Jesus Left His Heart In San Francisco

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter.

Click here to read the biblical text.

Audio recording available. Listen if you want to hear me sing:

I left my heart in San Francisco,
high on a hill, it calls to me:
To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars.
The morning fog may chill the air, I don’t care.
My love waits there, in San Francisco,
above the blue and windy sea.
When I come home to you, San Francisco,
your golden sun will shine for me.

Tony Bennett

Isn’t that a great song? Tony Bennett really knows how to make mefeel homesick (and I’m not even from San Francisco!).

Personally, the place on Earth that captured my heart in that way are the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina. Those ancient hills feel like old friends to me. They are tall enough to be humbling and gentle enough to be inviting. From the Beacon Heights summit, you can see for ten miles or more on a clear day, the landscape looking like a wrinkled blanket that stretches off to infinity. If I was to write this song, I would have to sing, “I left my heart on Grandfather Mountain.”

The beauty of this song is that Tony’s love for San Francisco makes you long for a place/person where you left your heart, even though your body has taken you far away. I want you to remember that feeling, as we turn to look at today’s gospel, because that’s what Jesus is talking about when he says, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

When we hear these words, we tend to think that Jesus is talking exclusively about his death on the cross. We hear “lays down his life” as the language of sacrifice, in the same way that a firefighter might “lay down her life” in the line of duty while saving people from a burning building. To be sure, this understanding is partially correct. Jesus’ death is a very important part of “laying down his life,” but it’s also much more than that.

In Greek, the word that the author of John’s gospel uses here for “lays down” is Tithemi, which literally means, “to put, place, set or establish.” Likewise, the Greek word for “life” used here is Psuche, which means “soul, as the seat of affections and will.” Psuche shares the same root as English words like, “Psyche” and “Psychology,” which have to do with the mind. So, if we were to re-translate the Greek words of John 10:11, we could say, “The good shepherd places his soul upon the sheep,” or, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Tony Bennett, “The good shepherd left his heart with the sheep.” The only difference is that Tony left his heart in San Francisco, but for Jesus, “San Francisco” isyou.

The people on Earth today who are best able to understand what this is like are parents. Good parents “leave their hearts” with their children on a daily basis. Essayist Elizabeth Stone wrote so profoundly about what this is like. She says,

“Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

Elizabeth Stone

Of course, parents are by no means the only people who understand this. Those who have given themselves fully to a place, person, cause, or vocation can understand what it feels like “to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

In fact, human beings aren’t even the only creatures in the universe that do this. Here is another neat example: When you look up at the Sun (while wearing protective lenses, of course), you can see a giant ball of hydrogen undergoing the process of nuclear fusion. Every second of every day, our Sun fuses approximately 700 million tons of hydrogen into 696 million tons of helium. The reason for that slight difference in mass, according to my physicist friend, is that a tiny amount of matter in each atom is converted into energy through nuclear fusion. When you add that up to the size of the Sun, which is about a million times as big as the Earth, you realize that the Sun is converting its own body into starlight at a rate of 4 million tons per second.

This light energy, as we know, then takes eight minutes to travel 93 million miles to Earth, where it hits the leaves of plants and drives the process of photosynthesis. Through the food chain, that energy is continually recycled around the planet as the fuel for life itself. The Sun is literally giving its heart to us at a rate of 4 million tons per second, all day, every day. We humans have no way of paying the Sun back for this gift of life, so we pay it forward instead. The best way to give thanks for this gift of life is to dedicate ourselves to the flourishing of all life on Earth. 

It is the same with Jesus, “the Good Shepherd” who “lays down his life for the sheep.” When we understand “lays down his life” as “places his soul” or “leaves his heart,” we can understand that Jesus was not only “laying down his life” for us on the cross, but in everything he ever said or did. In his teaching, healing, welcoming, forgiving, challenging, and calling, Jesus was continually “giving his heart” to the people around him. He asks for nothing in return. We can never “pay back” the gift of love that Jesus gave, so Jesus simply asks us to “pay it forward” instead. 

Jesus asks us to love one another in the same way that he loves us. Our calling, as followers of the Good Shepherd, is to “place our souls” with one another in the same way that the Good Shepherd has “placed his soul” with us. We are not to be like “the hired hands,” who run away from tough situations because there’s nothing in it for us. Instead, we are to give ourselves fully to the task of nurturing life on Earth.

So, I ask you this morning to consider: Where do you “place your soul?” What is that person, place, or cause to which you dedicate yourself so fully that you are willing to stake your life on it? How do you “pay forward” the gift of life that has been so freely given to you? What service do you render to the family, church, community, and causes where you “give your heart?” 

Answer this question for yourself, and you will be fulfilling the commandment of Jesus, who said,

“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Matthew 25:40

Jesus does not need our worship any more than the Sun needs our gratitude for the gift of light. All he asks of us is that we continue to “pay it forward” by loving one another as he loves us.

There Is More To Faith Than Having It

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Easter.

The text is Luke 24:36b-48

There is more to faith than having it.

When we talk about “having faith” we tend to talk about it like it’s an object, as if faith was a thing that we can possess in the same way that I “have a car” or “have a house.” But faith is not an object to be had. Faith is a process. It’s something we do.

I would like to look at this idea of faith as a process through the lens of today’s Gospel reading.

Today’s reading tells the story of Jesus’ biggest resurrection appearance to his disciples, up to this point, in Luke’s gospel. Previously, the women had been to the empty tomb and talked to the young man robed in white. Later on, two disciples on the road to Emmaus had walked and talked with a stranger all day without realizing who he was. And then, when they sat down to rest at the end of their day’s journey, the stranger broke the bread, blessed it, and gave it to them. And suddenly their eyes were opened, and they realized it had been Jesus with them all along. So, these stories were floating around, and the disciples didn’t really know what to make of them.

But then, all of a sudden, Jesus is standing there, in the midst of them, while they’re trying to figure it all out. And he says, “Peace be with you.”

Next, the text says, “They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.”

In other words, they were afraid. This corresponds to the first phase of spiritual development: A time that we all go through as kids. One of the big concerns during that time is safety. Kids can’t really protect or provide for themselves, so they frequently live in a state of fear. Jesus here meets the disciples in the midst of their fear. What he offers them is his presence and reassurance.

Jesus says, “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

Those of us who are parents or grandparents have probably experienced a kid waking up in the middle of the night saying, “I had a bad dream.” They come and crawl into bed with us, and we put our arms around them and say, “Hey, it’s okay. I’m here. It’s all right. It was just a bad dream.” We are comforting them and calming their fears.

In this first stage of spiritual development, people (especially kids) are looking to simply be comforted. They need to know that we, the grown-ups in their lives, are there for them when they need us. Our job, when it comes to their spiritual lives, is simply to be with them and Tell the Story of our faith.

It would not make much sense if I, when teaching a first-grade Sunday school class, were to say, “All right now children: I want you to take this doctoral dissertation home and come back with a 10-page paper next week!” That’s not the level where our kids are at. When teaching Sunday school to kids, we’re just trying to tell the stories.

For example, in the story of Easter, we tell them how the stone was rolled away and Jesus rose from the dead. We tell them these stories again and again because the stories are how they’re getting exposed to the content of our faith. Later, when they get a little older, there comes a phase, usually around the time when they become teenagers and young adults, when they start to ask questions. If their parents and church family have faithfully given them love and reassurance, they will hopefully know that church is a safe place to explore those questions. This is what we see Jesus doing next with the disciples.

The text says, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.”

There’s a lot of very understandable skepticism happening here. That’s why Jesus says to them, “‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.”

In the midst of their doubt, Jesus is giving them the freedom to explore the questions and examine the evidence. In the same way, our young people are going to ask us some pretty tough questions as they explore their faith and make it their own. They’re going to get us thinking about our own spiritual path in ways that we maybe haven’t before. That’s one of the gifts that God gives to our younger people: To keep us on our toes, so that we don’t get too complacent!

I would call this second stage “Exploring the tough questions.” Let’s go back to that example of the story of the resurrection:

In the first stage of spiritual development, we just told the story. Now, as we come into what scholars call “critical awareness,” we start to examine the evidence for the resurrection and find that it’s kind of ambiguous. We ask, on the one hand, “Do dead people come back to life?” Well, in terms of our own personal experience, most of us would have to say, “No.” So, the story of Easter raises a tough question: “How is this possible?” Our lived experience creates doubt about the story of the resurrection.

On the other hand, historians have uncovered some interesting pieces of evidence that actually point in favor of the resurrection.

First and foremost, historians know that there were several Messianic movements within Judaism, around the time of Jesus. Lots of people showed up claiming to be the Messiah, most often leading some kind of armed revolution. All of these movements, once their leader was either captured or killed, either fizzled out, dispersed, and ceased to be a thing. But that didn’t happen with Christianity. Something happened that kept us together as a movement: some kind of experience that made Christianity different from all these other Messianic movements. The unanimous report of the early Christians is that they kept going and stayed together because Jesus had risen from the dead.

Another interesting bit of evidence is the day on which we worship. Their experience of the resurrection caused the early Christians to shift their primary day of worship from Saturday, the Sabbath, to Sunday, the first day of the week. The day on which they claimed Jesus had risen. And this switch had already been established by the time the New Testament was written.

I like the fact that the evidence for the resurrection is ambiguous. It doesn’t prove or disprove anything. Therefore, we always have to make a leap of faith.

So then, the first stage of spiritual development is all about “Telling the story.” The second stage is about “Exploring the tough questions.” Both of these are critical stages of spiritual growth. We need to go through them, but it’s also important that we not get stuck in them. If we only ever tell the story, and never ask the tough questions, then we fall victim to fanaticism, denying any evidence that challenges our preconceived notions. On the other hand, if we move into asking the tough questions, but never move past that, we can get just as stuck in the stage of skepticism.

We’re left with a ditch on one side of the road and another ditch on the far side. Is there a third way, through the middle of the road? I think there is.

Let’s return to the gospel the story: The next thing the text tells us is that Jesus “opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” Something else needed to happen, some sort of “opening of the mind” into spiritual awareness.

I think this corresponds quite nicely to the difference between truth and fact. Facts can be verified or falsified. But some things can be true without being factual.

A great example is in the story of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Romeo stands outside Juliet’s house and says, “What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!”

Now, do you think Romeo is trying to say that his girlfriend is a ball of hydrogen undergoing nuclear fusion? That would make no sense. He’s not making a factual statement; he’s speaking truthfully, saying, “The one I love is beautiful, like a sunrise.” If you have ever been in love, you’ve probably felt something similar. Personally, I think my wife’s got a smile like sunshine. I might be biased, but that doesn’t make me wrong! It is a true statement.

That’s the difference between truth and facts. That is what emerges as the gospel says, “Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” And that’s also what happens as we continue to move forward in our process of spiritual development. We go from telling the story, to asking tough questions, to seeing the truth that is deeper than the facts. I like to call this stage, “Embracing the mystery.”

By embracing the mystery, we acknowledge that there aren’t cut and dry answers to all of our questions. But, at the same time, our questions don’t invalidate our faith. We can hold onto our doubts and hold onto the beauty of the stories themselves, as we retell and re-hear them from a new perspective.

The beauty that comes out of this process is that we can hold two truths together at once. In the Episcopal Church, we do this in almost every aspect of our theology. We have multiple interpretations of our beliefs, some of which disagree with each other.

Let’s return again to the story of the resurrection: We’ve already told the story, explored the tough questions, and examined the evidence. As we embrace the mystery, we find that there are some among us who affirm, in no uncertain terms, that there was indeed an empty tomb on that first Easter Sunday. There are others who might say, “Well, I don’t know if there was an empty tomb or not, but maybe it’s a metaphor for the circle of life? As winter gives way to spring, it’s as if the whole earth is springing to life again. It’s a kind of resurrection.” Others might interpret the story of death and resurrection as a metaphor for our spiritual lives: We die to our selfish way of living and rise to a more God-centered or reality-centered way of living.

All of these different interpretations, if we’re embracing the mystery of the resurrection, can be true in their own way. There are faithful Episcopalians, and Christians of every denomination, who hold on to each of these interpretations. I think it’s really cool that we make room for all of them in this church.

A great example of this diversity of interpretations is The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, a book written by Dr. Marcus J. Borg and Bishop N.T. Wright. Both are accomplished biblical scholars. Bishop Wright affirms the more traditional understanding of the resurrection, that there really was an empty tomb on Easter Sunday. Dr. Borg understands the resurrection as a metaphor, but with a deeply spiritual meaning. They’ve written this book together to present their different perspectives in dialogue with each other, as faithful Christians, fellow Anglicans, brilliant scholars, and good friends. (If anyone is looking for future options for the parish book club, The Meaning of Jesus by Wright and Borg would be a really good one.)

Here in the Anglican theological tradition, we see our theology as a dialogue between scripture, tradition, and reason. We see faith, not as something we have, but as a process.

What we see in this morning’s gospel is that Jesus loves his disciples through every stage of this process. He does not berate them or threaten them. He calms their fears, explores the questions, and opens their minds.

As it was with them, so it is with all of us. Wherever you find yourself in this process of faith, whether you’re telling the story, asking the tough questions, or embracing the mystery, I invite you to accept the fact of where you are today. Furthermore, I invite you to accept yourself. Finally, I invite you to accept that you are accepted, just the way you are, and exactly where you are in this journey. Just as Jesus was with his disciples, Jesus is also with you.

Wherever you are in your process of spiritual development: Keep going! Keep telling the story. Keep asking those tough questions. Keep embracing the mystery. The process never ends! And remember: Jesus is with you, loving you all the way.

Amen.

Courage Is A Choice

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent.

The text is John 12:20-33.

A bride, just a few days before her wedding to a wonderful person who she loves very much, gets a bad case of “cold feet.”

A college freshman, having worked hard to graduate from high school and longed for the freedom that comes with adult life, feels terribly homesick during her first month at school.

A doctor, looking forward to retirement after many years of practicing medicine, wonders to herself, “How can I possibly leave this amazing job behind?”

These are all examples of very normal hesitancy that arises naturally when human beings are faced with a major change in life. Almost everyone, to some degree or another, will experience something like this hesitancy at some point in their life. It’s normal and it’s healthy because it means that one is thinking hard about these big moments in life and taking their importance seriously.

When such moments arise, it’s like your own soul is checking in with you to ask, “Are you sure?” It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re about to make the wrong decision, but the weight of this decision is enough to make one stop and consider the consequences. Any good carpenter can tell you that it’s wisest to live by the maxim, “Measure twice; cut once.” Such moments can feel uncomfortable, but I would be more worried about someone who had never had second thoughts about anything.

In today’s gospel, Jesus Christ himself has just such a moment of hesitancy as he begins the final stage of his earthly ministry, which he knows will lead to his crucifixion and resurrection.

The story opens as Jesus is visiting Jerusalem with massive throngs of pilgrims on their way to celebrate the holiday of Passover. Mixed in with this group are a number of Greek pilgrims.  They weren’t ethnically Jewish, but they had come to believe in and respect the monotheistic faith of Judaism rather than the many gods worshiped by their own people. These Greek pilgrims wanted to take part in the Passover festivities as well, but they were only allowed to go so far.  Jewish law prevented them from entering the great Jerusalem temple. There was one, single area set aside for them at the very farthest back end of the temple. We would call the nosebleed section. They called it the Court of the Gentiles. Unfortunately, even this one distant space had been taken away from them and filled up with all kinds of vendors exchanging foreign currency and selling animals for the ritual sacrifices. Feeling like the odd ones out, these Greek pilgrims were definitely getting the message that there was no place for people like them in God’s holy temple.

In the midst of all this, these Greek pilgrims somehow managed to hear that there was this remarkable new rabbi named Jesus who happened to be in Jerusalem for the festival. They were intrigued by what they heard and wanted to meet him, so they tracked down someone from Jesus’ entourage. They found Philip and said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” I can’t imagine what the look on Philip’s face must have been in that moment. He probably thought, “Why would these foreigners want anything to do with Jesus?” Philip was confused enough that he thought he needed a second opinion, so he went and talked to Andrew, another one of Jesus’ disciples. Even together, they still couldn’t figure out what was going on, so they decided to bring the issue to Jesus himself. Jesus’ reaction to this news probably shocked them even more. He said, “The hour has come.”

What does that mean?  Well, there’s a lot of talk about Jesus’ “hour” at several points in John’s gospel.  Early on, when Mary asks Jesus to show his power by changing water into wine at a wedding, Jesus refuses saying, “My hour has not yet come.”  Later on, when people try to get Jesus to use another Jewish holiday as a publicity platform, Jesus again refuses saying, “My hour has not yet come.”  Finally, when he had enraged one crowd to the point where they tried to kill him, the text notes that they were unsuccessful because “his hour had not yet come.” It was like the whole book had been building toward this big moment that was about to happen. According to Jesus himself, the appearance of these Greek pilgrims was the “hour” he had been waiting for.

But that’s where things get really interesting. That’s the moment where Jesus has his own moment of hesitancy. He says, “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say: ‘Father, save me from this hour’?”

Jesus Christ, as human as any of us, experiences a moment of hesitation before fulfilling his destiny as the Son of God. The reason for this is twofold. First, Jesus knew that the path of crucifixion and death would be difficult beyond all imagination. No one could blame him for wanting to avoid it. I imagine that Jesus was like Dr. Martin Luther King, who kept on speaking up for civil rights, even though he knew it might eventually get him killed. Second, I think Jesus experienced this moment of hesitancy because he realized that his vision of God’s big family went against the long-established boundaries of his particular culture and religion. The guardians of orthodoxy had whole chapters of Scripture and centuries of tradition in their favor to say that their people were God’s only chosen people, out of all the nations of the Earth.

But Jesus says, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He didn’t say just the people of his nation, his religion, his ethnicity, or his political party. He said, “all people.” Jesus was driven by his conviction that God’s loving arms are big enough to wrap around the whole world. Jesus believed this so strongly that he was willing to stake his life on it, and that’s exactly what he did.

I think of this faith that Jesus had every time I drive by our church’s sign on Napier Avenue that proudly says, “The Episcopal Church welcomes you.” There is no asterisk by that sentence or fine print at the bottom that lists the exceptions to that rule. “The Episcopal Church welcomes you” is an absolute commitment that applies to every human being who walks through our doors and every person that Episcopalians encounter in their life outside this building. When we abide by it, we are following in the footsteps of Jesus himself, who gave his life to make this dream a reality. “The Episcopal Church welcomes you… no exceptions.”

This vision of God’s love is a tall order. It asks everything of us. Therefore, I don’t blame anyone, not even Jesus, for taking a moment of hesitancy to wonder whether they are up to the challenge. The fact that we hesitate means that we are taking the moment seriously.

But the main thing is that we not let our moments of hesitancy stop us from fulfilling the purpose that God has set before us. The virtue of courage is not the same thing as the absence of fear. Courage is not a feeling, but a choice. Courage means that you feel the fear and then do the thing anyway, even if you have to “do it scared.”

That’s what Jesus did. He asked himself the question, “And what should I say: ‘Father, save me from this hour’?” And then he answered his own question, “No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”

And that, in the end, is the point of all this. Jesus staked his life on the welcoming of everyone, not because he was some loosey-goosey liberal, but for the sake of the glory of God. Jesus refused to believe in any God who loved anything less than the entire universe. He did not ask to be spared from the hour of his suffering, but only that the true nature of his loving Father would be made apparent to everyone… no exceptions.

Friends, the message of this sermon is the same as the message of every sermon that deserves to be heard: “Follow Jesus.” Be like Jesus. May the same courage that he demonstrated in his life become apparent in your life. When you face moments of hesitation at the major changes in your life, acknowledge the fear and then move forward in faith. When you encounter people who are different from you, welcome them with the same love that Jesus showed to everyone. Live not for the sake of your own safety and comfort, but for the sake of the glory of God, whose love is big enough to embrace the entire universe. Friends, in an age of fear, choose courage, choose life, choose God, choose to be like Jesus, and remember always: The Episcopal Church welcomes you… no exceptions.

Attitude Adjustment

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for the Fourth Week in Lent.

The text is Numbers 21:4-9.

There’s a thing I do fairly frequently. It’s pretty ridiculous, but I don’t think I’m alone in doing it. Please let me know if you can relate:

I’m feeling a bit hungry, so I go into the kitchen and open the fridge. Inside, I see leftovers from last night’s dinner and think, “Nah. I just ate that yesterday.” So, I go to the cupboard, where we have all kinds of ingredients and seasonings. I look at them and think, “Nah. That stuff takes too long to prepare; I want something now.” So, I go to the snack shelf, where we have several tasty treats, but I think, “Nah. These are all sweet treats; I want something salty.” Finally, I throw my hands in the air and proclaim, “We have nothing to eat in this house!”

Isn’t that ridiculous? How ungrateful am I to be surrounded by so much abundance and still have the nerve to say, “There’s nothing to eat in this house?” It’s very ridiculous, but I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one who does it. Let’s have a show of hands. It’s Lent, and God is watching, so let’s get honest with ourselves: Who does this? All of us.

The good news is that we are not alone either. The ancient Hebrews in the book of Numbers apparently had the same problem we do now. These people had seen literal miracles as God liberated them from slavery in Egypt: the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, water from the rock, manna, and quail. Surely, by this point, the people of Israel should be convinced that God would protect and provide for them, no matter what circumstances they faced next. And yet, as we can clearly see in our first reading this morning, they persist in their complaining. They whine to Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”

Did you catch their self-contradiction? They said, “there is no food,” and in the very next breath, “we detest this miserable food.” They are just like me, saying, “There’s nothing to eat in this house,” while I’m surrounded by a level of bounty that would make medieval kings jealous! I think it’s fair to say that the Israelites and I need a very serious attitude adjustment. If you feel yourself to be in need of a similar attitude adjustment, then I invite you to join us as we look closely at what happens next in this text.

The text says, “the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.”  Now, if we take this story at face value, we very quickly run into some serious problems.  It would lead us to believe that our God is the kind of God who would kill someone just for complaining.  It would also lead us to believe that natural events, like snake bites, happen because God wills it as a form of punishment.  If we really believed all that, we wouldn’t support organizations like Episcopal Relief & Development because we would think the victims of earthquakes and hurricanes were just wicked sinners being punished by God.  But we don’t believe that.  We believe that God is love.  We believe that God stands with those who suffer and with those who work to alleviate suffering in this world.  And our belief in that kind of God leads us to go back and read this passage in a different way.

This story may or may not have been based on actual events, but that’s beside the point.  When the text says that “the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people,” I take it to be a reflection of the Israelites’ state of mind.  The snakes are a symbolic representation of their collective attitude and its effect on their communal life.

Have you ever been around people at work or school who just love to complain about every little thing?  I’m talking about the people who always look for the worst in other people and situations.  How does it feel to be around them?  It’s kind of a drag, isn’t it?  Being around them drains your energy.  It’s like a poison that saps the life right out of you.  Hanging around them kind of feels like walking through a snake pit: you’re just waiting for one to jump out and bite you.  So, when I read this story about people and their attitudes, the snake analogy makes a whole lot of sense to me.

When times are hard, it’s easy to focus on what’s wrong with the world. It’s easy to get caught up in talking about the good old days or the way you wish things were. It feels cathartic to let your frustration out (which is a good thing) but when the catharsis becomes a way of life, it can be toxic. Just as much as honest venting, we also need people who can help us to see what’s right in the world. They empower us to make things better. They help us to change our focus.

That’s exactly what the Israelite people needed in today’s story and that’s just what they got.  The text says that, “Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”  Isn’t this interesting: the people of Israel had a poisonous attitude of complaining that was sucking the life out of their community.  So, what’s the cure?  Look up, focus on this, and you will live.  Change your focus in order to change your reality.

Let’s fast forward to the New Testament.  We also read a story about Jesus today.  In this story, Jesus compares himself to Moses’ bronze serpent on a pole.  It’s the same dynamic as before, except that this time, the thing we’re supposed to focus on is not a symbolic statue but a living, breathing person.  Jesus is, for Christians, the primary revelation of God in the world.  When we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus.  When we want to become the kind of people we’re meant to be, we look at Jesus.  When we need to remember everything that’s good, right, beautiful, and holy in this world, we focus on Jesus.  When we’re ready to be cured of the poisonous attitudes that infect our minds, our community, and our church, we look at Jesus.

We remember the principles he taught us.  We reflect on his deeds of healing and forgiveness.  We reflect on the love that poured through him to every corner of creation.  We do our best to reorient our lives around Jesus’ vision.  When we feel the snakebite and the poison’s burn, we look up to this man who died with forgiveness on his lips for his murderers and we ask ourselves that famous question: “What would Jesus do?”

Change your focus and you change your reality.

Viktor Frankl, famous psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, illustrates this point in a story from the days shortly after his concentration camp was liberated by the Allies, at the end of World War 2. Dr. Frankl writes in his book Man’s Search for Meaning: 

A friend was walking across a field with me toward the camp when suddenly we came to a field of green crops. Automatically, I avoided it, but he drew his arm through mine and dragged me through it. I stammered something about not treading down the young crops. He became annoyed, gave me an angry look and shouted, “You don’t say! And hasn’t enough been taken from us? My wife and child have been gassed—not to mention everything else—and you forbid me to tread on a few stalks of oats!”

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 144

The difference between the two friends is remarkable. One man, because of the horrors they had endured, had lost his faith in the dignity of life. The other man, precisely because of the horrors they had endured, became more convinced than ever of the dignity of life, even the life of a few measly plants. This change in attitude has a profound effect on the way we live. Dr. Frankl writes: 

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. (p. 104)

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 104

When people think about what it means to “have faith,” they usually think about particular religious beliefs. Faith, they think, is about believing that Jesus walked on water or was born of a virgin. But those dogmas mainly have to do with what you think.

Faith, as Dr. Frankl might use the term, is about how you think. Do we see the universe as hostile or friendly? Will weapproach life as meaningless or meaningful?

May we, as people of faith, in seasons of conflict and tragedy, learn to shift our focus to the one who came to show us a vision of what life can be. May we become agents of healing from the poisonous attitudes we encounter at home, school, work, or church. In this soul-sucking culture of toxic vision that only sees what’s wrong with the world, may we be inspired to become life-giving beacons of faith, hope, and love to all the people around us who so desperately need to hear what Jesus has to say.

How Are You?

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Sermon for Ash Wednesday.

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21.

“How are you?”

“I’m good.”

Isn’t that a funny question? It’s probably the most frequently asked and most dishonestly answered question we face in a typical day. Most people don’t want to hear the honest truth. Can you imagine what would happen, if they did?

You would pass a total stranger on the street and ask, “How are you?” 

And they would say, “Well, I just came from my doctor and he said the rash on my backside is nothing to worry about…”

You would immediately be like, “WOAH! TMI! I did not need to know all that!”

There is only one acceptable answer to the question, “How are you?”

That answer is, “I’m good.”

People don’t ask that question because they want to know the truth. They ask it because human beings are social animals and we’re just checking in with the herd. We’re like a pack of gazelles, grouped together on the savanna, watching out for predators. When I see them on the TV nature shows, I imagine them talking to each other like people do, and they’re saying the exact same things: “How are you? I’m good. You good? I’m good. You good? I’m good…”

We do it because we’re social animals, and that’s a very good thing. The herd instinct evolved because every member of the group stands a better chance of survival if we are all looking out for each other. When someone asks, “How are you,” what they’re really asking is, “How are WE?” And furthermore, because every individual is part of the herd, what they’re really REALLY asking is, “How am I?”

I wonder what it would be like to switch the pronouns in our casual conversations? We’d walk by a total stranger in the street and ask, “How am I?” And they would respond, “You’re good.” It would be much more honest to do it that way, but that’s just not how our social discourse has evolved. 

The truth is, even if we did switch it around like that, it still wouldn’t solve the underlying problem of looking for self-validation from other people. The upside of being a social animal, especially for gazelles, is that there is safety in numbers; the downside, especially for humans, is that we have a tendency to identify too strongly with the herd. We rely too much on other people to tell us who we are. So, we begin to think that how we appear, in the eyes of other people, is who we really are, in an ultimate sense. 

And that is the question that we are really, REALLY, really asking when we meet each other on the street. The question on our lips is, “How are you,” but we’re really asking, “how are WE,” and we are really REALLY asking, “How am I,” and we are really, REALLY, really asking, “Who am I?” That’s the question that keeps us up at night.

Jesus of Nazareth understood this fact about human nature. That’s why he taught us, in today’s gospel, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). He knew full well that the human herd instinct, while helpful for survival, could not fully satisfy our inner longing to know ourselves. At best, it can help us maintain a sense of order and group solidarity; at worst, it can reduce morality and identity to the lowest common denominator of “keeping up appearances.” Jesus understood that what matters most is not how we appear on the outside but who we are on the inside, and that is something that the general herd of humanity cannot tell us. 

This is why Jesus, in today’s gospel, gives such strong warnings against the hypocrisy that comes with praying, fasting, and giving alms in public. Each of these things is good, in itself, but if we only do it to gain the approval of other people, we miss the point of why we do it.

So Jesus says that, when we donate to a worthy cause, we should “not let [our] left hand know what [our] right hand is doing” (3). And when we pray, we should “go into [our] room and shut the door” (6). And when we fast, we should “put oil on [our] head and wash [our] face[s]” (17). 

Jesus teaches us, “pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (6). He tells us to keep these things private, not because they are shameful, but because their performance for the sake of public approval causes us to miss their point. The purpose of these spiritual exercises is to help us look inward, rather than outward, for the answer to our most burning question: “Who am I?”

The forty days of Lent are the perfect time for us to take that honest look inside and find out who we are when no one else is looking. Traditionally, the Church has taught that Lent is a season of penitence, where we express sorrow for our sins. That is certainly part of it. Any honest look inside ourselves involves looking at those parts of our personality that we don’t like. But there’s more to it as well: An honest look inside of ourselves, away from the opinions of other people, leads us to embrace and celebrate parts of ourselves that we have kept hidden away out of fear that these aspects of who we are might not be acceptable to the people around us. 

The season of Lent is a time when you can rediscover these parts of yourself and realize that this is how God made you, this is how God loves you, and this is how you reflect the image of God in a way that it is utterly unique to yourself. THIS is who you are. Embrace it, celebrate it, forgive it if you must, and love yourself the way God loves you, just the way you are.

Friends, I want to leave you tonight with a question. This is not a question I want you to answer out loud or right now. I want you to think about it. I want you to carry it with you through these forty days of Lent. I want you to ask yourself this question very seriously and deeply, and I want you to trust that whatever answer you come up with will be the right answer for you.

Are you ready for the question? 

Here it is:

“How are you?”

The Way That We See

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for the Last Sunday of Epiphany, Year B

The text is Mark 9:2-9.

Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn penned the following lyrics in his song, Child of the Wind:

Little round planet in a big universe:
sometimes it looks blessed, sometimes it looks cursed.
Depends on what you look at, obviously,
but even more it depends on the way that you see.

(Bruce Cockburn, Child of the Wind)

The way that we see things matters. Our worldview matters. Some see the world as a battleground between us and them, the haves and the have-nots, the fit and the unfit, or the good guys and the bad guys. What matters, according to this worldview, is ensuring that our side wins and the other side loses.

Some see the world as a meaningless conglomeration of matter and energy that is ultimately indifferent to the needs and wants of individual human beings. What matters, according to this worldview, is imposing our will and our ingenuity onto the chaos and forcing it to satisfy our desires.

The Christian worldview does not see the world in either of these ways. As Christians, we follow the guidance of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who teaches that our Father in heaven “makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). Later on, Jesus says, “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (6:26) and, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these” (28-29).

Jesus sees the universe as a good place that is constantly being created and cared for by God. According to the creation stories in the book of Genesis, which Jesus grew up reading, God created a wonderfully good universe, formed humankind in the divine image, and placed us in the world in order to help care for this beautiful place. Anyone who has read the account of the life and teachings of Jesus in the gospels knows that Jesus is not blind or indifferent to the complicated realities of conflict and suffering, but he regards all of that as secondary to the central truth of a good God who created a good world and continues to sustain it in love.

The fourteenth century English mystic, Julian of Norwich, was the first woman to write a book in English. While lying sick in bed and near death, Julian describes her own experience of the kind of worldview that Jesus wanted to instill in his followers.

Julian writes that God

“showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and I perceived that it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought: What can this be? And I was given this general answer: It is everything which is made. I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that it was so little that it could suddenly fall into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.”

(Showings, IV)

The way that Julian and Jesus see the world is very different from the way that nationalists, terrorists, and other fanatics see the world. For Julian and Jesus, there is no struggle between us and them, no cosmic indifference to suffering, because there is only the God whose name is Love.

In today’s gospel, we get to see the beginning of the Christian worldview taking root in the minds of Jesus’ disciples, Ss. Peter, James, and John. We read that Jesus takes these three friends up a mountain and there, far away from the bustling crowds, “he was transfigured before them” (Mark 9:2). The text of Mark’s gospel only describes the change in his clothes, which “became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them” (3). While this might sound like the beginning of a commercial for laundry detergent, no sales pitch was forthcoming. The gospel writers preserved this story in order to express the way they saw Jesus. For them, Jesus was more than just a good man or a wise teacher; he was full of divine radiance. In later centuries, the bishops of the Church would develop this experience into the doctrine we now know as the divinity of Christ. One of the things that makes Christianity unique among the religions of the world is that we find God in a person. In Judaism and Islam, Moses and Muhammad are respected as prophets who proclaim the divine message, but in Christianity, Jesus Christ is the message itself. Through the story of the Transfiguration, we begin to see God in Jesus and, through Jesus, we begin to see God everywhere else.

Nowhere is this truth more apparent than in the mystery of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, we take grain and grapes that have been shaped into bread and wine. This means that, when our ushers present the elements at the altar, they are symbolically offering to God the fruits of the Earth and the genius of human labor. Every wheat stalk and grapevine, every farm worker and truck driver, every hillside and highway are already present on the church’s altar, even before the prayer of consecration has even begun. The Offertory in our liturgy is, not simply a moment for fundraising, but a giving back to God of everything that God has given to us.

Once the priest has received this offering, she blesses it and offers it back to us as the consecrated Body and Blood of Christ. Then we, the people of the Church, rise and gather around the altar to receive Christ. In that moment, it no longer matters who is rich or poor, male or female, black or white, gay or straight, cis or trans, conservative or liberal, Israeli or Palestinian, Ukrainian or Russian. The only truth that matters, in that moment, is that the Body of Christ I receive into my body is the same Body of Christ that you receive into your Body, therefore “we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17). This is what I mean when I say: Through the story of the Transfiguration, we begin to see God in Jesus and, through Jesus, we begin to see God everywhere else.

The way that we see things matters. When our worldview is shaped by religious fundamentalism or secular atheism, we will see the world as a battle over who is right. When our worldview is shaped by the class warfare of Marxism or the market forces of capitalism, we will see the world as an endless fight for survival. But when our worldview is shaped by the Gospel, our Transfigured Lord will show us a transfigured world that glows brightly with the radiance of God.

I think about the story of the Transfiguration whenever I am outside in the evening and happen to catch those glorious moments near sunset, when all the trees and buildings seem to be shining with a golden light. I feel like I have to stop and make the sign of the cross because it seems like God is granting us a moment, however brief, when we get to see the world the way God sees it all the time.

I think also of another moment of transfiguration, that took place on a busy streetcorner in Kentucky. It was recorded by a 20th century monk named Thomas Merton.

He writes:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

(Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 156-157)

Friends, the way that we see things matters. I encourage you this week to draw inspiration from Thomas Merton and Julian of Norwich. I invite you to attend deeply to our next celebration of the Eucharist. Above all, I urge you to be followers of Jesus, to see the world as he sees it, full of divine glory. May this Christlike way of seeing transfigure you from the inside out and lead you out to transfigure this world in the name of God, whose name is Love, and in the name of Love, whose name is God.

Amen.

Quiet On The Inside

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for Epiphany 3 / Religious Life Sunday.

Several years ago, while serving as pastor to a Presbyterian congregation, I did something that I am not proud of. I worked tirelessly, day and night, to be faithful in my calling as a minister. I worked so hard, in fact, that I worked myself right into a hospital bed… not once but twice.

I was driven to work that hard by anxieties that are common among the clergy of small parishes: aging buildings, shrinking budgets, and low attendance. I thought that, if I was really a good pastor, the parking lot would be overflowing, donations would be pouring in, and the church would have to build an extra wing just to accommodate all the new people joining with their families. The fact that these things weren’t happening made me feel afraid that I was failing at my job, failing the people I loved at my church, and most of all failing God.

I compensated for this fear by working as long and as hard I possibly could, beyond what was good for my health, sometimes staying in my office until 2 o’clock in the morning. “If I, as their pastor, just worked harder,” or so I thought, “then the church would be doing better.”

This line of faulty reasoning is not unique to clergy. People who work in every conceivable field, from education, to healthcare, to law, to business, and to government, all of us are subject to the endless social pressure to perform, achieve, and succeed. The market-driven economy of our society operates under the unwritten rule and unspoken assumption that the value of a person’s life depends on that person’s ability to produce and succeed on an economic level. The fact that we even use monetary words like “value” and “worth” to describe human dignity is a sign of how deeply this avaricious mindset has infiltrated into our collective unconscious.

This state of affairs is nothing new. Throughout human history, the temptation has always been there to mistake function for identity when considering the quality of human life. The author of our psalm this morning, Psalm 62, talks about their own experience in noticing the capricious ebb and flow of fortune on the stormy sea of the economy. The psalmist writes, “Those of high degree are but a fleeting breath, even those of low estate cannot be trusted. On the scales they are lighter than a breath, all of them together” (Psalm 62:10-11).

In the very next verse, the psalmist goes on to describe the kinds of moral temptation that arise when we try to measure life with the ruler of economic achievement: “Put no trust in extortion; in robbery take no empty pride; though wealth increase, set not your heart upon it” (12). What we can see here is a person of faith desperately trying to navigate the ship of conscience through the stormy seas of moral dilemmas. 

The good news in this psalm is that the psalmist has discovered a still center and a firm foundation beneath the chaotic waves of life’s surface. The psalmist writes, “[God] alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, so that I shall not be shaken. In God is my safety and my honor; God alone is my strong rock and my refuge” (7-8). We can hear echoes of this psalm in the nineteenth century Mariners’ Hymn by William Whiting, which states:

“Most Holy Spirit, who didst brood upon the chaos dark and rude,
and bid its angry tumult cease, and give, for wild confusion, peace;
O hear us when we cry to thee for those in peril on the sea.”

The Hymnal 1982, #608

The societal anxiety that drives us to mental burnout and moral compromise is founded on the fear that, beneath the chaos of life’s waters, there is nothing but the darkness of an empty void. Psalm 62 urges us to realize that this is a lie. God is present in the stillness beneath the surface; this is why the psalmist commands, “Put your trust in him always, O people” (9).

This is the same point that Jesus makes, in our gospel this morning, when he says, “The kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15). An earlier translation of this verse renders it as, “the kingdom of God is at hand” (KJV, emphasis mine). I invite you now to hold your hand out in front of you and repeat those words out loud. One of the names we frequently apply to Jesus in the Christmas season, “Emmanuel,” literally translates from the Hebrew as, “God is with us.” God is with us; God’s kingdom is at hand, as Jesus himself has said.

The stupefying truth that Jesus is communicating here is that the God we believe in is not some distant entity, but a very present reality. St. Augustine of Hippo picked up this line of thought when he prayed to God, “You were more inward to me than my most inward part” (Confessions 3.6.11). In another place, St. Augustine also prays, “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (Confessions 1.1.1).

Psalm 62 agrees with Augustine in proclaiming, “For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him” (Psalm 62:6). This is a confusing statement, given what we have just said about the nearness of God’s presence. How can one wait for someone who is already present?

Imagine that you were to see me in town one day, standing on a street corner, next to our priest. You walk up and ask me what I’m doing and I reply, “Waiting for the priest to get here.” I would not blame you, in that moment, if you then told me that I needed to get my eyes (or my head) examined. You might tell me, “Turn around, Barrett; she’s right there!”

That kind of turning around is what Jesus means, in Mark 1:15, when he tells his followers to “repent.” Many have come to associate that word with guilt and sorrow for one’s sins, but the Greek term used here, Metanoia, is best translated as, “Change your mind.” Its Hebrew equivalent, Teshuvah, literally means, “Turn around.”

What Jesus is inviting us to do in this gospel is change the way we think about God and realize that, beneath the chaotic waters of life’s surface, God is already present with us in the stillness. As Augustine has already told us, God is more present to us than we are to ourselves. What the psalmist calls us to “wait” for then is not the arrival of God, but the realization that God is already here.

My own realization of this presence came after my second trip to the hospital with stress-related illness. I realized then that, if I was going to survive in life and ministry, I needed to find a more grounded and balanced way of living. The only people I was aware of who knew how to do that were monks.

A quick search on the internet revealed that St. Gregory’s Abbey, an Episcopal Benedictine monastery, was located in the city of Three Rivers, just forty minutes away from my house. I booked a week-long retreat as quickly as I could. During that first week at St. Gregory’s, chanting and meditating with the monks, I learned for the first time what it feels like to be quiet on the inside. I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.

What I began to learn in the monastery that week is the meaning of the psalmist’s proclamation, “For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him” (Psalm 62:6). By letting myself drop below life’s chaotic surface, I found the presence of God in the stillness. The Benedictine way of spirituality changed the way I pastored my congregation, the way I parent my children, the way I relate to my spouse, and the way I live my life.

I made it my mission to visit the monastery as often as I could and bring its way of life home with me, as much as possible. After several years, I made a permanent commitment to that community, not as a monk but as an oblate. An oblate, for those who may not be familiar with the term, is someone who would be a monk, but is prevented by some kind of lifelong commitment (like marriage). As a husband and father with a full-time job, I am not able to rise at four o’clock every morning and pause to attend church services every three hours, but I am able to keep the spirit of the monastery alive in me by pausing for prayer and silence at the beginning and end of each day. I have found that the guidance of the Rule of St. Benedict is just as helpful for busy parents as it is for monks. Through the monks at St. Gregory’s Abbey, I managed to stay out of the hospital and found the kind of balance I had been looking and longing for.

Today, on the third Sunday of Epiphany, The Episcopal Church encourages its parishes to celebrate Religious Life Sunday. This is a day when we give thanks and pray for the many orders of monks and nuns in The Episcopal Church. St. Gregory’s Abbey, by far the closest, is just about an hour away from here in Three Rivers. There are many other communities, each with their own unique identity and calling: The Order of St. Helena, the Society of St. John the Evangelist, the Order of the Holy Cross, and the Community of St. Mary, just to name a few.

What these communities all have in common is their commitment to follow Jesus and live out the words of today’s psalmist: “For God alone my soul in silence waits.”

I encourage you to learn about these communities and remember them in your prayers.

Above all, dear friends, I encourage you today to look beneath the chaos of life’s surface and find there, in the stillness, the living heartbeat of God, who is more present to you than you are to yourself. May your discovery of this presence bring you peace and balance as you continue to navigate the troubled waters of this life.

Amen.

The Better Angels of Our Nature

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for the fourth week of Advent.

Click here to read the biblical text.

Our gospel on this last Sunday of Advent recounts the well-known tale of the Annunciation, where the archangel Gabriel announces to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she is destined to be the mother of Jesus, God’s Son. Over the past two millennia, this story has been told and retold so many times that it can be hard to comprehend its intended emotional impact. To modern ears, the Annunciation is a sweet and tender introduction to the even sweeter story of the Nativity. But can you imagine how it must have sounded to Ss. Anne and Joaquim, the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary?

Biblical scholars estimate that Mary would have been about fifteen years old at the time of the Annunciation, a typical marriage age for young women at that time. As the father of a fifteen-year-old at this time, I can keenly imagine how Anne and Joachim must have felt when they first heard the news of Gabriel’s visit.

Mary: “Mom? Dad?”

Anne and Joaquim: “Yes sweetheart, what is it?”

M: “Umm… I need to tell you something. I’m pregnant and my fiancé Joseph isn’t the father.”

The biblical text doesn’t tell us anything about Anne and Joaquim’s reaction, but I imagine they probably felt angry and terrified at the same time, which is completely understandable. This news would have been the embodiment of their worst nightmares for their daughter. Also, what Mary had to say next probably didn’t help them feel any better. How would you feel if your teenage daughter hit you with this news and followed it up with a crazy-sounding story about angels and prophecies? I imagine them pacing the floor, rubbing their temples, and asking, “How could this happen?! What were you thinking?!”

At this moment, Anne and Joaquim probably felt their stomach dropping and their mind racing. This is the feeling of their sympathetic nervous system kicking into high gear. The amygdala in their brain was, flooding their bodies with adrenaline to initiate the fight or flight response. If you’ve ever had the experience of someone shocking you with big news, you can probably relate to what they were feeling.

Mary herself seems to have been quite confused by what was going on. The gospel text tells us she was “perplexed” and asking, “How can this be?” This too is a completely understandable reaction, given the circumstances. Here was a teenage kid, in way over her head, with almost no life experience to guide her.

The response I find most interesting is the one that comes from the archangel Gabriel. The first words out of his mouth are, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” In modern language, I like to imagine that this is the equivalent of, “Congratulations!” The next thing Gabriel says is, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” And finally, after explaining the situation, Gabriel ends by saying, “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

While the humans in this moment are understandably perplexed and freaking out, the angel is the only one responding from a calm place of acceptance and hopeful possibilities. 

In scientific terms, this is akin to the wonderful human ability for the prefrontal cortex of our brains to override the baser impulses of our fight/flight system. You’ve probably experienced this as well, such as those moments when some reckless driver cuts you off in traffic and you successfully resist the urge to run them off the road. You remember, in that moment, that you are going seventy miles an hour in a thousand pounds of metal. After an instant of panic, your rational faculties kick back in and you remember that going to jail will not remedy the situation. 

This is how God has designed our brains. We can choose how to respond when circumstances arise that are less than ideal. We can fly off the handle or we can take a deep breath. We can descend to the level of our basic instincts or we can appeal to “the better angels of our nature,” as President Abraham Lincoln so eloquently put it in his inaugural address of 1861.

The astounding truth of this biblical story, which emerges when we look past two thousand years of pious nostalgia, is that God has chosen to save the world through the unplanned pregnancy of an unwed teenage mother. “For nothing will be impossible with God,” as the angel Gabriel has said.

Whether one is talking about teen pregnancy, gun violence, or any other number of social problems that presently plague our society, a common refrain among religious people is that these things are happening because “we’ve kicked God out of our country.” But, if two millennia of Christian theology are to be believed (and I think they are), then this teen pregnancy is the exact place where God has chosen to be most present to our world. This realization should shape the way we choose to respond to pregnant teenagers and any other persons who find themselves in circumstances that are less than ideal. 

One of the collects at Compline, the nighttime office from The Book of Common Prayer, reads as follows: 

“Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

BCP, p. 133

This prayer is immediately followed by the following prayer for mission: 

“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.”

BCP, p. 134

What I love most about these prayers, which are meant to be said just before retiring at night, is how they insist on the presence of God in the most troubling of times and call upon God’s people to participate in the mission of reconciling heaven and earth by caring for each other.

God is most present, not in sweet moments of peace and plenty, but in hard times of want and woe. God comes to us in our hour of need, often through the hands and hearts of caring people, and grows within us. The Divine Word takes on flesh, using the DNA of our own cells, so that we might be the hands and feet of Christ on this Earth. This is the message of Christmas.

The message of Advent, our season of unexpected pregnancy, is to care well for the Christ that grows within us by caring well for the Christ that grows within those around us.

Wherever we go in this life, we find ourselves as divinely favored people in the midst of unfavorable circumstances. We cannot control what happens to us, but we can control how we choose to respond to it. Will we fall prey to the demons of panic and despair? Or will we listen to “the better angels of our nature” and declare, as Gabriel did, that “nothing will be impossible with God”?

I have no doubt that you, during this holiday season, will find yourself in the midst of circumstances that are less than ideal. They may be as major as an unexpected pregnancy, a tragic loss, or a global crisis. On the other hand, they may be as minor as a burnt dinner, a delayed flight, or a traffic jam. Wherever you find yourself this Christmas, I encourage you to listen to “the better angels of your nature” by trusting in God’s presence, caring well for yourselves and each other, and responding to these crises, large or small, with the calm compassion of the archangel Gabriel, saying:

Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you…
Do not be afraid… For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Let It Shine

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon4 Comments

Sermon for Proper 28, Year A.

The text is Matthew 25:14-30.

Our gospel this morning is Jesus’ parable of the talents. It’s a tricky passage because we easily miss several of the subtle cultural cues when we try to read this ancient Middle Eastern document through modern North American eyes. So, instead of beginning this homily with a witty anecdote, I’d like to dive right into the text and retell the story in a more modern setting that gives us a better sense of the emotional vibe that Jesus is going for in this parable.

Imagine with me, if you will, that you are the main character in a gangster movie. I’m talking about movies like The Godfather, Scarface, and The Sopranos. For the younger people here, who probably haven’t seen those movies, I’d like you to imagine the scenes with Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

In this movie, you play the role of a working-class immigrant who sold the family farm in Sicily and began a new life in America. Once here, you fell on hard times and found yourself deep in debt to a local mobster. In order to work off this debt, you are now in the employ of this mafia boss. The problem is that, while you are working off your debt, you have to keep borrowing more money to pay the bills. Therefore, you are stuck in a vicious cycle of never-ending debt that will keep you enslaved to this wealthy mobster for the rest of your life.

Late one evening, you get a call from the boss to meet him in a back alley at midnight. Once you get there, the boss’ limousine pulls up. His consigliere gets out, with a toothpick in his mouth and a fedora pulled down over his eyes.

He opens the back door of the limousine and says, “Get in.”

Obeying, you sit down to find yourself face-to-face with your mafia boss. If you’re imagining the old gangster movies, this guy is the Marlon Brando character; if you’re imagining Star Wars, this guy is Jabba the Hutt. He’s rich, powerful, and very corrupt. If you get on his bad side, he’s the kind of guy who could make you disappear, never to be heard from again. In short: this is not a guy you want to mess around with.

He says to you, “Today’s your lucky day, kid. Some shady deals went bad, so I gotta get outta town and lay low for awhile. I’m leaving you in charge of the business while I’m gone and entrusting you with this.”

He picks up a briefcase and opens it. Inside, the briefcase is filled to the brim with neatly bound stacks of hundred dollar bills. This is more money than you’ve ever seen in your life. It would take you more than twenty years, not including your basic living expenses, to earn this much money.

The boss continues, “I’m holding you personally responsible for every penny in this briefcase. If it’s not here when I get back, I’m gonna send the boys around to bust your kneecaps!”

At this point, you have a difficult decision to make. You can’t refuse the money because the boss has decided you will be responsible for it, whether you want it or not. If you use it to run the boss’ loan shark business, and all goes well, you’ll be able to move up in the organization and might even make enough to someday pay off your debts to the boss. If it doesn’t go well, and you lose the money, you’ll find yourself on the bad side of a very dangerous person. The stakes are extremely high.

As a smart person, you decide you’re not taking any chances with this guy’s money, so you take the briefcase down to the bank, rent a safety deposit box, and leave the briefcase there until the boss gets back. You might not make any money but, by playing it safe, at least you know you won’t lose any either. It seems like the best option, given the circumstances.

I’m retelling the story in this way to create some empathy for the third enslaved person in Jesus’ parable. To the original hearers of this parable, it would have sounded and felt very much like a gangster movie. More than that, they might very well know real-life people to whom this had happened. They would not have blamed the third enslaved person one bit for playing it safe and burying the talent. The stakes were unbelievably high.

The question is this: Why does Jesus tell this story as a symbol for how we are going to build the kind of world we want to live in?

Jesus is being intentionally provocative. To his original listeners, this story would have sounded like the exact opposite of the compassion and justice that Jesus had demonstrated and taught about during his earthly ministry. Why then is he telling this story now? That’s the question his listeners would have been asking.

To answer this question, we need to look at the context in which Jesus originally told this parable.

The parable of the talents appears in the last section of Jesus’ final sermon in Matthew’s gospel. This sermon begins in chapter 23, with Jesus calling out the hypocrisy of religious leaders in his culture. It continues with the second section in chapter 24, where Jesus describes, in very apocalyptic terms, how the old social order (i.e. “the way we’ve always done things”) is no longer sustainable and doomed to eventual failure. In this final section, chapter 25, Jesus tells three parables about how we are going to build a new social order to replace the old failed system. Last week, we read the parable of the bridesmaids, which is about being prepared to welcome the new social reality when it comes. Next week, we will hear the parable of the sheep and the goats, which gets into specifics about what this new community will look like. In this new social reality, which Jesus calls “the kingdom of heaven”, the hungry and thirsty will be fed, the naked will be clothed, and the sick and imprisoned will be cared for. This week, we are reading the parable of the talents, which is about taking risks and making the most of what we’ve been given.

Too often in life, we humans sell ourselves short. We mistake our feelings of insecurity for the truth about who we really are. When we look in the mirror, we see ourselves as weak when, in reality, we are strong. We see ourselves as stupid when, in reality, we are smart. We see ourselves as ugly when, in reality, we are beautiful. Many of us develop these inferiority complexes as coping mechanisms for dealing with fear in an uncertain world.

The problem comes when these psychological programs for safety lead us to degrade ourselves to the point where we reject the treasure we’ve been given in ourselves, instead of using those gifts to build the kind of world we want to live in. Like the frightened character in Jesus’ parable, we bury our talent and comfort ourselves with the belief that we can’t fail if we don’t try. To think like this, according to Jesus, is to have already failed.

As human beings, we cannot refuse the reality of our changing circumstances, nor can we refuse the divine treasure that is in us. If we choose to ignore either of these realities, we will only succeed in excluding ourselves from the new world that God is creating through us.

In 13.8 billion years of cosmic history, there has never before existed a person like you. If we are to believe what Scripture teaches, that each unique person is made in the divine image, then you reflect the glory of God in a way that has never been seen before, and never will be again.

Every aspect of who you are, from your ethnicity to your gender identity, to your sexual orientation, to your disabilities, to your upbringing, to your education, to your skills, to your experiences, even to your traumas and your mistakes, all of these are tools that God has given you for the building of a better world.

Jesus called this better “the kingdom of heaven” and it has nothing to do with the afterlife. (If you don’t believe me, just pay attention later in this liturgy, when we say the Lord’s prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”) The kingdom of heaven is Jesus’ vision of the way this world should be, could be, and will be, in God’s time. It is a world where the power of love overcomes the love of power, where the hungry and thirsty are fed, the naked are clothed, and the sick and imprisoned are cared for.

This kingdom of heaven, Jesus’ vision for the world, is the greatest of all the treasures that God has given us. Some of that treasure has been entrusted to you. What is it? Think about your life, and all the unique things that make you who you are. How might you take those specific gifts and use them for the building up of the kingdom of heaven on earth? That’s your homework assignment for this week.

There’s only one rule: You’re not allowed to say, “Nothing,” or, “I’m nobody special.” The plain fact is that, in all of history, there has never before existed anyone like you. You are the unique product of several billion years of evolutionary success and divine creativity. That’s a fact.

(NOTE: Even if you could somehow prove that you aren’t at all special, that fact alone would make you special, because I’ve never met anyone who isn’t special before.)

Don’t bury your talent; dig it up. I want you to take that treasure within you and use it to make a better world than the one we live in today. I want you to hold it high, for all to see, and I want you to sing with me:

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine!