before cell phones and internet access—but somehow he determined that we had to manually spark the ignition to start the van again—I had to sit in the driver’s seat and turn the key, and he was out there, cussing in the heat, pressing some fuses together or something. Essentially we had to hotwire our own vehicle every time we started it. And so we did, all the way across the country, until we got to Michigan and he could afford to fix it.

Was the van worth it? Depends on how you count the cost. It never really did work that well, and years later I think he sold it for next to nothing.

But on the other hand, I can tell you that when I think of what it means to be free, and safe, and alive in this world, when I think of what hope feels like…what I remember is riding in that old VW van with the windows down somewhere in the Great Plains, eating a ham sandwich, singing an old song on the radio with my dad and I think: oh, maybe we did get to the promised land after all.

Part II:

It was love at first sight.

Those disciples had met Jesus in any number of ways, caught up in the various worries and occupations that constitute a normal life, but when they saw him, they saw Life with a capital L. They saw a different sort of road unfurling in front of them, one that carried with it all the promise of a spring morning. And how could they not follow, to see where they might go together? Wouldn’t that be worth just about anything?

And it’s true, that most of them didn’t have much to lose—no money or status. Maybe they thought that following Jesus would give them the dignity and the peace and the protection that are scarce resources in this life.

But then, we come to today’s Gospel passage, and somewhere at a rest stop along the way to Jerusalem, maybe in the 90 degree summer heat, Jesus has some difficult news for them: this journey is going to cost a whole lot more than they imagined.

The language of hating what is dearest to us and of giving up what is most precious—it lands hard on the ears, it makes a person sweat and second guess their choices. It suggests that whatever this love is, it is not the comfortable, cruising along smooth highways kind.

And its worth cannot be measured in the same way as those kings who wage war and build towers. Jesus, I think, talks about those things not to equate them with discipleship, but to contrast them. He is being ironic. He is saying, the book of True Life is not a ledger. The way of True Peace is not a negotiated settlement.

Therefore, none of you can be my disciples unless you let go of all that. You have to follow me by faith and when they ask, on the other side of the cross, was it worth it, you will have discovered a new way to speak of worth.

And only then will you be free, and safe, and alive in this world. Only then will you reach the promised land.

Part III:

I imagine, for many of us, it was love at first sight, or close to it—the first time we came through those red doors of St. Anne, or another door like it. The first time we heard the Spirit reverberate through an old hymn or felt Jesus press against our lips in the shape of bread. The first time we understood that we were welcomed just as we are, and felt the possibility of something new unfurling within us.

And what a journey it is, to be in a church like this, to build a community like this, to see it grow and change and stumble and get back up again. To show up in the light of spring mornings, and on winter nights, too, and to know that something, that Someone, waits for us here, waits to huddle in close, to hotwire our hearts, to ignite something long dormant within our souls, to make us feel alive again. That is the gift of church at its best. That is the gift of a place like St. Anne. Its worth is hard to measure.

And yet, it doesn’t always go the way we think it might, or should. We’ve had our moments when we felt stranded on the side of the road, the world rushing past, and I imagine there have been times when it feels like we are getting by on a lick and a prayer, because, well, frankly, sometimes that’s the best anyone can do.

Which is why Faith in Action day is so much more than just a ministry fair or a sign-up event. It is an acknowledgment of the cost—the deep and continued and holy cost—of following Jesus, and of figuring out how we are going to bear it, and share it, and even rejoice in that costliness together. It is a moment to say thank you to one another for all of the ways, large and small, that we’ve shared in the cost of keeping this place going, mile by by mile.

I hope, as we travel around the tables at coffee hour today, we will take time to say thank you to each other—for being here. For trying. For sweating in the summer sun and shoveling the snow and planning the programs and assembling the ham sandwiches. I hope we will taste the goodness of all of it, and recommit ourselves to the love that drew us in, that draws us out, that keeps us here and keeps us going.

Because it’s funny, when you consider the value of our life together here: it is not “useful” in any traditional sense of the word. We are not building towers and waging culture wars. We are not “winning” anything. We are just loving everything, and everyone.

What a miracle that this is enough—more than enough. What a miracle that this is everything.

What a miracle that we persist in the foolish, extravagant experiment of a life founded on chasing after Jesus, wherever he goes, for no other reason than this: that it was love at first sight.

And, as with all great love stories, perhaps, when all is said and done here at St. Anne, if someone were to ask us if all of this was worth it—all the false starts and the broken engines, all the hard questions and the hellos and the goodbyes—I hope that we will be able to look up and say: depends on how you count the cost.

But we can tell you this much: here, we were free. Here, we were safe. Here, maybe for the time, we were alive in this world.

And yes, oh yes, every now and then, I think we even saw the promised land.

Division: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, August 17, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Luke 12:49-56, which includes the following:

Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!

Jesus has something to say today, doesn’t he? All this fiery language and talk of division. If you were looking for a feel-good Gospel passage today, my apologies, but I want us to really look at this notion of division rather than scuttle past it. Because I’ll tell you something, I love Scary Jesus. Really, I do!

Not because I take what he says lightly, but because Scary Jesus—or perhaps more accurately, Prophetic Jesus, No-Nonsense Jesus—is willing to say and do the hard things that love and truth require. He is willing to take a stand for what is good and willing to name what is not.

This is the sort of division that he brings—it’s not about enmity, but clarity. The clarity of telling the sheep from the goats and the wheat from the chaff in our hearts and in our world. Jesus is here to give us clarity about what is worth holding onto through the long onslaught of the years. And what must be let go of.

When I think of this sort of division, I am reminded of a certain legendary incident in my family.

My grandparents, you see, had very different philosophies about how many old items in the house should be held onto. My grandma believed strongly that she might need to look at that stack of TV guides from the 1970s and, as you know from prior sermons, she had an epic collection of empty Cool Whip containers just in case. My grandpa, on the other hand, was a fitful organizer. He was occasionally seized with passionate zeal for empty countertops and cleared-out corners. And on one such occasion, he went nuclear.

Their attic was a place where no person dared tread; the detritus of decades was accumulated there—old photo albums, broken toys, enough boxes of papers to rival the Library of Congress. And one day, my grandpa must have been seized by a vision of cleanliness, and he just snapped. He had that baptism of fire burning him up inside. So he stole up the ladder to that attic and before we knew it, he had pried open the little window and was tossing bags of old clothes and God knows what else down onto the front lawn for all the neighbors to see!

You want to talk about households divided. Hell hath no fury like Verna Hooper on that day; she was up that ladder fast as a squirrel and a whole lot louder than one. Even Scary Jesus would have been scared. I won’t bore you with the gory details, but let’s just say every single item went back up into the attic and my grandfather learned afresh the meaning of marital penitence.

I would venture to say, though, that neither of them was fully in the right. I get my grandpa’s point: when we are frustrated by the weight and mess of the world, it is indeed tempting to think we should just toss it all out and start over. Send in the cleansing flood, or break down the walls of the spoiled vineyard, as Isaiah puts it today. Just let it all go.

But my grandma had a point too—there are things worth saving, even in the messiness. There are things that should be preserved, and there has to be someone willing to stand up for their value.

As is usually the case, the path of wisdom falls somewhere in the middle of these two postures. We have to figure out what to hold onto and what to let go of, and how to tell the difference. That’s the kind of division that Jesus is talking about. He is not interesting in starting fights among families for no good reason. But he does need the human family—all of us, together—to really get clear about what matters and what doesn’t. Have we figured it out yet? Maybe we’re still working on that. I hope we are.

Because that work of division, friends, that laborious and slow discernment between heirloom and junk, that is what the church is asked to do in each age. Informed by study, shaped by community, emboldened by love, empowered by the Spirit, we have to decide as best we can what stays and what goes. What is the substance of God’s mission and what is just clutter. And we do that, hopefully, for ourselves and one another here, and then we step out into the public square and declare the truth there, too.

And it’s funny, you know—I think The Episcopal Church is accused sometimes of being like my grandpa; that we, seized by some vision of inclusivity and love and social justice, have tossed out all of the fundamentals of the faith. This is absurd to me. As if, somehow, love and inclusivity and justice were not themselves the exact fundamentals that God is always interested in. I’ve read the Bible, thank you very much, and God does indeed care about those things deeply. Come to think of it, maybe we are the fundamentalists after all!

In truth we have not been seized by misguided zeal; but nor are we like my grandma that day, digging in our heels, holding onto the past. Instead we have been doing the long, careful, imperfect labor of figuring out what stays and what goes in the unfolding emergence of God’s kingdom. We are still doing it. We will always be doing it. Debating Scripture and structure. Cherishing our hymns and collects like Cool whip containers that are enduringly useful. And letting go of some of those old prejudices and fears, like TV guides that have nothing helpful to show us.

We do all of this, by the way, not because we are “getting political” but because we are faithful to the God who is still speaking into the present moment. We hear the message of the Lord and we take it seriously. We hear Jesus, who says I have not come to bring mere peace—I have not come to bring a passive acceptance of the deadening forces of this world. No, I have come to bring an ever-renewed capacity for division between right and wrong, I have come to bring clarity and awareness. I have come to empower a choice between what is true and what is a lie. So follow me, he says, follow me with love as our guide, and find out which is which, and let’s learn to speak it out loud.

How urgently we need to follow him now, this truth-telling, fundamentally loving and unafraid Jesus. How urgently we need to tell the world who he actually is, and not what he has been made out to be by the transactional exigencies of partisanship, culture, and power.

Because Scary Jesus, Prophetic Jesus, No Nonsense Jesus, the Jesus that I fear and love and follow, has never changed his message. He has never submitted to the lies of any age. And he never will.

Today we hear his rejection of a cheap comfort at the expense of truth. We hear his dedication to separating out what is worthy and good from what is destructive to the human spirit, and we see his willingness to die and rise again for the sake of this gentle and hospitable Kingdom. A Kingdom where all are welcomed at the table. That is what Jesus is about. That is who Jesus is.

And if that is somehow offensive to the prevailing and popular order of things—GOOD. If that is divisive—GOOD. I would rather stand in the divisiveness of an unequivocal love for all people; I would rather pay the price for that divisiveness; I would rather pursue its invitation to the edge of comfort and respectability, just like Jesus did, than live in uneasy peace with the world as it is.

I would rather the institutional church die singing songs of love than live for something other than the real Jesus. I would rather be mocked and misunderstood for doing the long, hard, foolish, communal work of sifting through the brokenness and the beauty of life and crafting a future out of it, together. Us and God, together. It’s not easy or efficient, but that’s the only kind of church I want to be.

So what kind of church are we going to be, my friends?

Maybe, with God’s help, the kind that is able to do some division.

And wouldn’t you know, as it happens, that is also exactly what occurred eventually with my grandparent’s house, long after the attic incident.

Once they were both gone, my family members carefully went through every room determining what to let go and what to hold onto. It was hard, and it was grief, and it was love, and it was the resurgence of a million precious memories. I think the clothes and the TV guides did go away; sorry Grandma. But not everything. Some things, like that old organ in my office, and like the Cool Whip containers that show up in my sermons, some things endure, undaunted by the years.

And that was, in the end, the necessary division—the healthy, holy division—which made what really matters so very clear to us.

That is the work we must all do eventually. And it is the work of the church, too.

So, if we are feeling brave, let’s go up to the attic, and sit down amid all the boxes of memory, and regret, and fear, and hope. Let’s speak of what is true, and admit what never was.

Let’s hold it all up to the light—and sort through—and do the work the Lord has given us to 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.

Eyes on Him: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, July 20, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Luke 10:38-42.

Not too long before I began my training to be a priest, I had a meeting with my rector and mentor, Fr. Shannon. I was, as you might imagine, a bundle of nerves and excitement and anticipation, wondering what on earth I’d gotten myself into, even though I also knew it was the only thing I could imagine doing with my life.

Fr. Shannon was and is a prayerful and wise man; he is the sort of person who cuts right to the heart of the matter when you speak with him. Even so, when I asked him for any last-minute advice as I headed off to seminary, I wasn’t quite prepared for the simplicity of his words.

Just keep your eyes on Jesus, he said. Just keep your eyes on Jesus and you’ll be fine.

That was it.

Now, I can be an over-thinker. With good PR one might call my personality type “introspective,” but if we’re honest, sometimes I just get in my head about stuff.

So when I’m all worked up inside about the future and Fr. Shannon just says to me, keep your eyes on Jesus, I will admit to you that internally, I was kind of like, uh huh….and??? Throw me a bone here, Father. There’s gotta be something more to it than that. How am I going to crack the code and become the ideal priest? How am I going to help fix all the problems of the church and the world? How am I going to shoulder the impossibility of the task ahead?

But that was all he said that day. Keep your eyes on Jesus.

So I packed my Uhaul truck with a lot of unanswered questions and went on my way.

And wouldn’t you know, that he was exactly right? Because I would learn in all sorts of ways throughout my years of training and formation—and I continue to learn—that keeping your eyes on Jesus is a deceptively simple invitation. It is actually really, really hard, especially once we realize how many other things we’re accustomed to focusing on.

The truth is our complicated lives and the complicated world around us and our egos and sometimes even the ups and downs of Church itself seem to conspire to keep our eyes on anything other than Jesus. Anything other than the simple, devastating truth of him and all that he offers, teaches, and dismantles.

I got to seminary and, as with anything, it was so easy to get caught up in the externalities of it—the grades and the institutional anxieties and the questions about the future. So easy to forget, if I wasn’t careful, that none of that stuff mattered if I wasn’t first focused on the deep, healing love that I had found in Jesus.

And as with any great love, some years on, I’m still only beginning to discover its fullness—only beginning to see what it means to keep my eyes on Jesus and to let that seeing change me.

I tell you this story, though, because in this light, I hope we can reassess today’s gospel passage. Here’s another confession: if I hear one more take on this story that divides us all into “Martha” types and “Mary” types, or that pits action against contemplation, I will pull out the nonexistent hairs on my head. With all due respect to those interpretations, this is not a passage about any of that. You are not just a Martha or a Mary. This is a meaningless distinction.

If you need some convincing on this point, consider: was Jesus a Martha or a Mary? Was he an active or a contemplative? The answer of, course, is that he was all of these things together and none of them alone. He was and is the unity of love and action, of prayer and prophetic witness, of service and surrender. Which is why, of course, we are supposed to keep our eyes on him—so that we might become like him.

Consider, too, that in Scripture Martha and Mary are both more than this isolated passage would suggest. Martha, in John’s Gospel, is not a hapless busybody, but a person of deep faith and insight: she is the first person in that book to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah. And Mary, in that same Gospel, is no retiring navel gazer, but a person of decisive word and action. She pours out her expensive ointment and anoints Jesus’ feet with her hair, defying criticism and convention.

Imagine that, women in scripture actually being more complex and powerful than church interpretive tradition has allowed them to be? What a concept! So let’s lay down that tired old binary these women supposedly represent. It is not real.

The point here, instead—the distinction that Jesus is making when he talks about Mary “choosing the better part”—is a question of where our focus lies. It is his gentle, direct reminder to Martha to keep her eyes on him in all that she does. In the things that she can set into order and in the things that remain a mess—in all of it, he wants her to not forget what it’s all for, what it’s all about, what it’s all moving towards: union with him, life in him, the eternal love affair between God and creation consummated in him.

Because Martha, worried and distracted by the many things she genuinely cares about, can only truly learn how to love them if she keeps her eyes on Jesus and receives him not just into her home but into the very depths of her soul.

And the same is true for us, friends.

All that we do in the church—our programs and our fellowship and our formation and our service projects—all of it is meaningless unless we first keep our eyes on Jesus and receive him into the deepest parts of ourselves. You’d think this would be obvious, but just like that advice Fr. Shannon gave me, it is deceptive in its simplicity.

Because it is so, so easy to become distracted, worried, and tempted by many other things—the ups and downs of economics and politics, the personal hurts and hungers that plague us, the unresolved conflicts and the institutional inertia. They are all important in their own way; they all need some faithful tending. But without keeping our eyes on Jesus—without making him the main thing that we are actually about—we will never go beyond a sort of well-meaning crisis mode. And I think we find ourselves in well-meaning crisis mode a lot of the time.

But God wants something more for you than that, St. Anne. God wants your liberation. God wants your peace. God wants you to be able to breathe again. And to help others do the same.

And the journey towards that liberation and peace and room to breathe begins, and becomes, and ends, for us, in focusing on Jesus. Listening to him, praying as he prayed, confessing to and confiding in him, studying his teachings, modeling our social ethics and our relationships upon his generous and gentle love. And then receiving him—reaching out our hands and receiving him into the deepest parts of ourselves.

This is what we must be about here at St. Anne, first and foremost: keeping our eyes on Jesus. And when I say Jesus, I mean the real Jesus, by the way, in case you’d forgotten or never been told what he’s actually like: living and present, responsive to reality, no enemy of science or truth or human experience, sacramentally available, still-being-revealed to us, Spirit-driven, justice-seeking, reconciliation-making, mercy-rendering. That is Jesus. Keep your eyes on him.

The stranger-caring, everyone-welcoming, difference-respecting, listening, peacemaking, table-turning, mountain praying, active, contemplative, holy Jesus. The Martha and the Mary and the Peter and the Paul and even the Judas-loving Jesus. Keep your eyes on him, because he is there waiting to love you, too.

Not Christian nationalist Jesus; not conservative or liberal Jesus; not idol of patriarchy Jesus; not disembodied, benign, relative-truth Jesus; not war-monger Jesus; not mere symbol Jesus; but the real, risen, living, loving, bleeding, blessing, breaking, laughing, dancing, fire and firmament Jesus who demands nothing less than all of you and nothing more than this: to see him, and to fall in love with him, and to fall in love with your neighbor and the world again because of him, and to die and to live again, all at once in him.

That’s who I am going to keep my eyes on, no matter what else comes along.

Just like Martha, and just like Mary, and just like everyone else who has ever dared to look up from the worries and distractions that surround them and instead chooses the better part that is, quite simply, Jesus. That is, quite simply, love.

Whatever else we do, lets start there. Just keep our eyes on Jesus.

As a wise friend told me once, do that, and we’ll be just fine.

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.

Urgency: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on May 11, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is John 10:22-30.

I have been told many times throughout my life (as I am sure you have been, too) that patience is a virtue. My track record with that is mixed at best.

Especially in springtime. Most years when I was growing up, right about this time, when the May afternoons become warm and breezy and filled with the scent of mown grass and flowers, I felt anything but patient—because the promise of summer felt so close, so tantalizing! Everything felt possible. Patience? Who needs it? That was something for boring old grown ups—I wanted freedom and sunshine and ice cream cones that dripped on the sidewalk and those long, campfire-scented nights when we listened to the old stories and sang the old songs. I was impatient, impatient for all of it.

And then a bit later, like some of our graduating teens whom we are celebrating today, you start to feel a new form of impatience for “real life” in the world beyond childhood, when you get to make your own decisions and mistakes and discoveries. The May of senior year of high school is sort of an icon of impatience, though usually a joyful one.

But frankly, as I have become more and more like those boring old grown ups, I’ve discovered that the whole patience thing never magically materialized with age. There are still so many things that I want–eagerly and anxiously–things I do not want to wait around for forever. Because as you go along through life, you realize the preciousness of time, the preciousness of experiencing everything you can, while you can.

And you also notice the deep needs and challenges and pain of the world around you, too, and you start wonder whether “patience is a virtue” might’ve been something coined by those who simply want the rest of us to be quiet and give up our dreams and our collective agency. In our own lives and in our common life in this world, more often than not what I really find myself wondering is not how to be more patient, but what, on earth, we are waiting for? Let’s go!

I love life too much, I love the world and the people in it too much to wait on truly being alive in it. So I think today, I think now, I think in all truth I am interested in the virtue of urgency. The virtue of loving, compassionate urgency.

Some of the personal circumstances of my life are surely shaping that feeling, but to be honest, I think I am still and always have been that kid who is eager for freedom and sunshine and sweetness, and I think most all of us are, deep down, in our own ways. The problem, the fundamental problem, is not that we are impatient—it is that we are too willing to wait. We are too willing to forestall what is truly important. We put off waking up and seeing the beauty and the goodness that we were created to be and called to build in the name of God.

So yes, I want to seek the virtue of urgency. Urgency to do something real that contributes to God’s kingdom. Urgency to love without discrimination. Urgency to listen and respond to the people around me, like Jesus did. Urgency to stand up to what is wrong and dishonest and harmful. Urgency to be the sort of person who is unashamed of the Cross of Christ and who is unabashedly confident in the promise of his Resurrected Life.

And I think that is what Jesus wants from all of us, really. Now, I know that patience is named as a fruit of the Holy Spirit in Scripture, and there are indeed times when we must slow down and seek the capacity to endure, to persist, to trust in God when we can’t see the road ahead.

But more often than not, I think Jesus wants us to get a little more urgent in our discipleship: in our living and our loving. A little wilder, a little bit more free. A little bit less like a boring old grown up and more like what we once were and still are—an open heart, running down summer sidewalks, licking ice cream cones and chasing stars.

Note this morning’s Gospel passage. Jesus is walking in the temple, a very serious grown up sort of place. He is approached by some Jewish leaders, and they have an urgent, rather insolent question for him. “How long will you keep us in suspense,” they ask. A better translation of the Greek is, how long will you keep wasting our time? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.

And you can’t really blame them. They have good reason to be impatient. They are not just longing for summer freedom, they are longing for true freedom—from oppression and suffering and exploitation. They are impatient for hope. And I think we all know what that feels like, we who have had too much of disappointment.

But as is so often the case, it’s Jesus’ reply that I find so compelling. You might think he’d say, now, now, my brothers, wait and see. Patience is a virtue. You’re just gonna have to be quiet and hold tight and buckle down til your salvation comes.

But that’s not what Jesus says. He is, instead, equally insolent, equally blunt. I have told you. You want a Messiah? You want salvation and liberation? I have told you all about it, and you do not believe. I’m waiting on you, my brothers and sisters!

I am standing here, I am standing here, Jesus says. I am God, standing here asking you to do something, anything other than sit around waiting for God’s Kingdom. I am asking you to live the Kingdom with me now, to build it with me now! I am God standing here, just as impatient as you are for the healing of the world. That’s why I came and why I am willing to die and to rise again. I am God standing here with my love and my life and my Spirit poured out for you like an ice cream cone melting in the summer heat, asking you to taste of its sweetness. Asking you to urgently live a life shaped by love and justice rather than patiently waiting for someone else to do it for you.

Thanks be to our urgently loving God.

And with all due respect to patience is a virtue, I do not want to be patient for the things of Jesus—the things of truth and beauty and goodness in this world—and I don’t think you should be either. If someone comes through our red doors, let them come away saying, wow, those people are not waiting around on the Good News. They’re running with it! They’re doing it! They are living with compassionate urgency and my God, what if all of us did that? How different things could look.

And if we are going to be the sheep of the Good Shepherd, then let us be the wild unruly sort, the kind who are utterly impatient to run through summer fields and to bless the earth as we stumble along through the flowers. Let us cause a stir for love’s sake. Let us make a bit of a mess for righteousness’ sake. And when people tell us to be quiet and shut up about love and to just be patient for the Kingdom, let’s do what all good sheep do—let’s not listen. Let’s chase it, right now. Let’s help it spring up, right now. Let’s never stop.

And sure, maybe we all start to look like boring old grown ups after a while. And I definitely can’t eat ice cream like I once did. But oh, oh, in here, in my heart, I am still trembling at the promise of springtime. I am still wanting to huddle in close to the firelight and hear the old stories and sing the old songs. I am still wanting to chase the stars and make my own discoveries and for all of us to be free. All of us, together, with Jesus, our Shepherd, leading the way.

So if patience is a virtue, I am still looking for it. Maybe I’ll find it some day.

But in the meantime, you’ll find me out there somewhere, running towards summertime. Running towards love. Running towards the God who is always, always running back towards us.

It is May. Everything is possible. And we’ve all had enough of waiting. So let’s go.

This is How it Ends: An Easter Sermon

I preached this sermon on Easter Day, April 20, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is John 20:1-18, Mary’s encounter with the risen Jesus in a garden.

This is how it ends. THIS is how it ends.

Take a look around you—at the morning light, at the flowers, and the flame that burns, refusing to be overtaken by darkness. Bathe in these rolling waves of alleluias, all of us here, together, finally, on the edge of a new day, standing in the risen light. If you take nothing else away from this moment, from this season, from this life, just hold on to the revelation all around you now: this is how it ends.

Whatever else has ended, or is ending for you, or in this world, this is how it ultimately ends. Whatever you are afraid of, or angered by, or regretful of, take heart, because this is how it ends. Whatever grief you carry, whatever wrongs you can’t take back, whatever words you never got to say, this is how it ends. Whoever you have lost, whatever parts of yourself you have betrayed, whatever you are still trying to find, this is how it ends. Whatever seems to be falling down around us or fraying apart at the seams: remember, and believe, and taste and see, that this is how it actually ends.

In this line of work, every day I hear and I feel, underneath all the words spoken and headlines blaring and the anxieties that pervade our church and our country and our time on this fragile earth, every day I hear the fear of endings. I hear that we are “in decline”, that we are losing ground, that we are coming apart, that everything we’ve loved and worked for is leaving us.

I hear this across all spectrums of identity and ideology and outlook and circumstance. We have all been seized by this sense of an ending, a bad ending, and like Mary Magdalene we are, many days, stooped over by the weight of our tears. Like her, we are wailing at the angels to give us back the things we love most, the things we cannot bear the ending of.

But why are you weeping? Look around you, and see, and know again, or for the first time, the truth of Easter: this is how it ends.

Whatever breaks, whatever dies, whatever unravels in us and around us—that is not the actual ending that God has in store for us. This is. Because our God is the God of Love and Life, our God is an Easter God, and we are Easter people, and on this clear and fragrant morning our Living, Loving Risen God emerges from the darkness, up among the flowers like a gardener, asking us to look, to look, and to see how the first green shoots of this new and deathless creation are rising right up all around us, right out of the wreckage of all those dreaded endings we fear.

So look! Stop your weeping and look!

Now, I love this moment of reunion between Mary Magdalene and Jesus; I find it one of the most poignant in all of Scripture. But I have also wondered sometimes if Mary felt like she got the brush off from Jesus. He’s in an awful hurry.

Here she is, the only one who stuck around after the men left and went back home, here she is crying her heart out, suddenly reunited with her Lord and teacher and friend, and then through her blur of tears and joy and relief, Jesus is just like, “Girl, bye! I’ve got places to be. It’s Easter; I’ve got brunch plans. I love you, Mary, but kindly extricate yourself from my person.”

Well, maybe he was a little more pastoral than that. But he doesn’t stick around long enough to explain or even to instruct. Because how can you really explain all of this. He simply needs her to look, to see, for that briefest, most crucial moment in human history: to see that, whatever has us bowed down in grief, this is how it ends. With you and I, and him, and everything alive, redeemed, renewed—and united with the One who made us. And on that day, oh what an Easter brunch it will be.

And this is important, especially now: that this glimpse, this Easter day that shows us how it all will end: this is meant for something far more than consolation. It is meant to EMBOLDEN us. It is meant to make us a little brave, a little feisty, because this ending means that we are free. We are free from despair. We are free from shame. We are free from death. We are free!

And Mary, well, she gets it. She understood the assignment. Because out of that garden she goes—she goes and she announces—she PROCLAIMS what she has seen. Oh yes, if you hadn’t noticed, the first APOSTOLIC PROCLAMATION of the risen Lord…the first human heralding of the new creation…is borne on a woman’s lips to the men hanging out at home.

Because what has been cast down is being raised up and blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted; and blessed are the pure in heart for they, THEY shall see God; and blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!

And as Mary goes along proclaiming, mind you, the world still looks the way it always did. Caesar is still on his throne, and Pilate is in his judgment seat wondering what truth is, and the crowds who called for crucifixion still know not what they have done. And all around are all of those usual endings, endings, endings, and falling temples and crumbling nations. Oh yes, we’ve been here before.

But Mary? Mary is emboldened now, because she stands at the center of a new world, she has seen, before anyone else, that this is how it ends. And when you know that this is how it ends, you can do anything that love requires, because there is nothing left to fear.

Friends, Easter is the feast of fearlessness. It is the feast that invites us to not just cling to the hope of some good news someday, somehow, but to see it here, now, alive, in front of us and around us. It is the feast that asks us to stop wailing at angels, and to dry our tears and hike up our garments and chase after that good news. Proclaiming as we go this thing, this Person, this Risen One, this new world that we have glimpsed.

And as we go, if we run into those petty tyrants of every age and the structures that prop them up, we will laugh, and we will stand in the streets and tell them: NO. You have no ultimate power. Because this is how it ends!

And if we see our beloved church changing through the years, we will cry out joyfully: it will be ok, because we are not limited by institutional realities, we are proclaimers of the Gospel of the Risen Lord, and this is how it ends!

And if we must say goodbye to each other along the way, as we certainly will in time, then we will say goodbye with tears and with tenderness but also with hope, because we know that this is how it ends.

And frankly, even if society were to fracture all around us and we had to stand on the rubble of what has been built, even then, even then, like the generations before us, even then we will look for that green shoot rising up at the mouth of the empty tomb and we will point and say, LOOK. This is how it ends! I have seen the Lord and this is how it ends!

Just like this. With love and truth and possibility, and resurrection, and a day that is not actually an ending at all, but a beginning. Look around you. This is the first glimpse of a new heaven and a new earth, with flowers, and a flame that will not be overtaken by darkness, and a torrent of unstoppable alleluias, and all of us together, finally, fully, always.

So why are you weeping? This is how it ends.

Failed: A Good Friday Sermon

Preached on Good Friday, April 18, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH.

It is important that we speak plainly and honestly today. We owe that much to ourselves, and to him. There is no hiding, here. No pretty turns of phrase to evade the truth.

No, the truth of Good Friday is simply this: We failed, God.

We failed today, fully and completely. We failed to see you. We failed to understand who you are and why you created us and why you came among us and what you asked of us.

It was so simple, what you asked, but so impossible for us to accept: to love one another and to love you.

But for so many reasons, and sometimes for no reason at all, we can’t do it. We don’t do it. And instead we crucify. And instead we are crucified. We fail.

And oh, how we hate to admit it. We are so afraid of failure and shame. But somehow that fear of our own failure, that recoiling at our own limitations, is precisely what we lay upon others. We make them bleed the blood we are terrified of spilling. We make them die the death we are terrified of dying.

And so we have ended up here again, like clockwork, on another Golgotha, on that dusty hill which arises in every age, soaked with sorrow and strewn with cynicism. And we are bathed, today, in a grim, unflattering light, the sort of light that doesn’t illuminate so much as it lays bare. In the deathly light of Good Friday, every blemish and crack and wound in the body of creation is made plain in your body, Lord; your precious body, as it, too, fails.

And we see here, in Jesus, upon this hill of sorrows, that, despite all our best efforts and biggest dreams, we don’t know how avoid failure in the end, not in the world as it is, because here death consumes even our greatest successes and highest ideals. It even consumes our God.

So even if we give everything we have, like Jesus did, even if we practice peace and stay patient and never speak a hateful word, even if we do everything asked of us, still, it seems, the crucifier comes. The crucifier who is time and death and fear and fury.

Still he comes, with crosses freshly assembled to dole out. Still he comes, in his heavy boots, stomping on the harvest of our years.

And still he comes, too, this crucifier, as a strange unwelcome traveler within us, welling up as the apathy and anger and resentment of our own hearts. We are the crucifier, too, somedays, even if we wish we weren’t. We must say that plainly, too.

Because so often, on any given Friday, good or otherwise, we choose to shrug or gawk or look away as the crucified ones continue to struggle through the streets of our own Jerusalems: draped in the flags of other nations or other identities, crowned with the thorns of prejudice, bearers of the burdens we’ve been taught to sneer at or dismiss.

And if we are honest, really honest with ourselves, we’re often just relieved that it isn’t us.

And so on it goes, this passion play.

So yes, we have failed, God, and we can’t fully explain it.

But it is necessary to say it, now, because really, what else can be said at the foot of your cross? There is no worldly victory here. No positive spin. There is no sly wink or nudge you give us that this is all just for show. This is simply what it appears to be. It is the opposite of love. And you, the One who is Love, you are gone.

And that is that.

But here’s the thing about today, God (and I am afraid, almost, to say it out loud, but I must, if we are speaking plainly.) Today is your encounter with failure, too, Lord. Your acceptance of your own failure.

I’ve struggled to understand this or even put it into words, since you are eternal and unfailingly good, but I am realizing that Good Friday is nonetheless your own surrender to failure.

Because you chose not just any death, but a shameful, embarrassing, degrading death. On the Cross, we see the fullness of your failure on the world’s terms. We see how creation could not bear the weight of you, how even your blessed flesh could not bear the weight of us. How you could not draw us back from our worst impulses.

You who–ever since your hungry children stumbled out of Eden with tearful eyes–you who have been trying to teach us how to undo the curse, how to find our way home. You who have parted seas and toppled tyrants and rained bread from heaven and crossed deserts and appeared in smoke and fire, all in the hopes of helping us find you again and find ourselves again…today is the shocking day when you say, my children, I have failed, too.

Because you have come to us in every way possible. You have come as light and as fire and as word and now as a man. You have come as bread and as silence and as liberation, to show us, to show us, to show us, and still, still, still we are here again, on this dusty hill, unable to truly find each other.

No matter what you have done til now, still, the crucifer comes.

And I am sorry, Jesus seems to say with his own parched lips, out of his own deep wounds. I am sorry that this has never quite worked. I am sorry that we always seem to end up here, on these many Golgothas. Because I promise you, you were created for so much more than a world full of crosses. I have wanted to give you so much more than this.

But now, it is finished. It is finished.

On Good Friday, the saga of our long journey out of Eden is finished. It ends here, with us casting God from our garden, sending him away, weeping and hungry. It ends here.

And I realize that saying this might make us uncomfortable. Surely this is not the end of the story? We know there is more.

But it is very important, actually, that we let Good Friday be Good Friday, and nothing else. That we let it be the ending that it is.

It is necessary, I think, after our long history of death and despair, to say that this particular story, this particular mode of endless disappointment—ours and Gods—ends today.

Because perhaps we need to say goodbye here, us and God, here upon the dusty hill, upon the rubble of our failed dreams. Perhaps Jesus’ words are the most honest thing that we can say to one another today: it is finished. We tried, and it failed, but whatever this is, this world that crucifies truth, it must be finished.

Because somewhere, out beyond time and terror and the Cross, somewhere within the mysterious alchemy of love and death and failure, only there and only then is something else possible, some truly good news that is not just a new chapter in this same, sad old story, but that’s a new story altogether. A new creation altogether.

A different garden that is neither Eden nor our own, but a new world, a new life in which no one will ever be cast out.

But whatever that looks like, whatever that new thing is that might yet be revealed from the depths of the tomb, we have to come here, first. We have to look into the face of our broken Lord, who tried so hard, who came so far, who loved so deeply. And we have to let him look at us, too: we who try so hard, who have come so far, who love so deeply, and yet are as broken as we’ve always been.

And today, for now, we have to let each other go.

I am sorry, Lord. I am sorry for all that we could not be to each other in the world as it is. I am sorry this is the ending of your time with us.

But please, please let it not be the end.

Let there be some new word spoken, some gentler, more kindly light revealed. Let there be something on the other side of all this failure. Let there be something plain and honest and good that does not always get crucified.

For whatever it is, we wait.

For you, we wait.

The Lord’s Own Prayer: A Palm Sunday Sermon

I preached this sermon on Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Luke’s narrative of the Last Supper, Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus.

When you encounter hard things, sometimes it can be difficult to know exactly what to say. In such moments, our eloquence can crumble, leaving us wide eyed and silent like children.

Palm Sunday is always sort of like that for me. It’s hard to vocalize what it all means, this jumble of praise and fury. I imagine it was even more so for the disciples who watched from afar as their Lord, the Lord, succumbed to the senselessness of his death. I wonder what they said. I wonder what prayer was on their lips as they stood there watching, as he gave himself away, as the sun covered its face and the earth was darkened, its Creator flickering and faltering like a dying star.

I wonder if, in such an impossible moment, those disciples simply grasped at whatever prayer they knew best, as most of us do in desperate times. And for the majority of us, I would suspect the prayer that we know best and turn to is the Lord’s Prayer.

How many times have we prayed it? Impossible to number, like those flickering stars. I couldn’t even tell you exactly when I first learned the Lord’s Prayer. It’s just always sort of been there, rattling around in between my breath and my bones.

I’d suspect though, as reliable as it can be, for many of us, the Lord’s Prayer is almost too familiar We remember the words but forget the meaning. We become dulled to the boldness and intimacy of what it says about God and about being alive to God in this world that births and crucifies us. It is only in moments like this, like today, when all other words fail us, that the Lord’s Prayer returns to mind, like a life raft.

I’ve been thinking about the Lord’s Prayer lately for two reasons. The first is because, with the ups and downs of the world as it is, I sometimes need a life raft as I struggle to express whatever tempest of feelings fills my heart. In such instances, sometimes the old, familiar words are all I have to offer up. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.

The second reason, though, is because, as I was spending time this week with Luke’s narrative of the Last Supper and the Passion and the Crucifixion that we just heard, I realized something that I hadn’t before: woven into this narrative, like a hidden scaffolding that holds together Jesus’ final days, are all the elements of the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, if you look closely, you realize that Jesus quotes or enacts the prayer directly throughout the Passion narrative.

So let’s refresh our memory. Earlier in Luke, Jesus has taught his disciples to pray in this way:

Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.

And then, in today’s story, as we just heard, he does and says again all the things in this prayer. He gathers with his disciples and gives them bread. And he prays near the Mount of Olives, crying out to his Father who is in heaven and says, your will be done. And he asks his disciples, multiple times, to pray that they would not come into the time of trial. And then, finally, with his dying breath, he seeks forgiveness, for everyone. It is the Lord’s Prayer, every single piece of it.

In this Palm Sunday story—in the culmination of his earthly ministry—we see Jesus living the very same prayer he has been teaching. He is walking the walk. When he is experiencing his own pain, and fear, and doubts about why it all has be like this, and why people do what they do, and whether the ones he loves can carry on when he is gone, when in effect he has run out of anything else to say or know, he, too, falls back into the familiar words:

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.

And although it is a painful story; and although we are living through painful times, I find a sort of hopeful symmetry in the realization that God is praying the same prayer that God wants us to pray.

I find it rich with possibility and power, even, that when we call to mind those familiar old words, we are not just reciting something memorized as a child, but that we are somehow part of God’s own eternal prayer.

And that God, from the time before all our senseless crucifixions, from the very beginning, God has been offering himself to Creation in prayer, calling us by our names, seeking for earth and heaven to be one, desiring to give us bread and love and forgiveness.

I believe that God is still praying that prayer, today and every day, because God’s heart breaks not just for the Passion of Jesus, but for the passion and pain of every one of us who have trod the path of crumpled palms and broken dreams, hosannas caught in our throats, unsure of the words to speak.

Yes, with us and for us, Jesus is praying this prayer in Holy Week, and in the many hard, holy weeks that comprise our lives. The Lord’s Prayer is the Lord’s own prayer, you see. God is alongside us in the praying this week, and has been forever. And when we call to mind those familiar words, God is reflecting them back to us, saying,

My Child, who art of the dust,

Blessed is your name to which I call.

My kingdom is coming, so that our wills can be one

On earth as it is in heaven.

So eat the bread I give. It is more than enough for all your days.

And forgiveness is already yours if you receive it

And share it freely.

We have been through many trials and temptations together,

You and I,

But I have never left you.

And those things that are past will never define you,

because your deliverance is already at hand.

So take my hand.

In the same way that the Lord’s Prayer shapes and guides Jesus’ path to the Cross, I pray that this Holy Week will shape and guide your path through whatever you are facing in life. This week will reveal everything that Christianity is actually about, beyond the noise and the politics and the culture wars. It is the week when we learn what walking the walk really looks like.

Come and wade deep into these waters as much as you possibly can. We will watch, and listen, and grieve, and celebrate and yes, we will pray the Lord’s Prayer many times over, and all of this—all that Jesus is and all that he gives and all that he loses and all that he transforms—will become the hidden scaffolding of our souls, strengthening us for whatever might flicker or falter.

Because beneath and beyond the clamor and the confusion and the crumpled palms and the wide-eyed silences, only one thing abides, only one thing really can, in the end, be true:

The Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory are God’s. Now and for ever.

And to that I can only say, Amen.