The Transfiguration

The Transfiguration

            One of my favorite movies, a guilty pleasure I suppose, is Shrek. There is this scene where Shrek is trying to explain to Donkey that Ogres are more than violent brutes, and he comes up with this analogy: “Ogres are like onions.”

            Donkey, being donkey, replies, “They stink? They make you cry? If you leave them out in the sun they get all brown and start sprouting little white hairs?”

            “No,” Shrek shouts, “Layers! Onions have layers! Ogres have layers! Onions have layers! You get it, we both have layers.”

            So too the Transfiguration, there are layersto it, to get to the center of its meaning we have to peel back many layers, each one important in its own right, and yet not complete.

            The transfiguration has layers.

Prayer

            The Transfiguration has layers.

            The first one is the experience itself, dazzling and glorious, the Apostles are weighed down by sleep, yet able to keep awake, and in keeping awake able to see Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah—these ancient heroes of renowned.
The Apostles are overshadowed by God’s holiness and
able to hear the very voice of God.
Able to know, not simply by faith, but by sight, that Jesus is God’s Son.

            Yes, these mountaintop experiences—maybe you’ve even had one… Those moments of clarity, those moments of closeness to God, perhaps while…
singing a favorite hymn,
on retreat,
at baptism,
at confirmation class or Sunday School,
during communion,
literally on a mountaintop able to see a wide swath of God’s good creation.
Perhaps you’ve had a particular spiritual experience, been moved by a piece of Scripture, felt the Spirit upon you in a unique way.

            That’s all part of the Transfiguration, but that’s not allof it, after all, The transfiguration has layers.

            Part of having a mountain top experience is coming down the mountain, right? There is a crowd, no more mountain retreat for Peter, John, and James
—then they are confronted with the failure of their fellow disciples, those disciples can’t heal a boy who has seizures. The disciples have to go from this place of comfort, where Peter would just as soon have set up permanent residence, they have to go down
and interact with the world as it is,
heal, share that special something that they wished to bottle up, up there.

            I guess Donkey was right, Onions, left out in the sun, don’t hold up well, and so too the faith… Though forged and found in a particular place and time, it needs to be translated, transitioned, shared, brought down the mountain…
Gospel is for spreading, communion for becoming a people,
hymns for singingtogether.

            And yet, perhaps I’m overstating our likelihood of having a mountaintop experience at all,
a religious experience at all…  

after all, even the Evangelist Billy Graham wrote a book wresting with the fact that a majority of Christians, 60 some percent according to his calculations, never have a religious experience their whole lives.
So, for most of us being told to go down the mountain makes no sense, because you were never up with Shiny Jesus in the first place…
But fear not, the Transfiguration is for you too,
after all, The transfiguration has layers.

            For a lot of folk, faith isn’t either of those extremes, overawed direct experience of God, or going down in the muck and healing… In fact there is so much grey space in between the two you could make an elephant out of it…

no, we’re often like Peter, aren’t we? “not knowing what he said.”
Things are unclear, maybe they’ll only make sense in hindsight, yet we’re in the moment and puzzled!
We’re kinda confused about the whole thing, yeah, we’ve had things happen to us, strange experiences, close encounters with death and life and some stuff in between…
but it isn’t a clear booming voice, it makes you catch your breath
or bug out your eyes
or just stay silent about the whole thing,
stuck with more questions than answers… 

Have I got news for you! That’s a part of the faith too
—the 2000 year history of Christian theology is best summed up by Amsalem, “Faith seeking understanding.”
We have yearnings and hunches and baptism and history and piles of scriptures we hold dear, and among all of that we seek… faith seeking understanding.
We don’t have cut and dry answers that stretch the whole of the sky, we have a faith seeking expression.

            

            But sometimes we seek with a greater urgency, it is more than just curiosity or an ordering of the mind or even a search for origins…
sometimes it is true desperation!That too is packed up in the Transfiguration…The transfiguration has layers.

            So desperate
—disciples who are awake with Jesus now, but will fall asleep in his final hours… falling asleep before the Son of God’s execution
—that’s desperate…
but perhaps more desperate still, this father we read about today, desperate for healing for his son (often desperate parents will stop at nothing), these disciples are his last hope…
this Jesus is his last hope…
When he is about to lose his only son, there he finds the Only Son, and that’s where we so often find the greatness of God, in our desperate hour, when our souls are being scoured…

            From the vantage of desperation we finally reach the onion’s center, we reach the final layer, for The transfiguration has layers.

            We reach, you guessed it, Grace… 

Peter continually wants to act,
to catch lightening in a bottle,
from a frantic frenetic pacehe tries to find peace
—but all that the Transfiguration requires of us is this,
“This is my Son. Listen to him.”
You can almost imagine the cloud shouting, “quit it Peter! just sit down for a second and use your ears!”
There is nothing you can do in the face of God’s unveiling, just be present!
All the Transfiguration requires of us is to hears—hear him announced “Son of God” and hear what the Son of God has to say! Hear him!

            Like onions and ogres, The transfiguration has layers.Mountain top experiences and leavings,
confusion and desperation,
and always grace,
simply being present as God acts on you through Word and through Witness.

A+A

Snow Day Pub Theology: Discipleship

Sermon: Our Calling

          Such a vision—seeing God enthroned, robe outstretched like glory, filling the temple. Fiery angels, Serephs, who are overawed by God, struck like a match off of God’s holiness—that same holiness that they sing of, “Holy Holy Holy, truly the Lord God’s glory fills completely the cosmos!” Their song overwhelming like earthquake and volcano, a wildfire upon the great heavenly altar!

          What can a human do faced with the divine? How can our faults not be so obvious in the face of the Faultless?

          And yet, that too is taken care of… from the billowing heat of the altar a coal transforms Isaiah, his lips—the lips he shall use to speak to God’s people—are transformed like gold is transformed—purified, all that is dross falls away, gold alone remains, all that is rough is removed, diamond alone sparkle with the light of God.

          He hears God calling to him, “whom shall I send? Who will go?”

          And, these lips, now joined to the holiness of the heavenly temple reply, “Here am I; send me!”

          And Isaiah spends the remainder of his life warning the people of danger, of troubles not only immediate—the Assyrians who will disperse the 10 tribes, but in the works, the larger Eastern Empire rising, Babylon, who will end the earthly temple and destroy the Davidic dynasty.

          Imagine that, just look at the strange calling of Isaiah, “shut their eyes, make them dull, keep them from turning and being healed, until all that remains of what was great is a stump.” Not until Jerusalem is burning and whole classes of people are being carted away does his message make sense.

          Just as Isaiah confessed his sinfulness and weakness before he could receive those holy lips, so too his nation had to be humbled before God did a new thing.

          Or consider Peter.

          The Lord hijacks his boat to escape the crowds and preach the word.

          The Lord, this carpenter, tells him how to do his job, has him fish funny, putting down his nets at the wrong time and in the wrong place, and yet a bounty, more fish than one boat could hold, if you look carefully, more than two boats can hold safely!

          That’s when Peter gets the message Jesus was preaching in the synagogue—“The Spirit of the Lord is upon  me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

          Peter didn’t get it in the Synagogue. Peter didn’t get it when Jesus healed Peter’s Mother-in-law. Peter didn’t get it when Jesus turned Peter’s house into a hospital and psych ward for everyone in Capernaum and the region of Galilee.

          But catchin’ fish… that does it for him. He confesses, like Isaiah, of his own inadequacy—he humbles himself, “Go away, I am a sinner.”

          But Jesus quells his fear and calls him again, using more fishy language, “You will now fish for people.”

          And that did it, he received his calling, said in effect, “Here I am, send me.” And he followed after Jesus…

          Followed him through healing and preaching and trial and denial and execution and mourning and resurrection and joy and proclamation and imprisonment and if tradition holds executed by the Romans for holding fast to his faith.

         

          Or consider Paul, puffed up and zealous—utterly convinced of his rightness, that these “People of the Way”, these earliest Christians, must be stopped; must die if need be!

Utterly convinced, until he was overturned, blinded on the Road to Damascus, face to face with the one the Way worshipped, this Jesus the Messiah. From there taken care of by the very people he hunted and hounded and hurt and persecuted, transformed into a man who can call himself “the least of the apostles” and recognize his new calling, this new humility, as a gift from God. Able to throw up his hands, recognizing his folly and confess, “I am what I am.”
Yes, 180 degrees wrong on what God was doing in Jesus Christ.
Yes, I now confess that the Messiah died, was buried, and rose, and this is in line with scripture.
Yes, he continued to work through the Spirit to empower his followers.
Yes, that includes me!

          Dramatically confronted by Jesus, he is transformed and called, and eventually can say “Here I am, send me.”

          And sent he was, preaching throughout Asia and Europe, writing to communities far and near, dreaming even of preaching in far off Spain. His calling planted seeds for a worldwide church, people of the way throughout the world!

          Or consider yourselves.

          Yes, you live in a society where following Jesus is treated like a hobby, faith like a leisure activity instead of a matter of death and life.
          Yes, the Church that once was is quickly becoming a stump, crouched and humbled.
          Yes, it can feel like the world is so big and each one of us is so small that maybe even a calling from God won’t do so very much…

          Yet the faith is a matter of death and life. Crouched and humbled is when tendrils of new growth come and God does a new thing. Fisher people and those of unclean lips, and even enemies of the church, called by God, can be called to do the unimaginable.

          We are still called to write letters, tell the truth even when it won’t be heard for generations, transform the prows of our boats into pulpits and tell God’s story in words that people today can hear!

          Humbled and expectant we can still respond to God’s calling with, “Here I am, send me.” A+A

Love Sermon

         I gotta say, I didn’t plan this—Lisa and I were just looking for a time between Christmas and Ash Wednesday to get married—it is just a coincidence that the Sunday after our wedding the Gospel lesson was about the Wedding at Cana, and now my first Sunday back in the pulpit we read 1^stCorinthians 13… the love chapter… where Paul uplifts love, defines it, and assures us it isn’t going anywhere, for it is the greatest of God’s gifts… It’s so often read at weddings that we forget that it isn’tPaul’s advice to newlyweds.

         Pastors often end up doing this funny two-step where they:
-remind the couple that Paul is talking about love being acted out in a Christian Community,
-and then they hope the couple can be a small Christian Community to one another…

         And that’s the dance we so often play with Paul’s words, so often that we miss that first part
—Paul is writing to a Church, a community of believers, a bunch of sinners who trust that they’ve been made right by Jesus
—a group of people… isn’t is said one of the dangers of community is that “we judge ourselves by our insides, but everyone else by their outsides”
—the motivations and methods of other people are always opaque and mysterious… and a church consists of a bunch of other people… what could possibly go wrong?

         Yes, Paul is writing to a whole community, a Church
—a bunch of folk with different gifts given to them by God, a people with a variety of talents and treasures, a diverse bunch of people,
all united together, even as they are broken and incomplete,
together striving to let it be known that “Jesus is Lord” and striving to work for the common good,
even as they do so from a variety of backgrounds and with a variety of gifts given by God… gifts and backgrounds that are all valuable, all important to God…

         And yet, there is something more valuable than all that
—let me tell you about the most valuable thing
—let me tell you about love.

Prayers

         Let me tell you about love.

         I want to sing and speak in such a way people listen, oratories and arias that receive standing ovations and kisses blown from ivory balconies…
-Without love, all anyone will hear from me are babbling speeches and bad violin screeches.

         I heartily wish to plumb the depths of this world and the next, to bear upon the tip top of my bald spot the meaning of life and be a fountain of wisdom that the next generation can come to in order to fill up their cup…
-Without love, I’m a divine dunce, hardly human—truly so heavenly minds I’m no earthly good.

         I strive to be generous, to give what I got and more if I can, to fill any outstretched palm and ensure no belly goes to bed empty
—without love, no one trulyreceived anything from me… God help me!

         Let me tell you about love.

         As I said it is hard to measure the motivations of others, or even our own, if we’re honest—is it a loving action I do or not? How do I measure that, how do I know the nature of what I do or what is done by another? What does love look like?

         Loving actions are not done to one-up another or to shame someone.
         Loving actions are not done out of arrogance or to bring about discomfort.
         Loving actions are not all about you.
         Loving actions aren’t motivated by rage or grudge.

         No, loving actions are always magnanimous and always kind. 

         Love never rejoices in injury! 

         Love rejoices in the Truth, for love is eternal, it shall not buckle as if weighed down, nor be worn away by the ravages of time.
         Love is the subject of our hope and the object of our faith. The promises of love are true; love is trustworthy.

         If I was on a journey from Teaneck to San Francisco I’d certainly be on Interstate 80 headed west.
         If I was on a journey from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida I’d certainly be on Route 1 heading south.
         And if I was on a journey of the Spirit I’d have faith in love (that is, I’d put my trust in love) and be hoping for love and my final destination would be love.

         I’m just somewhere along that road,
I’m trusting and I’m hoping—we all are—but friends in Christ we will make it to love!
Hold fast to your faith in the love found in Christ Jesus our Lord,
dream of the day when his love will find completion in us!
Love every chance you get! 

         Yes, these three, faith, hope, and love—they are gifts from God that abide—and the greatest of these is love.

A+A

Christmas Sermon 2018

          What a strange and compelling story, our Gospel, this story of Christmas. It is a story of great reversals, and no one behaves as we’d expect them too.

          Right off the bat the Empire is sidelined
—the main story of the day can be summed up by the Priene inscription:

“Praise Augustus a Savior who has made war to cease and who shall put everything in peaceful order.”

Gaius Octavius—called Augustus (meaning the Revered One), had won the Roman civil war, beating out 7 other would be emperors, winning a peace through superior fire power, and therefore seen as entitled to be the center of every story

… but not here, Luke nods at the emperor and moves on… this isn’t his story!

The Good News, the story of peace and salvation, of the Savior of the whole world
—it isn’t Rome’s story, it is a story that starts somewhere very different… it starts…

          It starts with a sojourner, Joseph, who comes home.

          Comes home along with his fiancé, Mary, a virgin who bears and births a child
—a strange story indeed.

          This child is wrapped in bands of cloth and laid in a manger, no place for his head
—such an out of the way place and space for this child who we proclaim to be the center of all that is!
God with us.

          And a heavenly herald comes to proclaim his arrival… and he chooses shepherds, those outside the city walls, those who spend a little too much time with animals and not enough time with people
—you know, they’re a little off
… and yet these outsiders are the ones brought in on the biggest story ever announced…

          Good news, and yet it terrifies them…

          Good news sung by a heavenly host
—a military unit of angels
—singing peace…
warriors singing peace in a society where warriors weave only strands of chaos.

          And finally, these shepherds, called to watch their flock, leave them, so that they may watch and see this new thing
—the heights of heaven knelt low to gaze upon the infant nestled in a manger.

          Sojourners finding homes, warriors singing of peace, watchers abandoning their post to see something truly special
—grand reversals, the world flipped on its head by the birth of Jesus…

          All of this marking a new world, one where God dwells with humanity, Creator with creature, God born in the flesh.

          And there is a terrible logic to it
—the mystery of God made flesh meets the logic of mortality—the logic of the grave…
once you are born you start dying
—so to with Emmanuel, God with us
—God becomes vulnerable for us, for our sake
—for you…

God among a people occupied by Rome.
God wandering with his parents, first to Bethlehem, then on to Egypt to escape the persecution of Herod.
God with outsider shepherds and stranger Magi.
God lost on pilgrimage as a boy. God baptized at the Jordon.
God three long years teaching. God scourging the temple.
God rejected by the religious and the politically powerful.
God crucified.
God dead and God alive again.

          God vulnerable like us, that we may be like him—beloved children of God.
Grand reversals not just in that story long ago, but now, today, including in our own life
—Gospel, life, peace, and salvation, for you!

          And, in the spirit of the vulnerability of this night, I’m going to ask all of you to be vulnerable too.
In our society that is obsessed with the perpetually new and never takes time to sit with something
—I would ask you to take some time to be like Mary
—Ponder and Treasure the mystery of God’s vulnerability.       And not just ponder, but like the shepherds share, talk to folk about what you come up with
—perhaps with your family over dinner, or with a friend when the moment feels right.

          In the back of your bulletin you will find some prompts for your pondering…
          -what false peace, saviors, and salvation are on offer these days?
          -Surely God reigns everywhere, yet where is God reigning for you and yours this Christmas?
          -Take a moment to think about the last time you were vulnerable, what did that feel like? Do you think that’s how Joseph and Mary and the Shepherds felt?

          And also, as you sit with the vulnerability of God that we celebrate this night, take some time to pray this Christmas.
An example of the prayer you could pray is this:

 O Holy One, heavenly angels spoke to earthly shepherds and eternity entered time in the child of Bethlehem. Through the telling of the Christmas story, let our temporal lives be caught up in the eternal in that same child, that we might join shepherds and all the heavenly host in praising the coming of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and uplifts the lowly

          Imagine it, you’ve been strip-searched, your equipment taken apart and put back together, and after a secondary pat down the Secret Service ushers you into the Oval Office and tells you that you have 10 minutes to capture the heart and soul of the president on film. This is your one shot to take a portrait that will adorn super market magazines and art galleries alike…

How are you going to get the right shot? How are you going to succeed? How are you going to get it right?

          Well, Platon, a British photographer…
you know he’s good because he doesn’t even go by his last name any more…
Platon figured out a formula for just such a scenario.

          He’s taken photographs of every sitting president from Carter to Trump, as well as world leaders, both famous and infamous—Aung San Suu Kyi, Robert Mugabe, Muammar Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel… not to mention singers like Bono and Yoko Ono and so on…
and he has one surefire technique.

          His portraits always manage to show something more than press secretaries or image consultants want to project
—they shows something more, something real…

          You see, he brings with him a decrepit, falling-apart, white painted crate for his subjects to sit on… somehow 10 minutes, or 7 minutes, or however long he’s got, on that humble little box, displaces the leaders, brings them down from their throne and shows them for who they really are, just another person, another portrait in black and white.
(Photos)

          And so too the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and uplifts the lowly.

Prayer

          He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and uplifts the lowly.

          It’s one thing when the fall is of obviously bad actors
—mass murderers drug out from their holes disheveled and done,
tyrants terrified by their own people,
gangsters who kept the whole block on lock down themselves locked up,
bullies brought to the principal’s office.

          But, what of our heroes?
-All those well spoken of men revealed to be cads and worse on account of the #MeToo movement
—Cosby and Clinton, Garrison Keller and Neil Degras Tyson…
-or think of all those women who were excited about the first female president and ended up disappointed by Hillary Clinton’s loss…
-or think of the controversy when “Go Set a Watchman” the sequel to Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mocking Bird” was released
—in it the heroic father, Atticus Finch, was revealed to be imperfect
—a bit racist in his old age even…
and just this month poor Atticus has just received similar treatment by Aaron Sorkin’s broadway re-write of “To Kill a Mocking Bird.”
Another deflated hero.

          When your heroes, those whose opinions or character you put some stock in
—when they fail, when they fall, what do you do? If they cannot stand, what hope have we?

          After all, we too have our failings,
battered from the outside,
conflicted on the inside,
we are human, so very human.
We too are flesh and blood.

          And the Good News, which Elizabeth and Mary testify to, is that God is as well
—God is with us
and God has come in that very battered, conflicted, oh so human material that encompasses us
—God has come in flesh and blood.

God is with us, and God has even come in the flesh.

          Mary sings about God acting in her life and in the past,

God has acted with both mercy and justice
leveling mountains and raising valleys,
scattering the proud and gathering the humble
—He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and uplifts the lowly…

-He supported Slaves against Pharaoh and brought exiles out from captivity.
-He worked through such flawed people as King David and Samson.  
-Raised up Judges like Deborah and faithful women like Ruth and Naomi,
and even offered second acts for elders like Elizabeth and Zechariah.

Mary sings “Yes we are O’ so human, but the Story of God’s people is the story of God continually with us none the less!”

          In fact, God not only stayed in the story with us, but came to dwell among us
—Mary’s child is God with us, God in the flesh for us!

          Now, when Platon takes those pictures, he de-thrones the leaders, but he also reveals more clearly who the person is…

          And that’s a way to think about Jesus
—God made man
—we can see God more clearly, more fully, because he has sat down with us, stooped onto that white box, so we know him outside the trappings of power
—we can see into his soul. Receive a portrait in black and white…
The invisible God made visible in his Son Jesus Christ.

          This portrait gives us a glimpse of proper humanity, proper heroism, proper power, it is a picture of the flesh as it ought to be, proper creatureliness.

          But it is so more than that. We are also brought close to the Creator, lifted into a greater reality still, lifted up into the reality of God.

          And Eva—I pray that for you today… that you will come to know Mary’s words:
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and uplifts the lowly…
that you will find hope in the midst of a fallen world,
hope in ambiguity, disappointment, and even danger…
for in your baptism you will come face to face with God among us, leaning kindly upon that white box, and you will be united to Jesus Christ.
Thanks be to God!
Amen and Alleluia.

Sermon: Summer is Coming

Summer is Coming

         “Winter is coming” this is the constant refrain of the fantasy series Game of Thrones. George RR Martin is 5 books into the series and winter has not yet come… in the TV series it isn’t until 60 hours in that winter comes… and yet that reality frames the whole thing, winter is unfolding—the birth of dragons, deaths of kings, wars and rumors of war, Wildlings and Others encroaching upon civilization, snow falling first in the north and then in the south—all of these point to that one foundational reality, “Winter is coming.”

         And we read about just such signs in scripture today, read about looking forward in hope to a thing that is not yet, and yet is unfolding, it frames the whole of scripture and life…

         Jeremiah points to the sign of a righteous branch, God’s actions through David may have been chopped down, but they didn’t grind the stump—new life is coming.

         Jesus promises us that God is doing something new, promises us tender tentative tendrils—look carefully friends, you will find the leaves greening in this gray and foreboding world…

         All these are signs that “Summer is coming.”

         

Prayer

         Jesus warns us about sea and waves
—one of the Bible’s ways of talking about Chaos and Death
—we are warned about the threat that looms so often
—losing life and losing control.

         Not only that, the world will be threatened
—and to clarify, the Greek word for worldused means the civilized world (so not the “He so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son” world), instead the economically integrated world
—yes from time to time we will realize the societal structure we live and breath in, we move in the same way fish move through water, is ephemeral and fleeting—sometimes it is really obvious how threatened the whole project is.

         The powers themselves shake (have you seen the videos of Alaska—it is like that!)
—all those forces beyond ourselves that shape our day to day life
—the little gods of this world we cling to
—behold! They shall all be shaken loose
—they shall all be revealed to be what they are, Idols… all those things we fear, love, and trust—that are not God
—they shall be sifted through, burnt away
—they shall fall away.

         All of this shall be an earthquake showing what stands and what falls.

         And have you ever thought how much all that weighs us down?
How much we worry about life and control, our society holding together, the powers holding fast
—how much we drugourselves in many ways
(shopping, shooting up, shutting down, tuning in, going online, main-lining, maligning our neighbor)
drug ourselves in order to look away from all this…
how much we time and talents… and our very lives… we fritter away concerned about all these things.
We lack hope.

         I was reading Conservative columnist Arthur Brooks the other day, he wrote an article entitled: “How Loneliness is tearing America apart.”
Did you know 13% of Americans don’t believe there is a single personwho knows them well. 42 million people who feel like they are anonymous—unknown to anyone but themselves…
Brooks believe this has led to the record 45,000 suicides that have happened across the country this year
—to get the scope of this it is like the entire population of Plainfield killing themselves…
he also notes 70,000 people died of drug overdoses this last year
—that’s the entire population of East Orange…

         And this alienation also leads people to seek simulated communities, communities almost entirely made up of screens,
be they social media platforms or obsessive watching of partisan Television
—all of this telling them who to hate
—most often our fellow Americans…

         And, you know I often tell you all, when it comes to the internet, never read the comments section
—well this article may be an exception…
 the 1,034 comments at the end of this article—I didn’t read them all of course…
but my God!
It was people pouring out their hearts about their isolation
—how they yearned so completely for realcommunity, realconnection.

         Now, I can’t imagine how much more painful this isolation will get for folk this time of year (Daylight savings time and darkness),right…
imagine you don’t believe anyone really knows you
—you are always alone, and you go to work in the dark and get home in the dark and the only human-ishinteraction you have is with the warm glow of you TV or Smartphone or Computer Screen… So hopeless…

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.”

         No… be alert! Crane your neck up, stand up straight
—your redemption draws near!

(Point to tree)

         In the face of Babylon battering down all that is Holy
—know there is a righteous branch!
         In the face of the falling away of all the small gods—this grand and horrible earthquake, they no longer grace the heavens—look!
Look what remains!
The Son of Man, he lives that we may have life.
Look what remains!
The Kingdom of God, revealing the world as it is, in the face of the world as it seems, so we know that God rules!
Look what remains!
The Word of God! The promises of God for us and to us, promises which God shall not forsake,
God shall not forsake us!

(Point to tree)

         In the face of unbelievable isolation, anxiety, addiction, and death…
When all the simulated community crashes and there we are…
What remains, what’s real?
—Christ, community, promise…hope
Real Christ—for you, the Lord on the donkey who sees fit to join us in all things, God made man that Humanity might be found Holy!
Real community—Surely a mixed body, saints and sinners all trying and failing and trying again, but here we are, thank God!
Real struggle—It isn’t just our communal life that is mixed, but each of us, all simultaneously saint and sinner
—a real struggle really worth it
—our whole lives found in the sanctity of God
—we are made in the image of God
—youreally are a part of it,
you really matter to God!
Real words of promise—Promises of Christ
—I will be with you always,
I’ve purchased and freed you from the powers of sin, death, and the devil.
You belong to Christ and none can separate you from him!

Summer is coming!
The stump was not ground down—it still grows!
We’re all interconnected and are rooted together.
Even when all appears dead, the necessary work of new life is taking place, the seed is being made ready!
Winter isn’t even a pause, it is part of the whole process!
Look at those green leaves, those tendrils tender and tentative, yet clearly alive.

Have hope.

Summer is coming!

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Praise the Lord!

              Praise the Lord, with my whole being—every role I have, from engineer to electioneer…
Every relationship I have—from child to parent to next door neighbor… may it praise the Lord.

              Praise the Lord in my work and my play, from the tips of my toes to the hair I once had on the top of my head.
Praise him like David in scandalous dance and divine ecstasy and like Mary in quiet pondering.
Praise with our hearts and minds, in the very depths of ourselves, even those recesses inside us we barely know.

              Praise the Lord, as well, with the length of my life.  From the first kick in the womb like John the Baptist to my last words, like Anna and Simeon—from nursing bed to hospice bed—as our whole life unfolds, being raised and raising others, sandwiched between generations in those middle years… all of it, may it praise the Lord.

              Trust God, not leaders in this world—they’re so human. Inconsistent, unsure of their own motivations, unaware of the consequences of their actions, and liable to get distracted. They won’t help or won’t do a good job of it… God help us! Don’t make of them an idol.

              They are so human, so mortal… what they begin they shall not end—did not David wish to see the Temple, did not Paul wish to preach in Spain—and yet they did not do so. All rulers shall die, their powers diminished, their projects unfinished.

              Trust instead in God— all else spins fast and does not hold, but we are held fast by our Father in Heaven, the Parent of us all. In God we are like a well-watered tree—fed and stable.

              Be rooted in God— your joy shall be complete—not happiness as such, but joy, that which transcends all that is bitter about our mortality—joyful even in sorrow and abandon—even in times of distress and at the end, there is rest and joy… journey done, return to God.

              Return to the Creator of all that is, seen and unseen—the one who is the beginning and the end…
that vast dome, sky, heaven, space, infinity
—that solid rock, earth, our precious home, we earthlings of the earth
—the depths, the sea, the chaotic waters transformed to nourish us and all creation
—every last creature, ameba to whale, breaths spirit,
everything is held together because the Lord is faithful.

What is the nature of this faithfulness, you ask.

              The Lord is faithful—he hears the groans of his people in Egypt, and exacts terrible punishment upon whole societies when they refuse to heed prophetic calls for justice!

              The Lord is faithful—Elijah, and the Israelites hungry in the desert, and those who receive the food we collect for them, and soon enough those who will receive food at our own Pop-up Food Pantry—all those who hunger are fed their daily bread, so long as we don’t get in the way and obstruct it.

              The Lord is faithful—God called his people out of slavery in Egypt, out of captivity in Babylon… Paul and Silas out of Jail—Christ freeing us from our captivity to Sin, Death, and the Devil.

              The Lord is faithful—Bartimaeus born blind, Paul blind and then he could see—may we all truly see, see the world in front of our eyes, in front of us to be loved!

              The Lord is faithful—Are we not bent down, or curved in upon ourselves, or just in need of some straightening up so we remember we’re human, we’re made in the image of God and ought to be treated as such.

              The Lord is faithful—In every age there have been people made right by God, brought into relationship with God—loved by God, empowered by God to love and serve their neighbors—from Adam to Abraham, Moses to Mary, Ezekiel to Zacchaeus.

              The Lord is faithful—Though Elijah tarries in a strange land, though Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees, though Moses was forever a stranger in whatever company he kept, though the Holy Family sought refuge in Egypt, God always protected them.

              The Lord is faithful—He will always help the most vulnerable, Job declares himself righteous on account of his aid to them, the Law is laid down in the book of Exodus (they are to be protected!) and James says true religion is visiting them, the orphan and widow. 

              The Lord is faithful—God thwarts the evil plots and plans of Pharaoh and King Nebuchadnezzar and Herod, that slaughterer of the innocent—the wicked he shall bring to ruin.

              Yes, in all these things the Lord is faithful!

              And the Lord will continue to be faithful, continue to reign with Justice—the Kingdom of God will continue to be a reality, every generation shall know that He is God!

Praise the Lord!

All Saints Sunday Sermon

              St. Augustine—the North African Bishop and early church father most instrumental in thinking through the Christian faith—recollects, in his biography the Confessions, his experience of loosing his best friend as a young man. In his mourning:

-He avoided the places where they used to spend time, because it felt like the places themselves were expecting his friend to return, but he wouldn’t return!

-Augustine toyed with the morbid thought of dying, perhaps even killing himself, so that he might join his friend.

-At other times, reflecting upon his friend’s absence—how completely he’d been erased from the world by death, Augustine would become so afraid of Death’s grand and horrible power over mortals that he couldn’t keep from shuttering.

…Yet…

              In another place, Augustine wrote, “Make me good, but not yet.” That is, let me enjoy a reckless and wanton life until I’m a hairs breath from death, and then I’ll be good, so I get that check-mark next to my name, so I am on the guest list at the end.

              And these two extremes, name clearly edges we so easily lean toward.
They say Orthodoxy—right belief—is not about extremes, but about navigating extremes—the proper faith in Jesus Christ is not way over here, nor way over there, but instead the broad center.

              And that is true of the faith regarding death as well.

On one side—despair and anguish
On the other side—indifference and escape.

May it not be so for us—instead let us always be Embraced by our Risen Lord, called by name to be his disciples.

Let us pray

              There are a lot of different things going on this All Saints Sunday. Reading aloud the names of those who’ve died—remembering aloud, naming, making it real through ritual. Former members of Cross of Life, by joining St. Stephen you are making the closing of your former congregation all the more real, Barbara, we’re going to miss you. And that’s not even mentioning all those things going on outside our church doors.

              There is a lot of change, a lot of loss, a lot of chaos floating around here—in scripture the ocean or the seas are often stand ins for that churning and overwhelming uncertainty that pulls us down to the depths.

              Death is often described as the twin of those chaotic waters, a sort of sea creature consuming the world—at the end of the day everything will be consumed by Death, it is an unstoppable reality riding uncontrollable chaos.

              In the face of all that, an impulse toward despair and anguish is natural.
Like Mary we may mourn Jesus’ seeming absence—Jesus if you were here, these things wouldn’t be happening,
the very scent of death would be banished from our presence.

              We just throw up our hands and say, it’s too much, I am defeated.

              Or, we slide to the other side of things—indifference and escape.

              I can no longer count the number of mailers I’ve received inviting me to attend opioid addiction conferences—in the rural west and the inner city we’ve been numbing ourselves to the chaotic waters and that monster Death for a while—but now even the seeming placid suburbs are suffering—the first time I buried someone younger than me it was just a tragedy, but at this point it has become a pattern. It’s a response, I guess, indifference.
              And it isn’t just young people—care givers often fall in this same lane—indifference and escape—they call it compassion fatigue, you care for someone or a bunch of people for so long you just get kinda burnt out inside.
              Or think of what we sometime do within the church—we seek baptism as fire insurance, see Christianity as nothing more than a get into heaven free card. We see the life of faith as a means of escaping death and chaos. The service becomes a waiting room and Vince, what you’re playing nothing more than elevator music.

              In face of Death and the Chaotic Waters, Despair and Indifference, Anguish and Escape can be our wrong steps—the extremes we wreck into, because it feels like we’re being chased.

              But let me tell you about the broad middle—the center of what God is doing on our behalf. In the face of Anguish and Escape—God offers a loving Embrace. We listen for Despair and Indifference, but God calls us to be his Disciples.

              The chaotic water will not drown us, but will be still—will be replaced by a living water, a life giving water, streams shining and flowing from the throne of God to slake our thirst.

              Death, that consumer of worlds, will be swallowed up.

              God is making all things new, for God was, is, and will be among us.

              Think about Lazarus, he’s called out of the tomb—he escapes death—praise God!
But not only that, he is unbound and freed and follows Christ (is his Disciple) and shares with him a meal—the last supper, where Christ says “Love one another.” Where he is embraced by Christ, leans against Christ’s chest and is fed. And then, Christ goes and dies and rises—that we all might share in his eternal life.
              We’re all connected—connected together in the life of Jesus Christ.
              And we shape that for one another—we all have saints who came before us, sometimes it is those big ones, right
Christ shapes Matthew, who shapes Paul, who shapes Augustine who shapes Luther…
but just as often it is smaller,
grandma sang the faith into me (had a voice about like I do, but she sang it anyway),
the Smith family down the street brought me to Sunday School,
when I wondered if God was calling me to the ministry Pastor Sarah said “duh!”

              Right… if eternal life in Christ really means eternal it doesn’t just mean in heaven—though that’s quite a promise too—but its here and now as well—our life together, following after Jesus together, being continually embraced by Jesus through our siblings of the faith…
For that matter, I hope that in some small way God will use my life to do the same for other people…

I pray that we might be surprised to learn one day, maybe on the other side of the Jordon, that we were saints as well, leaving footprints in place so that someone found solid ground as a disciple, that we held others in the faith as we ourselves were held.

              I started this sermon with an Augustine quote—illustrating the two extremes we face when faced with death—Anguish and Escape, but perhaps this last one will help us to arrive in the middle where we together may follow Christ and be embraced by him as well.
“Christ departed from our sight, that we might return to our hearts and find him. For he left us, and behold, he is here.”
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