There is no manuscript this week. Here is my outline:
I. Introduction – “I love Jesus, but sometimes he makes me mad.”
1. “That’s not what I said”
(1) You be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you
(2) I’ll try to be nice to people who aren’t nice to me, but there’s a limit
(3) Be nice to terrorists and racists, approve whatever they do
Being nice doesn’t enter into it
Nice is a tool
(4) Like your enemies
II. What Jesus actually said:
1. “Love your enemies.”
(1) Love is a choice, not a feeling
2. “Turn the other cheek”
(1) Cultural context: Walter Wink
Insult, not injury
Open right hand only
Left hand too degrading (used for sanitation purposes)
Turning face gets nose in the way, assailant liable for damages
Closed hand (fist) reserved for equals
(2) Nonviolent resistance
Make them hit you like an equal
Take the power back, but don’t return violence for violence
III. The heart of the Gospel
1. In a hard world of violence, God loves even harder
(1) Radical love, impractical love, offensive love
2. When humanity turned away from God and fell into sin, God did not turn away from us.
(1) God took on flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ, who taught and demonstrated love in every moment of his life
(2) When the political and religious powers-that-be tried to shut Jesus down, he spoke up and acted out even louder
(3) When that didn’t work, they unleashed all their powers of hate and violence at Jesus in order to silence the voice of love, once and for all
(4) But even that didn’t work, because Love Itself cannot be contained, even by death, which is why Jesus rose from the grave on Easter morning, conquering the power of death, and bursting open the gates of hell from the inside
Easter Sunday is the biggest jailbreak of all time
3. Eucharistic Prayer D in the Book of Common Prayer sums it up beautifully (p. 373)
“When our disobedience took us far from you, you did not abandon us to the power of death. In your mercy you came to our help, so that in seeking you we might find you. Again and again you called us into covenant with you, and through the prophets you taught us to hope for salvation. Holy God, you loved the world so much that in the fullness of time you sent your only Son to be our Savior. Incarnate by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, Jesus lived as one of us, yet without sin. To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation; to prisoners, freedom; to the sorrowful, joy. To fulfill your purpose Jesus gave himself up to death; and, rising from the grave, destroyed death, and made the whole creation new.”
The Book of Common Prayer, p. 373-374
IV. As Gospel people, we ought to love with the same wild and reckless abandon: radical, impractical, offensive
1. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(1) Mother of murdered son, to his murderer:
“I am very full of sorrow. So I am asking you now – come with me to the place where he died, pick up in your hands some of the dust of the place where his body lay, and feel in your world what it is to have lost so much. And then I will ask you one thing more. When you have felt my sadness, I want you to do this. I have so much love, and without my son, that love has nowhere to go. On turning to the policeman she said ‘So I am asking you from now on – you be my son, and I will love you in his place.”
2. On a smaller, more personal/local scale
(1) Nonviolent Communication Strategies (Marshall Rosenberg)
“When you did ____.”
“I felt ____.”
“Because I value/need/want ____.”
“I request that you ____.”
V. Conclusion
“Goodness is stronger than evil, Love is stronger than hate, Light is stronger than darkness, Life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, Victory is ours, Through God who loves us.”
Imagine, if you will, a shrub in the desert: surviving, pelted by sand, scorched by the sun, and praying for rain. Now imagine a tree by a river: well nourished, with deep roots, surrounded by green.
The prophet Jeremiah uses this dual-image to describe two ways of living: the way of self-sufficiency and the way of trust.
In order to understand what Jeremiah means by this, it would be helpful to have a little bit of historical background:
Jeremiah lived about 600 years before the time of Jesus. During his lifetime, the Babylonian Empire had become a regional super-power under the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar.
After a series of military victories, Nebuchadnezzar asserted his dominance over Judean politics by deposing the descendants of King David from the throne and replacing them with Zedekiah, a puppet ruler of his own choosing.
Now, after a while, “King” Zedekiah got a bit too big for his britches. He started listening to a group of so-called prophets who filled his head with nationalistic delusions of grandeur. They told him that, since they were the “chosen people,” they could rise up and throw off the yoke of Babylonian dominance.
In order to accomplish this feat, Zedekiah had entered into secret negotiations with the nation of Egypt to provide military assistance for this coup. Jeremiah warned the king that this would be a very bad idea and would not pan out the way he thought. Jeremiah realized that their national life was founded on their covenant with God. Faithfulness to this way of living would result in peace and prosperity for the people, while unfaithfulness would result in struggle. Jeremiah believed that the current state of Babylonian dominance (to which this puppet king owed his position) was the result of unfaithfulness to the covenant. He advised King Zedekiah and the Judean people to accept the fact of Babylonian rule and improve their situation by focusing on their spiritual lives.
The false prophets, on the other hand, told Zedekiah to rise up against Babylon, that he could rely on supernatural favor to strengthen his hand to do whatever he wanted, simply because they were “the chosen people.” The false prophets got the king’s attention because they told him what he wanted to hear. Meanwhile, Jeremiah got himself arrested and thrown in prison because he dared to speak an inconvenient truth.
In 587 BCE, Jeremiah’s prediction would prove to be correct. The Zedekiah went ahead with his Egyptian alliance and rose up against Nebuchadnezzar. When the Babylonian army showed up to quash the rebellion, the Egyptians turned tail and fled, leaving the Judeans to face the Empire alone. The Babylonian army ransacked Jerusalem, burned the temple to the ground, and hauled the upper-class leaders away into slavery. Jeremiah’s point-of-view was vindicated, but it was a complete disaster for the people, especially those who bought into the king’s nationalistic delusions of grandeur.
This disaster is what Jeremiah was warning the people about when he said:
“Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”
Jeremiah 17:5-6
According to Jeremiah, the way of political maneuvering and raw force would lead only to a shallow and desperate life. A life founded on moral and spiritual principles, on the other hand, would lead to flourishing and peace in time. “Trusting in God” is a longer and more circuitous route, but it leads to a stronger foundation for peace, security, and prosperity. Jeremiah writes about this kind of life:
“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”
Jeremiah 17:7-8
I have encountered the way of the shrub in the desert in my own life. As a parent of teenagers, my kids frequently come to me with big asks: “Can I stay up late? Can I go out with my friends on a school night? Can I have money for this or that thing?” Most of these requests are simple Yes or No questions.
My first instinct is usually to take the authoritarian route and put my foot down with a firm, “No.” When they ask why, I am tempted to respond, “Because I said so.” Of course, when I’m feeling tired or just want to avoid a meltdown, I might take the permissive route and say, “Sure. Fine. Whatever.”
The problem with both of these approaches is that they both keep us on the surface of the conversation. Neither one really digs down to the root of the matter. My wonderful wife is the one who taught me how to slow down and ask the deeper questions about the kids’ needs. Instead of snapping to Yes or No, I have gradually been learning how to pause and say, “What’s going on? What about this is important to you?” We often end up listening, negotiating, and compromising before reaching a final decision.
I find that it takes more time and more work, but the rewards are greater because it helps me to really pay attention to my kids as human beings, understanding their unique needs, hopes, and fears. In the end, we still have to come to a Yes or No decision, but how we get there is at least as important as the answer itself.
The way of the shrub in the desert, like the way of the quick Yes or No, is a life turned in on itself. Grounded in one’s ability to exert control, it has shallow roots, clinging desperately to the dry sand and praying for rain to come.
We can see examples of this kind of shallow existence all around us. We spend hours on our devices, seeking quick validation from the number of likes on our posts and getting angrier and angrier about the news fed to us in echo chambers of social media. At work, we climb the corporate ladder without regard for who gets stepped on. In the economy, we seek instant gratification with fast fashion and planned obsolescence. In politics, we treat democracy like a spectator sport, alternately cheering and jeering, depending on which party is temporarily on top. All of these are examples of the “shrub-mentality,” and all of us participate in it, at least sometimes. The shrub-mentality not inherently evil, but it is shallow and brittle.
The way of the tree by the river, on the other hand, is a life nourished by deeply-rooted connection. It takes more time and more work to cultivate, but our patience pays off in greater resilience and flexibility. Jeremiah’s vision of the tree by the river is an image of the abundant life that God intends for all people. The way to this life is neither quick nor easy, but the journey is worthwhile.
As members of a faith community, we have been given a particular set of “gardening tools” for cultivating the life that God intends.
First, we have our core values, like faith, hope, and love (see I Corinthians 13). When we consciously identify these values and say them out loud, we set ourselves on the path to fulfilling them. They are, if you will, the “seeds” we plant in our spiritual garden.
Next, we have our spiritual practices, like prayer, worship, service, and especially the Scriptures and the Sacraments. These are like the spades, rakes, hoes, and watering cans that we use to help the “seeds” grow. The more we make use of them, the healthier our garden will be.
Finally, we have each other. As the old adage goes: “Many hands make light work.” Mutual relationships of care, support, and accountability are like the richly tilled soil in which our garden grows. The work is long and hard, but it becomes more doable when we do it together.
Kindred in Christ, the question that the prophet Jeremiah puts before us today is this: “How deep are our roots?”
Are we clinging to the surface, hoping for rain, like a shrub in the desert? Or are we watering the seeds of our core values, tilling the soil of mutual relationships, and using the tools of our spiritual practices?
That tree by the river can be you. That tree can be us: Deeply rooted, with green leaves, and branches full of fruit. Even in the midst of struggle, we can continue to live the life that God intends for us: A community rooted, connected, and flourishing.
One of the many things I love about our liturgy in The Episcopal Church is our lectionary. For those who may be newer to our church: the lectionary is a cycle of prescribed Scripture readings that repeats every three years. Whether you attend St. Mark’s, Coldwater or St. Stephen’s Church in Durham, North Carolina, every Episcopal congregation in the country will be hearing the same readings that Sunday. I think that’s a neat way for us to stay connected to each other.
The other benefit of our lectionary is that it gives us a very thorough and robust diet of Scripture to mentally digest during our Sunday worship. Each week, we have four readings: one from the Hebrew Scriptures (a.k.a. the Old Testament) or the Acts of the Apostles, a Psalm, an Epistle, and a Gospel. The fact that we read so much of the Bible in each service keeps us preachers accountable to the whole witness of Scripture and prevents us from preaching the same sermon, over and over again, based on our favorite few verses.
My usual practice for sermons is to pick one of the readings in a given week and focus my message on that particular text. Most of the time, that helps me stay focused and allows me to delve deep into one reading, rather than trying to force a connection between all four readings. This week, however, I’m going to break my usual rule.
When I was looking over the readings for this Sunday, a repeated theme jumped out at me from three of the four readings. That theme is the felt sense of inadequacy. I found the theme of inadequacy in the readings from Isaiah 6, I Corinthians 15, and Luke 5.
In our first reading, the prophet Isaiah experiences a mystical vision of God during a time of political upheaval. The passage begins: “In the year that King Uzziah died.” The death of a king was always a fraught period in the ancient world. The power vacuum left by the former king was often contested by rival claimants to the throne. The people held their breath while they waited for the administrative dust to settle. They probably wondered things like, “What kind of ruler would this new king be? Would he uphold their sacred traditions? Would the people have peace and prosperity during his reign?”
It is during such a time of upheaval that Isaiah writes, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne.” I think that detail is significant: the old king was dead, but the throne was not empty. The people may have felt uncertain about the immediate future, but their ultimate destiny was secure, not because of their political leaders, but because God remains eternally on the throne of the universe. This is a thought that can continue to comfort us today.
In the midst of this vision, the prophet Isaiah is overwhelmed by the sight of divine glory. He says, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts!” Standing in the presence of God, Isaiah is overcome by the felt sense of his own inadequacy and insignificance.
St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians in our Epistle reading this morning, talks about experiencing a different kind of inadequacy. He writes, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” For Paul, his experience of inadequacy comes from the guilt he feels over his past actions. Earlier in his life, Paul had been part of a systematic attempt by the authorities to wipe out the Christian faith. He had hunted and killed Christians in the same way that Nazi officers had gone door-to-door in search of Jews during the Holocaust. To imagine what Paul must have been feeling, imagine a Gestapo officer ripping the swastika armband off his uniform and asking, “What have I done?” Paul’s felt sense of inadequacy says to him, “What you’ve done is so horrible, so irredeemable, you can’t possibly hope to play any part in God’s plan for this world.”
In today’s Gospel, St. Peter (a.k.a. Simon) experiences his own sense of inadequacy when Jesus borrows his boat to use as a pulpit. After the sermon, Jesus tells Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon, a career fisherman taking advice from a carpenter, is skeptical at first, but eventually goes along with the suggestion. When the nets come back up, overfull to the point of breaking, Simon is dumbstruck by someone who knows how to do his job much better than he does. As an amateur guitar player, I’ve had that experience when listening to professional musicians who can play circles around me. Whatever skill or talent you may have, you’ve probably met someone who is much better at it than you are, and felt completely inadequate. Simon, when he saw how full the nets were, fell down on his knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
All three of these biblical figures, Isaiah, Paul, and Simon, experienced a felt sense of inadequacy because of the enormity of their situation, shame for their past actions, and the limitations of their own abilities.
In that sense, they are not that different from you or me. Who among us has not felt overwhelmed by the state of the world? Who among us has never felt regret for our past actions? Who among us does not occasionally get overshadowed by a talent much greater than our own? All of us have been there, at one time or another.
The conventional wisdom of pop psychology and self-help books encourages us to repress these feelings of inadequacy by “staying positive” and allowing “good vibes only” in our thinking. The problem with this approach is that, if we ignore the voice of inadequacy, it just shouts louder than before. We end up self-sabotaging our lives, jobs, and relationships in our attempts to prove that voice wrong. We transform ourselves into egotistical poseurs or delicate wallflowers in our efforts to numb the pain that says, “You’re not good enough.”
The Gospel, on the other hand, offers us a different solution than the one suggested by the strategy of repression. In Isaiah’s case, an angel takes a burning coal and presses it to his lips, the very part of himself that he had bemoaned as “unclean.” Fire is a blacksmith’s tool that has been used, since ancient times, to purify metal and temper steel. The angel says to the prophet, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” In Simon’s case, Jesus calls the man into a new and deeper dimension of his profession, not as a fisherman but as an apostle. “Do not be afraid,” Jesus says, “from now on you will be catching people.” In Paul’s case, the experience of God’s grace leads him to find his identity, not in the sum of his past mistakes, but in the unconditional love of God. Paul writes, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.”
The Word of God transforms the inadequate feelings of Isaiah, Paul, and Simon, not by ignoring or going around them, but by embracing and moving through them. The voice of our inner critic tells the truth, but not the whole truth, about who we are in the eyes of God. God looks at us with unconditional love and teaches us how to view ourselves with compassion, courage, and curiosity. Each and every one of us is greater than the sum of our mistakes, inadequacies, and feelings of overwhelm.
There is, deep in our heart of hearts, a calm center where Christ sits on the throne, seeing and guiding all with wisdom and love. This calm center is who we truly are. As we sit next to Christ on the throne, he teaches us how to see ourselves and our world as he sees it. Using the tools he gives us in our spiritual exercises, we grow in self-awareness and self-compassion. In time, that inner transformation begins to leak outside and influence the world around us. Under the influence of grace, the concerned citizen becomes a prophet, the Nazi persecutor becomes a theologian, and the fisherman becomes an apostle.
This is the work of God’s amazing grace in our lives. If we let it, God’s grace can change the way we see ourselves and lead us out from there to change the world. Amen.
The other day, I realized something unusual about narcissism: It’s the only illness in the world that you’re happy to have.
This is true: Psychologists don’t even do clinical tests for narcissism anymore; they just ask, “Are you a narcissist?” If they say, “Yes,” believe them! That doesn’t happen with any other disease. Can you imagine someone coming back from the doctor like, “What’s got two thumbs and Stage IV Cancer? This guy!” It just doesn’t make sense.
Clinical narcissists, on the other hand, lack the basic self-awareness to realize that their condition is debilitating. They are so pathologically focused on their own needs, they don’t even realize it’s a problem. They act like the biggest jerks while pretending to be the greatest person who has ever lived. They wind up alone when what they really want is to be loved.
Very few people are narcissists at the clinical level, but all of us have that tendency within us. We all have moments of selfishness. So, before I go labeling other people as narcissists, I need to take a look in the mirror and realize: Sometimes it’s me.
What I miss, when I’m acting selfish, is the fundamental truth that I cannot create a full and meaningful life for myself if my only goal is to create a full and meaningful life for myself. My life, and yours, only has meaning when we look at it in context, as one small part of a greater whole. That fundamental truth resides at the heart of today’s gospel.
Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation. In today’s gospel, we heard about the infant Jesus undergoing the Jewish rite of Pidyon Haben, also known as, “Redemption of the Firstborn.” This custom, commanded in the Torah (see Exodus 13, Numbers 3:40-51), serves a reminder to the Jewish people that our lives are not our own, but belong to Adonai our God. Forty days after the birth of a firstborn male baby, the parents would present themselves, with the child, in the Jerusalem Temple. In ancient times, they would offer an animal sacrifice or monetary donation as a symbolic payment for the child, who belongs to God.
When the infant Jesus underwent this ritual, two mysterious elders appeared, Anna and Simeon, who began to proclaim wondrous things about this child’s Messianic destiny as “the consolation of Israel” and “the redemption of Jerusalem.” Joseph and Mary came to present their baby at the Temple, according to custom, but they left with something much greater: confirmation that this baby was the long-expected Messiah of the Jewish people.
Human sacrifice, as we typically understand that term, has never been a normative practice of Jewish or Christian religion. It was fairly common, however, in various cultures during biblical times. When God initially commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac in Genesis 22, it would have seemed normal to people in the Ancient Near East. They would say, “Yeah, that’s what gods do: They demand that you sacrifice your children in exchange for prosperity.” It seemed normal to them. The shocking part of that story, for the people of that time, is the part where Abraham’s God stops the sacrifice before it happens. This would have seemed like a revolutionary new idea to them. Later on, in the New Testament era, St. Paul continued this line of thinking in his epistle to the Romans: “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).
The term “sacrifice,” as understood in the Jewish and Christian traditions, is not about physical killing. The Latin roots of the word, sacra ficia, literally mean “to make holy.” When something is sacrificed, its individual existence takes on new meaning in the context of a greater whole. That is exactly what happened with the infant Jesus in today’s gospel, and it is what happens with all of us when we are called upon to make sacrifices in our own lives.
In our liturgy of the Eucharist, we have a regular part called, “The Offertory.” In some churches, they call it, “passing the plate.” In practical terms, this is where we all chip in to keep the lights on and programs running at the church, but it’s also much more than that. The spiritual meaning of the Offertory is that we are presenting the fruits of our life and labor to the Lord, who is the original source of these good gifts. In some parishes, it is still common practice for the people to say together the words of I Chronicles 29:14 when the Offering is presented at the altar: “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.”
More important than the collection plate are the elements of bread and wine, which are brought to the altar at this time. Wheat and grapes are fruits of the Earth, which have been shaped by human labor into bread and wine. Our monetary offerings are a symbolic addendum to these primary elements. Really, it is the Earth itself, and our own selves, that we place on the altar as a living sacrifice to God. Standing in the place of Christ, the priest receives these offerings, blesses and consecrates them, and offers them back to us as the Body and Blood of Christ, which we then receive into our own bodies. In this act of Communion, we come into a deeper awareness of the true meaning of our lives. Because of the wheat and the grapes, we are in Communion with the Earth; because they have been shaped into bread and wine, we are in Communion with all human labor; because all people are welcome around this altar, rich and poor, black and white, male and female, gay and straight, cis and trans, Republican and Democrat, native and immigrant, we are in Communion with each other; because these consecrated elements are the Body and Blood of Christ, we are in Communion with God.
Dieticians are fond of saying to their patients, “You are what you eat.” This statement is never more true than when you come forward to receive Communion in Church. Whenever I administer Communion, I always give an opportunity for eye-contact (NOTE: Some people are not comfortable with that, and that’s perfectly okay; just know that it’s there, if you want it). I hold up the consecrated host between us and say, “The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven.” Notice that I do not say, “Thisis the Body of Christ,” but just, “The Body of Christ.” Question: Am I talking about the bread or the person whose eyes I am looking into? It’s intentionally ambiguous. The answer, of course, is, “Both.” You are what you eat.
Through this act of sacrifice, we too are “made holy” and sent forth to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. We say, in our Post-Communion Prayer, “Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image and nourishing us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood. Now send us forth a people, forgiven, healed, renewed; that we may proclaim your love to the world and continue in the risen life of Christ our Savior.”
What we receive back, in Communion, is infinitely greater than that which we give up. We offer bread and wine; we receive Christ’s Body and Blood. We offer ourselves; we receive God. Our lives take on new meaning when we set aside our narcissistic desires and see them instead as part of the greater whole.
Kindred in Christ, I invite you this day to consider your lives from a Eucharistic point-of-view. When you gather with your neighbors around this altar to receive the Sacrament, meditate on these words of St. Paul in Scripture: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). “Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ” (BCP 372), overcoming our narcissistic tendencies, petty squabbles, and unhappy divisions. May we, through Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, come to understand our individual lives as parts of the greater whole of God’s life. And, in so doing, may we become the fulfillment of Christ’s prayer, that we all “may be one, as [he and his Father] are one” (John 17:22).
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 