sermon – Page 9 – By Another Road

Stories: A Goodbye Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, July 16, 2023, my final service as Associate Rector at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23, Jesus’ parable of the sower.

I still remember quite clearly the first time I saw Trinity. It was late evening in early April of 2019, just over four years ago. I had flown into Fort Wayne from California that day for my interview weekend, and Fr. T.J. picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at my hotel after a welcome cocktail. But I was still wide awake, restless, a bit nervous, my body on west coast time.

So I took a walk down Main Street in the dark, past the stately Courthouse, past the workers closing up shop at the Coney Island, past Henry’s, then left on Fulton Street, and suddenly there it was in front of me, lit up, its gold-hued stone walls illuminated by flood lights, a beacon in the still spring night. And I stood there on the corner, looking up at the steeple, and I felt a strange, thrilling sense of knowing, like when you fall in love, and I thought, maybe, just maybe, the long and winding road of my life has led me all the way here.

And so it did. And the courthouse and the Coney Island and Henry’s and especially these old stone walls have come to hold all sorts of memories and meanings that I could not have imagined back then on that April night, back before I was a priest, before COVID, before I came to know and treasure your names and your faces and your stories, before we navigated the ups and the downs of these four years alongside one another, praising God and praying for each other and engaging, week by week, the graceful rhythm of the liturgy. I could not have imagined all the blessings and the lessons of these years, and how they would leave such an indelible mark on my heart.

But here we are. And although four years go by so quickly, I know that the story that began on that April night and which ends, for me, on this July morning, will be one of the most cherished and enduring stories of my life.

But one of the interesting and oddly comforting things that I have learned during my ministry at Trinity, and something that I think is true for all of us who spend time in this place, is that within these walls, our beginnings and our endings are all layered on top of one another, interlocking like those golden stones—time is a bit slippery, and what is seemingly lost to us lives on.

Just as it is in the liturgy itself, where Alpha and Omega come together, where righteousness and peace kiss, I find that the past and the present commingle in these hallways. Priests and parishioners long gone, long dead, even, are still part of the living memory of this place. One can sit here in the nave on a quiet afternoon, the sunlight bathing the walls in color, and sense the presence of those who came before, the ones who are themselves carried, now, on the light, a thousand fragments of faith, hope, and love, still abiding here.

And so when things change, when stories end, when people leave, or move away, or even die, these endings are gently incorporated into that which does not end. They are held in trust, like a precious volume added to the shelf, an entry into our one shared story. It is a story that began long before any one of us, and that will continue long after all of us. Each of us comes and contributes what we can while we can, and then we hand it off to God and to the future.

And as hard as it is to leave, I find peace in the knowledge that my offering is just one of many; for there is something good and necessary and holy to feel, in this life, like you have been part of something far larger than yourself alone. Trinity is a place where each of us can be part of something large, something magnificent, something eternal, even, if we give ourselves over to it.

And that is so, of course, not simply because of some magic within these stone walls, but because this is the house of God; it is the place where our individual stories collide not only with one another’s and those of our forebears but with the one timeless story of God’s passionate and undying love for us and for all of creation.

And in a world and a culture that so often tells us that it is up to us alone to determine what is real and true, to wrest some scrap of meaning from the happenstance of our lives, to navigate our way between the lonely waystations of existence and find solace only in ourselves, in this place we learn that this is not so. We learn that we were not made to be alone and that we will not be alone, in the end. We learn that God has knit himself into our stories and has knit us into his own, all-encompassing story.

I think this is part of the reason that Jesus, the incarnate God, loves to teach his followers in stories and parables. Not just to be obscure or confusing, but to remind us that the whole of salvation is the imaginative exercise of a Creator who longs to re-enchant the world.

God longs for us to feel a sense of wonder, like the child we used to be, and so he tells us stories of sowers and seeds and soil and sunshine so that we might begin to realize that the Kingdom of God is as close to us as the ground upon which we stand, that this Kingdom grows, somehow, when we recognize that we are a part of everything and that everything is a part of us.

In parables like the one we heard this morning, the parable of the sower, Jesus is not telling us about various types of earth so that we can determine which soil sample fits our own individual story and circumstance—whether we by ourselves are rocky or thorny or rich and fertile. Instead, he is asking us whether we can dream of and bring into existence a world where all might flourish of fertile ground; where all might be fed by the harvest of a righteousness deep and vibrant as the Indiana cornfields; where all might know the abundance that is possible when we love and care and tend to one another, as we have here. That’s the story God wants us to be a part of. That’s the story I have found here with you.

For God knows that too many of us, myself included, have felt what it is to be trampled down like the dust; to be caught among the thorns and stones. God knows how we have walked endlessly through the night, down unfamiliar streets, down long and winding roads, seeking our place in this world, and that sometimes we need a new promise, a new vision to illuminate the darkness, to dazzle us with its golden possibilities, to give us that strange, thrilling sense of knowing, like when you fall in love. Because God wants you to fall in love again–or for the first time–with him, with who he has made you to be, with this world and all who are in it, with the unique story that has brought you safe thus far, and with the new, shared story that is still being written.

How good it is, my beloved friends, that our paths have converged in this place. How good it is that the story of God’s love, the one that brought us together, will never truly end. And if you ever find yourself feeling lost, or alone, or unsure about your place in this world, may I commend to you the simple reassurance of these old stone walls, softly glowing in the darkness, and the Spirit that abides herein, which will never forget you, nor me, nor any moment of what we have found and cherished in this place, even long after we are gone.

So thank you. Thank you for letting me be part of your stories. Thank you, God, for letting me be part of Trinity’s story. And so, until we meet again, in that place and time where all our stories become one, world without end: my gratitude and my love.

Sleep: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, June 11, 2023 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary texts cited are Genesis 12:1-9, Romans 4:13-25, and Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26.

The other night, I couldn’t sleep.

Maybe you’ve had one of those nights, too, where you go to bed and turn off the lights and as you lie there, suddenly all of the questions and the challenges you are facing loom up in the shadows and take on newer, larger dimensions. Maybe you start to think up problems you didn’t even know you had. And you toss and turn and flip and flop and look at the clock and tell yourself “I have to get to sleep,” but then that just makes you more anxious and so now you can’t sleep because you are stressed that you can’t sleep.

I am grateful that this is not a nightly occurrence for me; it happens just once in a while. And I know that for some folks, sleep is persistently hard to come by for a whole host of reasons. But as I was lying there the other night, trying to calm my mind, listening to the fan blowing, I was reminded of other June nights: the ones from my childhood, when I would fall into bed, tired from the day’s activities, and the fan would be blowing in the window…but back then I would just drift off, unfazed by any existential angst or unfinished to-do lists.

And it occurred to me that, by and large, many of us probably slept a lot better when we were children. Back when our loved ones were just down the hall and we didn’t feel so alone. When it was easier to release the cares of the day, easier to trust that tomorrow would be just fine, and that maybe, when we wake up, it would be even better than we dreamed it to be.

But somehow, along the way, things change, and by the time we are grown, a great number of questions and worries and memories hold vigil at our bedside, and it becomes hard to fall asleep in their company. What was once an easy rest, a trusting openness to tomorrow, is now a tense, restless waiting, our minds spinning in the darkness as we try to solve all of the problems of the world before the morning comes. And so while I was lying there in bed, I thought, how precious it would be to sleep like a child once again.

As I was recovering from my sleeplessness this week and reflecting on this Sunday’s readings, something else occurred to me that hadn’t before: that sleep is actually a powerful metaphor for faith. Because the sleep for which we long, that wistfully-remembered sleep of the June nights our childhoods—deep, peaceful, trusting—is quite similar in nature to what St. Paul is talking about when he refers to this thing called “faith” in the letter to the Romans.

When Paul speaks of faith, he is not just talking about an intellectual assent to a set of doctrines, nor is he speaking of a blithe certainty about how and why the world is the way that it is. He is talking about that intimate sort of bond you feel when you know that you are safe, that you are loved, that you are not alone in the dark, and that tomorrow will be ok.

And to this end, Paul uses as an exemplar of such faith the figure of Abraham–someone who had the benefit of neither doctrines nor certainties, but who did (a few passages later in Genesis) fall into a deep sleep and had a dream of what would be–that he would be the “father of many nations.”

Abraham could not have imagined on his own how God was going to do the things God promised to do, but he gave himself over to the promise anyway. And this giving over of the self to something large and mysterious; this surrender to the dream that God unfurls for us in the darkness—this is what we mean when we talk about faith.

As best we can tell, Abraham did not lie awake making checklists, trying to figure out exactly what he had to do in order to make this happen on his own; instead, he said, God is with me, and I suppose that will be enough to face whatever tomorrow brings. And so it was.

The faith of Abraham was an abiding trust that the God who called him by name would hold him and carry him and nurture him, like a parent cradling a sleeping child. And so we laud him as the progenitor of our faith not because of his perfect understanding, but because he was the first among us, the first in this long unfolding story, who simply rested in the arms of God. He was the first to trust that tomorrow would be just fine, and that maybe, when he woke up, it would be even better than he dreamed it to be.

A question that remains, though, is how? How do I arrive at such a tranquil faith, such a restful surrender? How do I trust in God so deeply, so fully, that I can drift off in his loving arms, despite the real dangers of this life, despite the despair and the unanswered questions that keep me awake at night? How can any of us, once we are no longer children, once we feel so alone?

Of course the answer, as always, has something to do with Jesus. And our Gospel passage points toward it.

There’s a lot going on in this Gospel reading, actually. It’s kind of like those dreams you have where one scene suddenly transitions into another, layer upon layer. But after the calling of the reviled tax collector Matthew and the healing of the woman with the hemmhorage (both people, by the way, who have surely suffered their own share of sleepless nights) the story culminates with…what?

Jesus visiting a child, lying in her bed. A young girl who, he says, is not dead, but sleeping.

Now of course we can interpret this passage several ways, and most of us might assume that he was speaking metaphorically–that the girl was indeed dead and that Jesus brought her back to life, like Lazarus. Or that she was sick or comatose, and he revived her.

But there is another possibility, too, one that is a bit more evocative and mysterious, one that we might dismiss as easily as the observers in the story itself: the possibility that Jesus meant what he said.

What if Jesus was right, and the young girl was indeed asleep, in another state of consciousness, resting in the tantalizing, hidden promises of God? She wouldn’t be the first person in the Bible to have done so. As it is said:

your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams.

What if she was a mystic deep in a vision, deep in the hidden, luminous darkness of God? What if she was asleep like Jesus was asleep in that boat on the stormy sea; asleep like Joseph when the angels spoke to him; asleep like Abraham dreaming of his children; asleep like one who is held in the arms of the Almighty; asleep in order to remind the clamoring, sleepless world—including us— of what true faith looks like—

Not like a restless, anxious night, not like a to-do list, but like….rest. Perhaps faith, in the end, is nothing more than rest. Resting in God.

If so, then this young girl is, for us, another Abraham. Another reminder that faith, more than anything, looks like curling up in the arms of a loving parent and falling asleep.

And thankfully, we have a God who desires but one thing: to hold us and rock us through the night.

Come to me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Will we still have some sleepless nights? Probably. Anyone who loves this world and the people in it is bound to worry a bit. But I hope that when I am lying there in the dark, lamenting my inability to figure life out once and for all, to know what’s coming, to know exactly what to do, that I’ll remember dreaming Abraham and the sleeping girl, and I hope I’ll remember how faith feels less like having all the answers and more like slipping into cool sheets on a warm June night and drifting off, knowing that tomorrow will be just fine. That maybe it will be even better than I dreamed it to be. And that no matter what happens, God will still be there, waiting to take my hand when I wake up.

For he has come through the clamor and the noise, through the vast night of eternity to be at our bedside, to cradle us like a sleeping child, to promise, “you are not alone. I am here.”

And in that promise, I rest.

Hello/Goodbye: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, May 21, 2023 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary texts cited are Acts 1:6-14 (an account of the Ascension of Jesus) and John 17:1-11.

I find it a fascinating feature of certain languages that the same word can be used for both hello and goodbye. In Italian, whether coming or going, people often simply say “ciao.” In Hawaiian, it is “aloha.” In the Czech Republic, where I did a study abroad year in college, they say “ahoj,” which honestly always made me feel a little bit like a pirate. When a word like this contains within itself more than one meaning, it is called polysemy.

We have many polysemous words in English, too, of course, but we typically use different words to greet one another and then to take our leave. Although even for us, we might choose to say “good day” or “good evening” on both arrival and departure.

In all of the instances when one word serves as both hello and a goodbye, our languages reveal something deeper than their simple function. When both meanings are held in the same word, there is an acknowledgment of the fluidity of time and space and our place within them; when hello and goodbye are the same, then every coming together acknowledges an inevitable parting of ways, and yet every parting of ways holds within it the hope of inevitable reunion.

I like this very much, not only because it is linguistically nuanced, but because it feels true, it feels like a little reminder that whether, in this moment, we are moving closer or farther from one another, we are still connected.

And if that is true, then it suggests that the narratives we so often tell of encounters and departures—of definitive hellos and devastating goodbyes—are all, in reality, held within a larger, more gentle and generous story wherein all the roads we travel are interconnected, where all of our hellos and goodbyes lead back to one another in the end. Which is, itself, a polysemous, complex realization.

Because if hello and goodbye are never truly final, it’s a consolation when we feel the sting of loneliness and yet it’s also a caution when we would rather escape our histories or shrug off our responsibilities to right relationship, because the intertwining of all our hellos and goodbyes signifies that we are inextricably tied to one another and to the whole of the earth. It suggests that, as the poet Tennyson says, we are a part of all that we have met, and, thus, it is part of us. Hello, you are part of me. Goodbye, I am part of you. No matter where we go, we will never not be part of each other. And knowing this, we must decide how best to live.

I am thinking about hellos and goodbyes and polysemy this week because we have just celebrated the Feast of the Ascension this past Thursday and you can tell that its story is echoing into our lectionary readings this morning, and to tell the truth, this story has always felt like kind of a bummer to me in the midst of our Easter joy.

Because viewed from one angle, the Ascension is a goodbye narrative. The risen Jesus, only recently reunited with his beloved friends and family, is carried up in a cloud, into the great Mystery where it is beyond our capacity to see him, and his disciples are left staring at the sky, yearning for one last glimpse of him.

And from this perspective, especially for all of us who have grieved the loss of a beloved face, who have felt the hollowness of being the one left behind, the Ascension might feel a bit like a flat note in the jubilant melody of the season.

We might say, You loved us enough to come back from death, Lord, so why must you go, now, to a place where we cannot see you? Why must we continue to let go of you? Why is it still the case, even after the Resurrection, that everyone and everything we love still says goodbye to us in the end? Why must we wait here alone, waiting for the unresolved promise of your peaceable kingdom?

And yes, Lord, I know you have promised us the Spirit as our Comforter and guide, but if I am brutally honest, Lord, there are days I would trade that unseen Spirit for just one glimpse of your face, for one moment of your actual hands holding mine, reassuring me that I am not alone on this journey, some proof that your leaving was not forever, that there will come a day when we can say hello and it will not also mean goodbye. I would give anything to know that there will be, one day, an end to endings.

But depart he does, and wait we must. And so for now, like the disciples on the mountain, we must stand in this polysemous moment of the goodbye that searches for a hello, containing within itself both joy and grief, reunion and relinquishment, and we must continue to wonder why and how and when we will understand the necessity of loss.

But then this week, as I was reflecting on all of this, something occurred to me: that the Ascension, like so many other stories in Scripture, is itself polysemous—it, too, means multiple things at once. And while it is indeed a farewell narrative from the perspective of us and the disciples on the mountain, I realized that from the vantage point of God the Father, from the vantage point of the Spirit aloft on the high wind, from vantage point of the innermost heart of the Trinity, the Ascension is a hello, a celebration, a homecoming. It is Jesus, the Son, in the fullness of his risen, reclaimed, redeemed human flesh, crossing back over the threshold of heaven saying to the Father, here I am, I have returned to you, and much have I seen, and long have I loved you, and how good it is to be in your embrace again.

And if we truly love him, how could we not want our Lord to finally be at home? How could we not feel some joy that even though we must say goodbye, it is because he needed to see his Father’s face once more? I can’t begrudge him that. I know I want to see my father’s face again someday, too.

And there’s also this: in the Ascension, when Jesus says goodbye to us and hello to eternity, he is, in truth, doing something entirely new, something that only he could do, fully human, fully divine, his polysemous body drawn up and out beyond the limits of the flesh, blurring the boundaries between heaven and earth, reigning as the Lord of both.

He is not simply saying both hello and goodbye at the same time; he is breaking down the barriers between hello and goodbye; the barriers that separate us from God and one another. He is effecting his prayer that we might all be one, never parted. He is transfiguring all our beginnings and our endings, all of our greetings and our grief, all of our hope and our fear, into something bigger, something timeless, something that we cannot even imagine because we have not yet known a story that didn’t have an ending.

By journeying to a realm where human flesh could never have otherwise gone, he is making a place for us, a place where we will be greeted and welcomed, and somehow, where we will never have to say goodbye.

And when he returns, bringing back the glory of heaven for our eyes to behold at last, it will be a new word that he speaks, neither hello nor goodbye, but some word no mind has yet conceived, that no lip has dared to speak, a word that contains all things within itself, a polysemous Word that resolves every question, dries every tear, mends every broken heart, a word that will make the earth tremble with its beauty and its power, a word that will hold more than we could ever say but that will say it all. A word that will initiate our own Ascension.

What will that word be? I do not know. But in essence, I think it will say, here I am, I have returned to you, and much have I seen, and long have I loved you, and how good it is to be in your embrace again.

And now, no more hellos, no more goodbyes. Only this. Only us. All of us together. Always.

What He Saw: A Sermon for Good Friday

I preached this sermon on Good Friday, April 7, 2023, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary text cited is the Passion Narrative according to John, in which Jesus, as he dies, says, “It is finished.“

I was not there to witness it, but I was told that shortly before my great-grandma died, many years ago, she began speaking to her own mother, long since dead—speaking to her as though she was right there in the room with her. Not mumbling in her sleep, not in a delusional state, but clearly, directly, as you might talk to anyone who has come to visit your bedside. She saw her mother’s face, and then, not too long afterwards, she died, and it was finished.

I’ve heard many similar stories about other people since then, and while I don’t really know how to explain them, they seem to suggest that as our lives ebb, like a wave pulling away from the shore, a returning wave of something makes its presence known to us—something very real and very deep. Maybe we call it a memory…or maybe we call it divine presence…or maybe, like my great-grandma, we simply call out, mother. Whatever it is, whoever it is, there is a shared sense across many cultures and generations that in our final moments, we catch a glimpse of the people and the places we have known and loved.

As they say, our life flashes before our eyes.

Just last year a medical paper was published documenting, for the very first time, how this is in fact true—how life does flash before your eyes in the end. Somewhat by chance, the brain waves of a dying man were captured by an advanced medical scanning device. The doctors noticed that in the moments both immediately before and after this person died, the portion of the brain that processes memory was activated. As his other brain waves ebbed, the gamma waves—the waves of memory and meaning—flowed. He was remembering—processing a vision, somehow—of someone or something familiar. Something lost that had come back to him in the end.

And I wonder what he saw, that unnamed man. Was it his mother’s face? Maybe the time he got lost as a child? Was it the way the sun sets over the water on a summer evening? The fragment of a half-forgotten song? The smell of baking bread or the taste of good wine? How his father used to smile at him? And I wonder, were they just memories, just impulses in the brain, or were they a response to something real, something, like my great-grandma’s mother, that was somehow truly present again in a way that no medical scanner could ever detect? Those are questions that science cannot answer, but that the heart ponders nonetheless.

Because I like to think that, whatever it was that the dying man experienced, or whatever it was that my great-grandma saw as her life slipped away, that they were not just alone with their thoughts. I want to believe that their lives and their love came back to them at the very end, like a returning wave upon the shore, a presence, a promise that even though it is finished, it still all mattered. And that nothing was lost. Not really.

And if that is true, then I also can’t help but wonder what Jesus saw in his final moments on the Cross before he said, it is finished. He who felt so alone, he who was so abandoned, so undeserving of the ending he received. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

But if it’s true that our life flashes before our eyes, that love returns to us in the end to companion us into the darkness, I wonder what he saw as his breath ebbed away.

We know, of course, he saw his mother’s face, still alive, but deadened by grief.

And maybe, as he closed his eyes, maybe he saw the time he got lost as a child, when they found him in the Temple, when everything was new and possible. Or perhaps he saw the way the sun sets on the Sea of Galilee. Or maybe he remembered the fragment of a half-forgotten song heard long ago: my soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior. Maybe he remembered the smell of bread in the Upper Room.The taste of good wine at that wedding in Cana. Or how his Father smiled at him in secret, in his heart, and from beyond the cold and distant stars.

Maybe it was all of this, the sum of a life, the fragmented pieces of himself gathering back in, returning on a wave, bearing witness to the ending, bearing the memory and the presence of love, bearing the unbearable weight of loneliness until…it was finished.

And although that would be beautiful and meaningful all on its own, and although I believe that Jesus’ own life and love came back to him in the end, I don’t think that’s all there was. I don’t think that’s all he saw as he hung there, his breath crushed under the weight of the world’s brokenness.

I think we would miss something essential about who he is and what this day is about if Good Friday were the story of just another, single life flashing before someone’s dying eyes.

For the life of Jesus is the life of God, and the mind of Jesus is the mind of God, and the memory of Jesus is the memory of God, deeper and broader than any one returning wave. He holds the whole ocean of time and experience within himself. His life, his mind, his memory encompass everything, everyone, everywhere.

And so it was not just his own private memories, his own personal life that flashed before his eyes in the end, but ALL of life. All that ever was, all that ever will be. He saw all of it as he died on the Cross. He saw all of you. He saw every part of you. And through eyes blurred with tears and blood and love, he saw, as he always had, in the very beginning, that it was good. Not perfect, but very, very good.

He saw the time you got lost as a child and your parents found you.

He saw the time you got lost and nobody came looking.

He saw the way the sun sets over the lake you sat beside on a summer’s evening.

He saw the way the sun rose on the first day of the world.

He saw how your mother sang to you when you were afraid.

He saw the times you were too afraid to sing out loud. The poems you never wrote. The letters you never sent.

He saw every meal on every table. He saw every hungry belly.

He saw the consequential fruit trembling on the tree in Eden; and he saw the unnoticed wildflowers and weeds that grow on the side of the road. He saw the bouquets at every graveside, the names inscribed in stone.

He saw every creature, its life and its death, its peace and its agony, he saw every crack in the earth, every polluted river, every verdant forest, every wave of the infinite sea.

He saw every battlefield, every bomb and bullet, every needless slaughter, and he saw how our brother’s blood cries out from the ground, seeking justice.

He saw every broken heart, every tearstained face, every lash of the whip, every dream deferred, every march for peace, every backroom deal, every sacrifice and every betrayal, every sleepless night, every tick of the clock.

He saw all the times we failed, all the times we tried, all the times we made something beautiful, all the times we broke something beautiful.

He saw all the times we broke.

He saw the worst of what we have done, and the best.

He saw all of it.

All of life—all of life flashed before his eyes.

And then he said:

It is finished.

He said, it is finished, now, my beloved child, bone of my aching bone, and flesh of my wounded flesh. Finished because now I see it all, with my own living, dying eyes, everything done and left undone. Now I comprehend your finitude, your fear, how alone you feel in the vastness of creation. I see, with my own eyes, the returning wave of memory and grief, all that was lost, all that was forgotten, all that was loved; all of it is returning to me now, and it is your face I see, your face I call out to, your face I will not forget as I enter into the darkness and whatever lies beyond it.

It is finished, and I do not know where I am going, but now I see the pain and the beauty and the promise of this entire world and I hold it in my broken heart, in my fading breath, and so wherever I go now, I will carry you all with me. Nothing is lost. Not really.

So let us rest, now. It is finished. For I see, in the end, what was always the only important thing to see: that I love you, all that you are, all that you are not, with the ferocity and the depth and the power and the mystery of the endless ocean, and if I can, I will return it all to you, I will bring it all back to you, I will make it whole again, somehow, someday.

For all of life—mine, and yours, and ours—has flashed before my eyes, and thus I have drawn all things to myself.

It is finished.

…

And then the wave breaks on the shore.

And he is gone.

And, for today, there is nothing else that can be said.

The Best Meal I Ever Had: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, March 19, 2023 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary text cited is John 9:1-41, in which Jesus opens the eyes of a man blind from birth.

So, I want to tell you about the best meal I ever had.

It was in Assisi, Italy, back when I was in college and my mom and I were doing some travels through Europe. We had gone to Assisi to visit the holy sites associated with St. Francis, but we were, of course, also very happy to enjoy some good Italian food and wine.

The meal in question was at a simple little restaurant, nothing fussy or expensive. It incuded a bottle of red wine, a plate of ravioli in a light cream sauce flavored with poppyseeds and citrus, and a thick steak so tender that I would put it up against the best you could find at Ruth’s Chris down the street or anywhere else, really.

We sat at a table near the window, the golden evening light pouring in across the table, and both the servers and the other diners seemed genuinely happy to be there–at peace, in no rush to be anyplace else. Now, maybe I was delirious from the beauty and the sanctity of Assisi, or maybe I was just really hungry, but the food was so lovingly prepared and the setting so homey and warm that as I ate, tears of joy welled up in my eyes. Outside of cherished family gatherings, it was definitely one of the best meals I ever ate.

I wonder if you can recall a meal or a particular dish that evokes warm memories for you. Maybe it was on a vacation, too, or maybe it is something much closer to home—a family recipe or food from your favorite local spot.

Now, I am going to do something quite shocking and unconventional in the midst of a sermon. I’m going to ask you to turn to someone next to you or near you (don’t be shy) and very briefly tell them about that food. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy or exotic. Just something you have loved. Take just a moment and tell your neighbor about it.

…

Feeling hungry yet? Good!

Food can and should be one of the elemental pleasures of life, and our memories of it are often vivid, tied to beloved people and places. I always find it interesting how easily we can call to mind a favorite dish or restaurant and talk about it to connect with other peope. I think that’s because we speak about food from our lived experience of it, our deeply felt sense of nourishment and identity and belonging.

And even if we are not expert chefs, even if we don’t know how to cook at all, we can still probably speak with some energy and insight about our experience of food, of being fed, of what that one magical dish tasted like back when we were a kid, or when we cooked it for our family, or, yes, when the evening light spilled across the dining table in Assisi—in all the little moments and morsels when we encountered a little taste of heaven. We may not know the recipe or the reason why, but we can simply say with confidence, this much I know: I was hungry, and I tasted something beautiful.

In his own way, this is the testimony of the man in today’s Gospel story, the man who once was blind but who now can see, the man who has had a little taste of heaven. He is healed by Jesus through a rather earthy recipe: dirt and saliva kneaded together into a paste and then dipped into the sacred water of Siloam. Not a meal, per se, but rather the satisfaction of a deeper sort of hunger, one the man might have given up on: the hunger to belong, the hunger to be something other than “other.” And so this is what Jesus gives him, and to those around him who witness the healing: a sign, a reminder that in God’s Kingdom, there will be no outsiders, there will be no people forgotten at the roadside, there will be no one who hungers from lack of bread or compassion.

And this man, his eyes having been opened, although he knows not the recipe nor the reason why, speaks with captivating simplicity about what he has experienced. “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see…I was blind, now I see.” I was hungry, and I now I have tasted something beautiful.

And everyone around him, the neighbors and the Pharisees, they kind of lose it over this miracle served up in their midst . First they refuse to believe this is the same man who was blind. Then, after its clear that he is, they refuse to believe that Jesus is up to any good, and they certainly refuse to believe that this is a sign from God. They want to know how, and why, and to what end all of this has taken place. They want the ingredient list, they want the recipe, they want to speak to the chef, they want to send it back, this exquisite, strange gift, this feast of possibility.

But the man can’t speak to any of that. He is not a priest or a scribe, he is not a person of any influence. He doesn’t know yet exactly who Jesus is or where he comes from or why he did what he did. And so he just keeps saying what he knows, what he has experienced: I was blind, now I see. I was forgotten, now I am remembered. I was invisible now I am seen. I was lost now I am found. I was nothing now I am part of everything. I was hungry, and now I have tasted something beautiful. That is my testimony. It is entirely up to you whether you partake of it or not. But it has nourished me. It has saved me.

And I wonder, dear friends—I wonder whether we can speak about our faith like the man whose eyes were opened by Jesus. I wonder whether we can speak with simplicity and confidence about the experience of Jesus in our lives. I wonder whether we can describe how we have been encouraged, how we have been sustained, how we have been healed, how we have been fed by our encounters with the Son of God.

I wonder, really, since we can speak so easily and joyfully about the best meal we ever had, why we can’t always, just as easily, just as joyfully, speak about the One who is the Living Bread, the One who has prepared for us an eternal banquet? I wonder why I hesitate to do this sometimes.

I have a couple of theories about this, at least for us Episcopal types.

First, I think somewhere we got the idea that talking about Jesus means that we need to fully understand everything there is to know about Jesus. (As if we ever could!) Maybe we’re afraid we don’t fully understand every line in the Nicene Creed or that we can’t coherently explain the relationship between the persons of the Trinity (pro tip: nobody can!). Maybe we don’t feel up to the task of defending the history of the church to the skeptical or the confused. Maybe we are even a little skeptical or confused ourselves some days.

But here’s the thing: we do not need to know everything about who Jesus is in order to speak about who Jesus is to us. We do not need to have a degree in theology or church history to describe how we have been changed by an encounter with a loving, welcoming, merciful, dynamic, ever-present God.

As the man says, Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. If we, too, can name the impact that following Jesus has had on our lives, then maybe that’s exactly enough.

The second reason I think we hesitate, sometimes, is that talking a lot about a personal encounter with Jesus sounds like something other types of Christians do—including those whose values and understandings of the gospel differ significantly from our own. We are afraid, perhaps, of coming across as preachy or exclusionary.

But again, here’s the thing: if we take seriously that we are part of God’s life in Christ, then we have to be able to talk simply, humbly about who we are, who we love, what we have experienced of God, without it automatically becoming an exercise in recruitment or conversion. I don’t think I need to tell you that the world desperately needs Christians who can do this.

So my challenge to you, to myself, to all of us in these final weeks of Lent, is this: think of how you described that favorite meal. Think of how it felt to share about it with your neighbor, not trying to convince them that it needed to be their favorite meal too, or even that they have to learn to cook it themselves. Think about how it was simply you sharing the joy of what you have experienced, what you have tasted, what you have known and loved.

And then, I want you think about how you would evoke that same feeling when you talk about what Jesus has done in your life. Commit, if you will, to 15 or 20 minutes this week of writing down or thinking about how you would describe the impact upon your life of following Jesus, of being loved by him, of whatever your relationship is with him right now.

Give yourself the gift of putting that into words, and then, perhaps, God will show you when and how to share it with someone else who needs to hear it. Someone who is hungry for something deeper than food. Someone who is lost, or who cannot see their own belovedness. Maybe you will tell them what you have experienced. Maybe it will save them from despair. Maybe it will save you, too.

Maybe you will simply say, I was blind, but now I see.

Maybe you will say, I was hungry, and I tasted something beautiful.

Salt & Fire: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, February 5, 2023 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 5:13-20, when Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth.”

Last year as we were preparing for the Easter Vigil (the nighttime service that is the culmination of both Holy Week and, really, the entire liturgical year), Father T.J. let me know that I would be responsible for building and lighting the outdoor Paschal fire, the flames of which signify resurrection and which are used to light the Paschal candle for the first time.

And I thought, great. I love the Paschal fire; it evokes something so deep and elemental about our faith and worship tradition; it is such a powerful liturgical moment. This was going to be amazing!

But there was just one problem. And if you recall my sermon from a couple weeks ago about my reticence towards going ice fishing, you might be able to put the pieces together: I am not the most outdoorsy person. As a Cub Scout I was more likely to get a badge for indoor activities like cooking or arts & crafts than I was for anything out in the woods. So building fires? Not exactly my strong suit. Members of the Young Adults group have seen my rather suspect attempts at building a “camp fire” in the church garth by simply lighting a Duraflame log…so they’ve known this for some time.

But anyway, back to the Paschal fire. Fr. T.J. said, don’t worry, there’s a really simple way to do this. Watch this Youtube video and you will see how to make the fire with just two things: rubbing alcohol and coarse salt. And it’s true! Those two ingredients, when ignited, create a beautiful, bright fire. My struggle to actually get the thing lit is a story for another time, but if you were at the Easter Vigil this past year, you saw the fire blazing out on the labyrinth, and you saw how it sparked the Paschal candle and how it sparked our Easter joy. Just some fuel and some salt for the flames to dance upon.

That’s the amazing thing about salt: sort of like the burning bush that Moses encounters, or the three young men who survive the fire in the Book of Daniel, salt can burn and burn and not be consumed. It is a catalytic agent, which, chemically speaking, means that it affects the rate at which the fuel is consumed. The salt is stable and strong, and so it allows the flame to burn long and hot and steady rather than just flaring up and disappearing in a moment.

This is very useful for Paschal fires, but also for other things. You see, in 1st century Middle Eastern cultures, among other places, this same principle was employed in the earthen ovens used to make bread: salt would be placed on the bottom, topped by fuel (which in that time was usually dried animal dung) and then lit to produce an intense, consistent heat for baking.

And it’s true that salt was also used for preserving food, but in a society that had very little access to meat, it was actually this use as a catlytic agent in the earthen oven that was the most prevalent in the daily lives of common people. Over time, if the salt became mixed with dirt or other materials that decreased its ability to help the fire burn, it would be discarded for a fresh supply.

And so now, I invite you to listen again to that moment when Jesus says, You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

The first time I learned about the connection between salt and the earthen oven, it was like hearing that famous passage from the Gospel for the first time. Especially when you realize that the Greek word for “earth” that Matthew uses here is drawn from a Hebrew word that elsewhere in the Bible means not just the earth, the ground, the land but literally the earthen oven, the furnace.

And so some Biblical scholars who have made this connection argue that a more accurate rendering of the passage could be:

You are the salt of the earthen oven; but if salt has lost its saltiness, (that is, its ability to catalyze), how can it be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

In other words: in your place and time, here and now, you, the disciples of Jesus, are the catalysts of the flame of God’s Spirit. This is what you are. This is what God made you to be: salt to bear the heat, salt to sustain the fire of love, to allow it to burn in you and through you with the Divine promise that it will not consume you and it will not destroy you, for to bear this flame of love is your God-given purpose on this earth.

You are the salt of the earthen oven. And the world will be warmed and fed and illuminated by the holy fire you carry, by the brightness of God’s light that encircles you.

And I know that there are other symbolic layers to the image of salt, too, but if we take this interpretation to heart, then it suggests that being salt, being light, being disciples of Jesus, is not so much about preservation—which is, in essence, the slowing down of transformation—but about sustaining the transformative process: giving ourselves over to that ever-emerging fire, that blazing brightness we refer to as God’s Kingdom.

We are salt when we let our selves and souls and bodies nourish the flame of love and help it to burn long and slow and steady down through the ages. We are salt when we turn our insitutions and our societies, like that earthen oven, into places where there is food and warmth and safety for everyone; where the lonely and the lost and the hungry gather in around the hearth; where our daily bread is found until that day when the true feast that God is preparing for us–the bread of heaven, the bread of life–is ready at last.

And so if we strive to follow our Lord’s counsel, if we long to be the salt and light he tells us that we are, then we must ask ourselves: when and where do I feel on fire with purpose and joy? What thing have I been given to do, big or small, that stirs up a sense of warmth and light within me and around me?

Or, if we’re not quite sure of that yet, then ask, what inspires me in the lives of others, those in my life or in the history of our faith, who have clearly been set ablaze with God’s love? Whatever it is—a creative pursuit, an act of service, a cause for justice and peace, a conversation with a neighbor, a small gift offered in love, a dedication to prayer—focus on these things, make note of them, and consider deepening your practice of them as we begin to approach our season of Lenten reflection and devotion.

Even now, in the deep chill of winter, long before the salt and fuel are mixed and the Paschal flame is lit anew, we can still light up the world. We can still be the source of brightness and the providers of nourishment.

For if we are the salt of the oven, scattered gently down upon the earth by our Creator, baptized with fire and the Holy Spirit, then we have but one mission: to keep the flame burning for as long as we can; to nourish the world with our love; and to let our Alleluias and our Amens rise up like ember and smoke and the scent of baking bread: the spark of eternity, the scent of heaven, the taste of home.

For more on the scholarship behind this sermon, visit: https://www.ajol.info/index.php/hts/article/view/70848/59805

Fisherman: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on January 22, 2023 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 14:12-23.

And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

My grandpa, like any person born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, loved to go fishing. And in particular he loved to go ice-fishing.

If you are not among the hardy (foolhardy?) souls who have tried this pastime, maybe you can still picture it: a frozen lake in the dead of winter, all sentient life wisely hibernating or hunkered down in a warm place. Except for the intrepid ice-fishers, who drag their shacks and their camp chairs out onto the quiet snow-blown expanse to drill holes in the ice and to sit—in bitter cold and in pensive expectation—waiting for a bite.

I confess, the few times I went out ice-fishing with my family as a kid, I didn’t get it. I was bored and restless—and cold! I didn’t understand why anyone would willingly do this for fun, especially when you could just get fish at the grocery store. But then, I was a kid who grew up mostly in cities and in California sunshine, and the lake water didn’t run in my veins like it did for my grandpa. The stoic beauty of the ice-fisherman’s reverie was lost on me.

He would sit out on the ice, munching on a sandwich, sipping coffee from a thermos, contemplating the tree line, the sky, maybe his place in the universe; I was never quite sure. Sometimes he’d catch something, often he wouldn’t. He never seemed to mind. And truth be told, I think he liked the ritual of the trip to the lake—its sensations and its silences—just as much, if not more so, than bringing home a catch.

Now you still aren’t likely to find me out on a frozen lake these days, but as I look back, I have come to appreciate not only the spare beauty my grandpa found in ice-fishing, but also how his going out onto the ice was, in many ways, an encapsulation of who he was in the rest of his life. The quiet and the deliberative spaciousness of ice fishing were the same qualities he evoked most other days, with his family and with his neighbors and friends.

He had his hot-tempered moments, but for the most part he moved through the world with a gentle attentiveness to things and to people: content to be who he was, where he was, patient, not obsessed with the elusive big catch of one sort or another that many of us chase after. Maybe he had always been that way. Or maybe all those years of ice-fishing helped make him that way. I’m not sure, but I do know that it was a part of him.

My grandpa and his ice-fishing have been on my mind this week, of course, because Jesus, in calling the first disciples, finds a handful of fishermen by the Sea of Galilee and invites them, in a clever turn of phrase, to “fish for people” instead. It’s a beloved scene in the Gospels, but oftentimes I think we focus so much on the abruptness of the disciples’ response—how they seem to drop everything and follow Jesus on the spot—that we don’t spend a lot of time pondering what they were doing beforehand: namely, their original vocation as fishermen. I wonder, though, why Jesus singles them out, these men on the shore, among all the other people he might have invited into his circle.

Was Jesus calling them just because they happened to be there, without regard for their previous life experience? Was he, in effect, asking them to become someone entirely new, or did he see some particular potential in these men with their nets and their boats and their weather-beaten faces?

Given who Jesus is, I like to think he saw something already formed in them after a lifetime of traversing open waters and mending things that are frayed and waiting, day after day, with persistent hope for an unseen harvest from the deep. I like to think he saw something that made these fishermen exactly the right people for the journey that was about to unfold.

Because I believe that who we are and what we have done with our lives, no matter how simple or quiet or humble, matters to God. It matters in the Kingdom of God.

In the same way that my grandpa’s ice fishing and the rest of his life seemed to mutually inform one another, perhaps these Galilean fishermen already had what Jesus needed them to have as future apostles. Maybe their decision to follow him, as dramatic and abrupt as it seems, was not, in fact, a clean break from their past. It was not a rejection of who they had been, a rinsing off of the smell of fish and mud, but an embrace of what these things had taught them—it was the decision to trust that their lives, their skills, and their gifts might be brought forth in a new way for the purposes of God.

Maybe Jesus did not call them away from themselves and their original vocation, but deeper into those things. For he did not say follow me and I will make you something other, something better than a fisherman, but follow me, and I will make you fishers of people. In other words, I will make you the fullness of who you already are.

And so those fisherman had the courage to follow him away from the shore because they knew that they had what they needed within them; they were already enough. And if that is so, then perhaps we have what we need, too, perhaps we are already enough for wherever God is calling us to go. Not running away from ourselves but going deeper into ourselves so that we might embody what God created us to be.

And I know all of us, myself included, have parts of ourselves, parts of our story, parts of our personality, parts of our past, that feel worthless, parts we would just as soon leave behind. The embarrassments that enmesh us in a net of shame. The regrets that linger on us like the scent of lake water. The things that prevent us from believing we have anything of value to offer.

But Jesus is standing there, seeing all of it, knowing all of it, and he is saying, yes, you. I’ve been looking for someone just like you. Follow me. Follow me as you are. Follow me with what you have, no matter how great or small. Fishermen, follow me. Tax collectors, follow me. Saints and sinners, follow me. The mighty and the lowly; the famous and the forgotten; everyone, follow me— for everyone is needed where we’re going. And all that you have been and known and done will be gathered in and it will be made purposeful, it will be made beautiful by my love. It will be more than enough.

That, in the end, is what I learned from my grandpa and how his quiet, patient days fishing on the ice spilled over into his quiet, patient life: to trust in the sufficiency of who you are; of what you love; of what you know. Trust it to guide you, with God’s help, into what you do not yet know. Trust that God is already at work in the small things of daily life, shaping you for the vast and timeless purposes that only God can truly understand.

And regardless of whether it is ice-fishing or mending nets on the shore of Galilee or raising your kids or caring for your neighbor or striving for your daily bread, whatever it is that has formed you into who you are today, trust that you are ready to respond when Jesus calls you. You are ready and able, not in spite of your life but because of it, because every life has potential, every one of us shimmers with the possibility of God’s glory, like ice glittering in the sun.

Follow me, Jesus says, and I will make you fish for people.

So follow him. And let him show you the blessedness of who you can still be. The blessedness of who you already are.

The Road Taken: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, January 8, 2023 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 3:13-17.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Even if you are not a fan of poetry, I suspect you’ve probably heard this verse, from Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” It has been passed down by generations of readers, and that last line about the road less traveled is often used as a sort of poetic motto by those who are eager to pursue meaningful, purposeful, adventurous lives.

Now, I don’t want to be a total downer this soon into a promising new year, but if you’ve ever been inspired by this verse’s invitation to take the road less traveled and chart a singular, unconventional course through life, I am about to ruin it for you.

Because if you read the entire poem very closely and look into the backstory of its composition, it becomes clear that Frost was being ironic. His point, in fact, is not that there is one blessed byway for the adventurous and a boring one for the rest of us, but that both of the roads diverging in the wood are, in fact, comparable. The narrator of the poem, no matter how they choose to recall it later, is probably not fundamentally changed by the particular road chosen. Frost, with his typically wry sensibility, is subtly poking fun at our anguish and indecision over the choices we make and the illusion that there is one perfect course to take through life—he does this so subtly in fact that it’s easy to miss! But now you know. Sorry.

But Frost wanted to challenge us with this not because he was a nihilist, not to suggest that the paths we take in life are meaningless, but to suggest the opposite, something hopeful—that meaning is found on every path. Frost, like many poets, saw that true significance is found in the actuality, the givenness of the world around us—that what is good and true is available everywhere, no matter which road we have chosen.

And I, for one, am actually relieved that this is what the poem is getting at, because there have been many times in my life when I grieved the roads not taken—the sense that I had missed some big opportunity or make some irreversible blunder into the weeds. As one moves farther and farther through life, down whatever path we’re on, it’s all too easy to be consumed by what-ifs: what if I had gone there instead? What if I had stayed there just a bit longer? What if I had said yes to that? What if I had said no to that?

It’s natural to wonder such things, but what-ifs can also stop us in our tracks, prevent us from embracing the reality of whatever is in front of us right now. And, as Frost might want to remind us, whatever is in front of us is itself sufficiently meaningful. The journey we are actually on is a good one, because it is real, it is what we have chosen.

I’ve been thinking about all of this—of roads diverging and life’s purposes—because today we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, and however else we might interpret or understand Jesus’ baptism, it was indeed a pivotal decision in his own journey through the world. Just a couple of weeks ago we honored his birth, and now we observe him as a grown man, setting out with the song of the road on his lips and the fire of heaven in his eyes. “Let it be so now,” he insists to John the Baptist as he prepares to enter the River Jordan. “It is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” He is eager to begin, eager to go wherever the Spirit-wind of God is blowing.

And I wonder, in this moment, sensing in himself the need to fulfill some deep and all-consuming purpose, did Jesus ever ask himself, “what if?” Did he ever consider taking another path? To stay in Nazareth, perhaps, and live a quiet life? Go to Jerusalem straight away and try to make it big there? Or did he worry, at the age of 30 or so (not considered all that young in his time and place) that maybe he had already missed his chance to do his Father’s work? Perhaps.

But in this moment, in his baptism, no matter what else has come before, we see him make a commitment to the path that he is on. As he goes into those waters, he is saying, whatever this life is, whatever this journey is, whatever this road is, I choose it. I will love it. I will follow it to the end. No more what-ifs. Here I am, Lord. And here I am—the Lord.

And then he emerges from the river, and heaven rejoices that he has said yes, that he has chosen. For this is what heaven always does—rejoice—when we choose to love what is in front of us.

And this is what Jesus’ baptism—and our own baptism—invite us into: a life that always chooses love for whatever, whoever comes into our path. A life that isn’t haunted by the roads not taken, but a life that says, instead, this place where I stand is good. And even if it’s not what I imagined, this place where I stand is still full of possibility, it is a place where I might yet “fulfill all righteousness.” For this place is beloved of God, and therefore I will make this place, this life, this path my own beloved, too. I will no longer be distracted by roads never traveled, I will no longer be consumed by what-ifs and whys but I will instead throw my arms open, still bathed in those baptismal waters, still drenched in God’s love, and I will say, “what now? What next? What might I do here, on this road, in order to truly live?”

For what Frost implied, and what God knows, and what Jesus demonstrates is clear: there is no road you can take, no road you have taken before, that will ever remove you from the landscape of God’s Kingdom or the realm of God’s Spirit. Wherever you go–and even if you have stumbled along the way, as we all do–if you move through this world with love and compassion and a thirst for righteousness, you are not lost. For in the end it is not the road we travel that matters most, but the heart of the one who travels upon it.

So wherever you find yourself today, in this new year—whatever has come before, whatever might lie ahead—know that God, through your baptism, invites you into the fullness of life right here, right now; the fullness of life that Jesus embraced.

And when you do come to a fork in the road, make your choice, but remember that God will travel with you wherever you go. God’s mercy will surround your path like falling leaves, God’s peace will be the ground under your feet, and God’s Son—the song of the road on his lips, the fire of heaven in his eyes—will greet you at the end of your journey.

And on that day, “ages and ages hence,” when there is no more sighing, may we add our own words to that famous verse, saying, instead:

Two roads diverged in a wood

And I—

I saw my Lord would never leave my side

—and that has made all the difference.

The Word: A Sermon for Christmas Day

I preached this sermon on Christmas Day, 2022, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne. The lectionary text cited is John 1:1-14.

One of the gifts that we are given each year on Christmas Day is a poem of sorts:

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.

Today’s Gospel reminds us—lest we forget in the immediacy and the intimacy of our holiday celebrations, with the lights and the songs and the smiling baby in the manger—that Christmas also has vast, cosmic dimensions. The poetic language of John’s prologue tells us that the significance of this day begins out beyond the stars, beyond time itself, back to the hidden and infinite source of all things.

It’s an intuition, a hunch, a golden thread tugging at the human heart from some unknown depth, when we say that in the beginning, before the beginning, God simply was, in timeless communion with himself, beyond conception, boundless, complete.

We were not there to see such a thing, of course, and the mind cannot really understand this, as hard as we might try, and so, with St. John, we do what we always do when our usual way of communicating falls short: we resort to poetry, to language that strains against its limits, language that reaches past itself, trying to speak of that which is ultimately greater than our words. We say,

In the beginning was the Word,

And yet even in this evocative statement, we fail—albeit gloriously, with great beauty,—to capture the fullness of whatever it means. When we speak of timeless beginnings, of eternity, our souls lean toward that which our mind cannot grasp, like flowers turning toward the distant sun, seeking the source of life, hungering to know where, and how, and why all things are.

From where did all things come into being, God?

How did all things coming into being, God?

Why did all things come into being, God?

These are big and timeless questions, carried on the lips of humanity from time immemorial. And while we may not always associate them with Christmas, still, the birthing of God into our midst lends itself to considerations of origin and purpose—both his, and our own.

In the beginning was the Word.

The Scriptures are full of figures asking for an explanation, a solution, or at least an assurance that there is some shape and purpose to life on this earth, especially when it can seem so obscure and aimless at times.

“Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling,” Job cries out at one point in his long tribulation. “Why are times not kept by the Almighty, and why do those who know him never see his days?”

This is, in essence, the question we have been asking during the long Advent that preceded this glorious morning. We have been searching for the day and the dwelling place of God for a very long time, trying to locate him, trying to see him, trying to learn from him why it is that we find ourselves here, enfleshed, imperfect, haunted by beauty, hungering for truth, wanderers on the earth, struggling to remember our true home, saying,

In the beginning was the Word,

And hoping that we will discover, in the end, a fuller sense of what this means for us. Hoping that this Word, one day, might speak a word back to us, to reveal both our origin and our future.

And today, quite suddenly, he does. Today, as an infant, the Word gives his answer.

For, the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Christmas is the feast of holy materiality. It is the day when what was poetic becomes incarnate. What was eternal and unreachable becomes finite and present. God reveals that his days and his dwelling place and his origin and his purposes are not solely in some distant realm, but right here, in our midst, no longer hidden or inscrutable, but fully accessible, as vulnerable and open to us as a newborn child.

And this is a new thing.

For when Job cried out to God, and when God replied, God did so only with more questions. God said, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” He said. “Who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” And Job had to be satisfied with not knowing the answer.

But on this day, God says, instead, “come to Bethlehem and behold the foundation of the earth in the flesh, for I have come that you might reach out and hold it. Come and see the cornerstone of the universe, lying right here in a manger. Come and see with your own eyes the Morning star rising in your sight, that you, too, might shout for joy like the angels. For though I come from an eternally distant place, I am no longer hidden from you, my purposes and my plans are here for all to see, and though they are deeper and older than time itself, they are quite humble, quite real.

God says, You have asked a question of me across the ages—where? And how? And why? And the answer, the long awaited answer I give to you, the answer– you who are now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh–the answer is simply this:

Cherish what is given; be at peace with what is taken; believe in what endures.

For yes, in the beginning was the Word, shrouded in the silence of eternity, but today you shall hear the Word with your own ears, you shall see it with your own eyes. The Word is love. And this Love was with God. And this Love is God. Today, and forever.

And now, let your life become the incarnate poetry of God’s love. Let your life be the thing that strains against the limits of language, that reaches past itself. Let your life become an answer to your own questions. And let the child in the manger who is God teach you that such an answer—where, and how, and why we are—can only be enacted and embodied, not fully comprehended. Because love is a verb, and Christmas is an origin story, and the world still yearns to see where it will lead through all of us.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.

And today, at last, we are with God, too.

Dreamer: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on December 18, 2022, Advent IV, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 1:18-25.

If you ever wander into my office, you’ll see a whole collection of religious art and objects, each with their own special meaning and story. One of the newer additions is a small statue right on my desk—it’s a pewter figure of St. Joseph, who is depicted laying down on his side, eyes closed, deep in sleep. It caught my eye because it’s a bit unusual as far as saint statutes go; they’re usually upright and alert, like toy soldiers: eyes wide, halos glowing, ready to pray for us.

And maybe I was just feeling extra tired that day, but when I saw sleeping Saint Joseph for the first time, I thought—yes, Lord, at last, here is a saint who really gets me. For I am quite sure that I’m at my holiest and best behaved when I’m sleeping. And I’ll confess that some days the only thing standing between me and a grievous sin is a good long nap! So I was delighted to later receive the statue as a gift, and he continues to remind me, especially in this busy season, to rest.

The tradition of the sleeping St. Joseph figure is found throughout Christian art, but it’s especially popular in Latin America. It has become more widespread in recent years because Pope Francis is fond of it. He told a crowd once that he has an old figurine of sleeping Joseph, and when the Pope is worried about something, he writes it down on a piece of paper and slips it under the statue so that Joseph can dream about it and in so doing, carry those prayers up to God.

The reason, of course, that Joseph is depicted as sleeping and dreaming in these images is because dreams are a key part of his story in Scripture, as we just heard in today’s Gospel. Matthew tells us that it is in a dream that the Angel of the Lord directs Joseph to do his part in the unfolding story of the Incarnation: to take the pregnant Mary as his wife despite the threat of scandal; to protect her and this mysterious unborn child; and then to name the child Jesus and to adopt him as Joseph’s own. And later, it will also be a dream that warns Joseph to flee with his family to Egypt to escape the murderous plotting of King Herod.

Like many of his ancestors before him, Joseph was asked to trust in the power of dreams to reveal God’s presence and purpose. And perhaps this is not all that surprising, because even for us dreams are a potent landscape of possibilities. As our body rests and our mind wanders through many chambers at the edge of consciousness, it is in dreams where reality expands, where hope and memory intertwine, where demons lurk and angels whisper. It is in dreams, often, that we can see the things we’re not yet ready to face in the daylight, or perhaps that we hadn’t even begun to imagine.

And so as Joseph sleeps, he is shown a new possibility: something the social codes and the conventional wisdom of his time would have never allowed. The Angel speaks to him of mercy and courage and fidelity, of trusting in the wild promise of a newborn savior, of journeys long and perilous and good. And then Joseph stirs from sleep, and all of creation waits to see what he will do. The Angel holds its breath. Joseph opens his eyes. And though we never hear him speak, I like to imagine him emulating the response of Mary:

Here am I, the dreamer of the Lord. Let it be done with me according to your word.

I think it is no small thing that Joseph decided to trust in his dream. Who among us, in the light of day, doesn’t tend to forget our dreams or brush them off, even when they seem significant? How easy it would have been for Joseph to do the same—and how different things would have been for all of us if he had. And so we honor him not only as a protector and earthly father figure of Jesus, but as a dreamer–as the one who believed in the dream of God. The one who woke up and said yes, that is possible. I can do that.

In some ways, this story–Joseph’s dream, and his waking, and and his choosing to believe–is the story of the whole church. For in Christ we have all been visited by God’s redemptive dream for creation. We have all been asked to wake up and believe, to let the dream change us, to let it shape our choices and our lives, so that God might continue to be made incarnate in the world through us. We, too, are the dreamers of the Lord, and the world is yearning for us to open our eyes, to remember what has been revealed, and to say, yes, that is possible. I can do that.

But how do we know? How do we know that it is indeed God’s dream welling up in us, and not just some random impulse of our own? How did Joseph know that he should trust the dream rather than dismiss it?

The answer is what the answer always is: love. We will have many of our own fleeting dreams and desires and designs, but the dream of God is love, and the dream of God will always ask of us just one thing: to act out of love. The dream of God speaks of mercy and courage and fidelity, of trusting in love’s wild promises, of journeys long and perilous and good. The dream of God says, just love: love generously, love scandalously, love insistently, and then indeed you will hear the angels sing and you will see the heavens bend down to stand upon the earth and then you will no longer be sleeping. The whole world will at last be awake and the dream will be real. It will be enfleshed. It will be Emmanuel—God with us.

And so I ask you: what is it that you have been dreaming of this Advent? What visions have dazzled you in the darkness? What hopes have stirred within your heart? What new word has God placed upon you in this season?

Whatever it is, hold fast to it. Write it down, and if you happen to find a statue of St. Joseph, slip it beneath him and let him dream with you a bit longer in the cold winter night.

But remember that we are deep into Advent, now, and the light is gathering. The Dayspring approaches.

Are you ready to wake up? Are you ready, not just to dream, but to believe in the dream God has given you, to make it real?

All creation waits. The Angel holds its breath.

And now, dreamer, open your eyes.