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).
In the 2001 movie Shrek, the titular ogre tries to explain to his friend, the donkey, how ogres are complex beings.
“Ogres are like onions,” says he.
The donkey replies, “Why? Because you smell bad?”
Shrek: “No.”
Donkey: “Because you make people cry?”
Shrek: “No… because we both have layers. Onions have layers; ogres have layers. You get it.”
Just like ogres and onions, today’s gospel also has layers. Specifically, it has three layers: Jesus, Isaiah, and Jubilee. We are going to have to unpack each of those layers in order to fully appreciate what Jesus is saying in this passage of Scripture.
In the first layer, we have Jesus preaching a sermon at the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. This would have been very exciting for the people of that town. Many of our parishioners at St. Mark’s will remember the late Bishop Tom Shaw, who grew up in this parish and later became a monk, a priest, and a bishop in The Episcopal Church. We still keep a candle burning in his memory between the pulpit and the altar. Imagine how exciting it would be for Bishop Shaw to come back and say Mass here, at the parish church where he grew up. That’s how big a deal it would have been for the people of Nazareth when Jesus came home to preach.
This story is also a big deal in the gospel according to Luke because the author uses it as Jesus’ inaugural address at the beginning of his ministry. In the same way that a president’s inaugural address sets the tone for that president’s term of office, this sermon is Luke’s way of setting the tone for the rest of Jesus’ ministry.
So, what is the tone that Luke is trying to set? To understand that, we need to look at the second layer of this passage: Isaiah.
The passage of Scripture that Jesus read in the synagogue comes from the book of Isaiah, chapter 61. The prophet, in this section of Isaiah, is writing to the Jewish people as they return from a half-century of exile. In 587 BCE, the Babylonians invaded the southern kingdom of Judah and hauled their leaders away as slaves. During the next 50 years, the Babylonians tried to do to the Jewish people what white settlers did to indigenous tribes in North America: They displaced the people from their homeland and tried to erase their culture by outlawing the speaking of their language and the practice of their religion.
Thankfully, the early Jews resisted this attempt at forced assimilation. They pushed back against their enslavers, wrote down their ancestral stories in the Torah, taught those stories to their children, and went on strike once a week, on the Sabbath, to remind themselves and their captors that they were not the property of the Babylonians, but beloved children of God. After two generations of resistance, the Persians conquered the Babylonians and allowed the Jews to return home and rebuild.
Isaiah 61 was written as the Jews were beginning that process of rebuilding after the Babylonian Exile. During this time, the people were looking for some kind of inspiration to guide them in that process. The prophet provided that inspiration by looking even further back into Israel’s history. When Isaiah talks about “good news to the poor,” “release to the captives,” and “the year of the Lord’s favor,” he is talking about the year of Jubilee, which leads us to the third and final layer of this story.
The year of Jubilee was prescribed as one of God’s laws in the Torah. It appears in chapter 25 of the book of Leviticus. According to this law, there was to be a general amnesty of debts, once every fifty years. All debts would be forgiven, all enslaved people would be freed, and all land would return to its original owners. Practically, this would mean doing a hard reset on the economy. It would interrupt patterns of generational poverty and allow a fresh start, so that grandchildren were not still paying for the mistakes of their grandparents. Spiritually, the year of Jubilee communicated to the ancient Israelites that their God was a God of fresh starts and new beginnings. The God of Israel is, not just a God of law, but also a God of mercy. Compassion and forgiveness were established as foundational principles in the Torah, which is why Isaiah pointed to them as foundational principles of the new society that Jews were rebuilding after their return from slavery and exile in Babylon. The people had just been through a horrible period of collective trauma, so the prophet wanted to ensure that their new society would be a safe place to heal from that trauma. That’s why Isaiah pointed to the year of Jubilee as the model for what this new society would look like. The ancient prophet Isaiah understood what the 21st century prophet, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, also understood: that “there is no future without forgiveness.”
This brings us back to the first layer of our story: the layer of Jesus. Jesus appeals to the prophet Isaiah, who appeals to the year of Jubilee, to establish the fact that the foundational principle of God’s kingdom on Earth is the principle of mercy.
Mercy is the driving force behind everything that Jesus says and does. He demonstrated mercy by healing the sick and feeding the hungry. He showed mercy by welcoming tax collectors and sinners. He taught mercy by saying, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7) and “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). Finally, Jesus embodied mercy in his death on the cross, praying for his executioners, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
The reason why the author of Luke’s gospel has Jesus quote this passage from Isaiah, who refers to the year of Jubilee, in his first sermon, is to establish the fact that mercy is foundational principle of Jesus’ ministry on Earth. Therefore, if mercy is the driving principle behind Jesus’ ministry, then it ought to be the driving principle behind the Church’s mission as well.
Mercy is, and ought to be, an unsettling topic. Mercy takes away any sense of power from those who need and receive it. Mercy is shocking to those who still cling to their illusions of control. Mercy is offensive to the self-righteous, but, in the words of the late author (and Episcopalian) Rachel Held Evans, “What makes the gospel offensive is not who it keeps out, but who it lets in.”
Scripture and history are rife with examples of people for whom the mercy of Jesus became the central fact of their life. St. Paul the Apostle was transformed, by God’s mercy, from a persecutor of the Church to its first theologian. He writes, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain” (I Corinthians 15:9-10). In the same way, the Rev. John Newton, who began his career as the captain of a slave ship, later experienced the mercy of God, repented of his sin, and became an Anglican priest. He dedicated the remainder of his life to ending the Atlantic slave trade and penned the most famous hymn in all of Christian history: “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”
According to Luke, in today’s gospel, mercy lies at the heart of everything Jesus does, therefore it ought to lie at the heart of everything the Church does in his Name. As receivers and conduits of God’s mercy, we are, and ought to be, the “Amazing Grace People.” The world ought to look at us with shock and awe when they see how indiscriminately we lavish the mercy of God upon those who deserve it least. As sinners, saved by grace, we ought to be offensive in our witness to the mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Mercy was the driving force behind the year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25; mercy was the foundational principle of the new society that the prophet was rebuilding in Isaiah 61; mercy was the theme of Jesus’ ministry in the gospel according to Luke; and mercy is the Church’s reason for existing today.
Kindred in Christ, we have opened the Scriptures and examined Church history to wrap our minds and hearts around this overarching theme of God’s mercy. One question still remains: Where does this leave us, today? Will we be Christians or not? Will we risk everything to be conduits of God’s shocking and offensive mercy or not?
Thankfully, because of you “Amazing Grace People,” I don’t have to look very far to find an answer to that question.
Last Friday, I had the privilege of touring and speaking with the staff of Tommy’s House, which you may already know as a transitional residence for women recovering from the disease of addiction. The director of Tommy’s House, a parishioner in our congregation, explained to me how Tommy’s House provides a safe and supportive environment for its residents, helps them get back on their feet, and empowers them to begin new lives, beyond the shackles of chemical dependency.
During the tour, one of the staff members (who had previously been a resident in their program), asked me, “Why is it that, wherever we go, we always find that it’s the Episcopal churches in a city that open their doors to our Twelve Step recovery meetings?”
What a great question! There are two answers.
First, Episcopalians were there when the Twelve Steps were invented. Bill Wilson, the original author of the Twelve Steps, had a spiritual mentor named Fr. Samuel Shoemaker, who was an Episcopal priest. Bill W. often referred to Fr. Shoemaker as “the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.” Fr. Shoemaker, of course, denied this allegation and gave full credit back to Bill. The fact remains, however, that The Episcopal Church was there when it happened and continues to be recognized as a safe space for Twelve Step recovery meetings.
The second, and more spiritually significant, reason why Episcopal churches are frequently known as reliable hosts for AA and NA meetings is because we are an “Amazing Grace People.” We believe that God is a God of second chances. We understand that a finite sinner cannot out-sin the mercy of an infinite God, therefore we are “the Amazing Grace People.”
Friends, I send you into the world this week in full assurance of the infinite mercy of God, which easily overwhelms the finite number of your sins. May the mercy of God be the foundation of your new life, from this day forward, just as it was for Isaiah, Jesus, and all who continue to minister in his holy Name. And “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all evermore. Amen” (II Corinthians 13:14).
I wrote the following book review for my diocesan magazine in late 2023. Reposting now because of the increased interest in Bishop Budde’s book.
Edgar Budde, Mariann. How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith.(New York: Avery, Penguin Random House LLC, 2023)
How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith is the third and most recent book by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Mariann Edgar Budde, the ninth and current bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. Published earlier this year, this book was inspired by the teargassing of protesters to make room for a political photo-op outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020. This event, and the ecclesiastical response to it, propelled Bishop Budde and The Episcopal Church into the center of public attention for the first time since Presiding Bishop Michael Curry preached at the royal wedding of 2018.
The book begins with an account of the events of June 1 from Bishop Budde’s point-of-view. After the initial retelling, the author occasionally refers to the events of that day, but the main thrust of the book has significantly more breadth and depth. As the title indicates, this is not a book about political grandstanding; it is a book about bravery.
Part memoir, part history, and part theological treatise, this book focuses on the virtue of courage as a choice that we make. Bishop Budde writes:
Decisive moments involve conscious choice, impressing their importance upon us as we experience them, for we know that we’re choosing a specific path of potential consequence. In a decisive moment, no matter how we got there, we no longer see ourselves as being acted upon by the slings and arrows of fortune or fate, but as ones with agency. We’re not on autopilot; we’re not half-engaged. We are, as they say, all in, shapers of our destiny, and cocreators with God. (xviii)
Across the chapters that follow, Bishop Budde explores the various kinds of decisions to which the virtue of courage may call us. There are chapters on Deciding to Go, Deciding to Stay, Deciding to Start, Accepting What You Do Not Choose, Stepping Up to the Plate, The Inevitable Letdown, and The Hidden Virtue of Perseverance.
Each chapter includes an autobiographical vignette and an historical profile to illustrate the particular theme. While the book is intended for a larger audience, the author does not shy away from biblical, liturgical, and theological references particular to Christians. Most (though not all) of the historical profiles are of prominent Episcopalians whose names are easily recognizable, even though their Episcopal faith may not be as widely-known. Historical examples include Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Jonathan Myrick Daniels, and the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Contemporary Episcopal voices cited by the author include Dr. Brené Brown, the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, and Rachel Held Evans. The author makes a special point of highlighting examples from the lives of women and people of color.
When it comes to the autobiographical sections, the author does not shy away from experiences of personal failure and disappointment. This spiritual reflection on the virtue of courage is not a self-congratulatory polemic. There are many times in life when courage calls us to take responsibility for our mistakes. Bishop Budde describes personal experiences of such moments with an abundance of honesty and humility.
My primary criticism of the book is a relatively small and forgivable one. There are times when the several examples of historic Episcopalians come across as advertisements for our denomination. As a reader, it seemed like the author was implying, “Look at all these cool Episcopalians! Don’t you want to be one too?” A greater religious diversity among historical examples would have decreased my sense of evangelistic pressure and increased the book’s appeal to a wider audience. That being said, I think this fault is minor because the Episcopalians the author cites are indeed examples of the virtue she is expounding. Furthermore, since the author is an Episcopal bishop, I can’t really blame her for wanting to highlight the denomination she serves.
All in all, I think this book will appeal to parish book groups and individuals looking for personal development. Its language is accessible to readers without a theological education and its spiritual dimension is broad enough to include people who do not identify as religious. Finally, though I must admit some personal bias on this point, I think this book would be an excellent choice for Episcopalians in the process of discernment and formation for ordained ministry.
Courage, like love, is more choice than feeling. We blaze the trail of God’s call by putting one foot in front of the other, falling down, getting up, changing direction, and starting again. How We Learn to Be Brave gives ample inspiration, encouragement, and guidance for that process.
“The key to the perfect wedding day is imperfection.”
That’s the one piece of advice I give to every couple who asks me to officiate their wedding. So long as both parties arrive at the ceremony safely, say their vows in front of an officiant and witnesses, and sign the license, it qualifies as a successful wedding. Everything else is extra. You can bank on some kind of hiccup with the DJ, the catering, or the dress. At my own wedding, the pre-recorded entrance music cut out while my wife was still halfway down the aisle, so she had to walk the rest of the way in silence. It was still a lovely day and a successful wedding.
In biblical times, however, things weren’t so simple. Weddings back then were week-long affairs that involved the entire town. The ceremony was a reaffirmation of the social bonds that held their community together; the couple served as a sacred symbol of God’s covenant with the people of Israel.
Furthermore, wine itself was an important symbol of blessing and joy, so it’s absence would have undoubtedly be interpreted as a bad omen for the new couple.
Running out of wine during such an auspicious occasion would have brought permanent shame on the family. This level of shame, more than mere embarrassment, would lead to the entire family being cut off from the community and not allowed to participate as functioning members of society. The closest thing our culture has to this kind of shaming is when a celebrity gets ‘cancelled’ for acting inappropriately with staff or fans. The difference is that the stakes were much higher: Firstly, because the people involved were regular, working-class folks and, secondly, because the bar for getting ‘cancelled’ was much lower than it is today. The shame of running out of wine at a wedding would have absolutely ruined the family involved.
Knowing this cultural background helps us understand the urgency in Mary’s voice when she informs Jesus, “They have no wine.”
Jesus’ curt response, then, seems shocking: “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you?”
This is a sentence that requires some explanation. At first glance, it sounds rude and dismissive, like a teenager who has just been asked to clean his room (“Ugh… whatever, bruh!”), but a careful examination of the language reveals a very different tone.
First of all, the term “woman” was a term of respect, much like “ma’am” or “madam” would be today. Since our culture uses different words for respect, I would personally not recommend calling your wife, partner, or mother, “woman.” (If you would like to test this hypothesis for yourself, I invite you to do so, and I will happily come to visit you in the hospital afterward.)
Second of all, the comment “what concern is that to me and to you” is meant to be more reassuring than dismissive. If Jesus had been Australian, he might have said, “No worries, mate!” In America, we might say, “No problem. Piece o’ cake!” That phrase is used in other parts of Scripture when a minor issue does not present a barrier to a relationship between two people. In essence, what Jesus is saying here is, “Don’t worry, ma’am. Everything is fine.”
Of course, this response is also shocking, albeit in a different way. Given what we just learned about weddings and wine in ancient Galilee, it would have been perfectly understandable if Mary had said, “What do mean, Jesus?! Everything is not fine! This is a real crisis!” But Mary doesn’t do that. Instead, she calmly turns to the servants and says, “Do whatever he tells you.”
The rest of the story plays out as we read it in today’s gospel. The servants follow Jesus’ instructions and a miraculous transformation ensues. Symbolically, the joy and abundance of life is restored to an even greater level than where it was before.
I’d like to think that I would have the same quiet confidence as Mary during a catastrophe, but I’m not 100% sure that I would. (Then again, maybe that’s why God chose her, instead of me, to be Jesus’ mother.) I’ve been known to indulge in more than my fair share of “doom-scrolling.” Like so many of us, I frequently feel overwhelmed by the crushing pressure of crises, in my life and in the world, that I can do nothing to fix. Mary’s plea to Jesus, “They have no wine,” has often escaped my own lips as a cry for justice, freedom, or hope, sometimes for others and sometimes for myself. When I imagine Jesus telling me, “Don’t worry, sir, everything is fine,” I want to shout back at him, “No it isn’t! We’re in a real crisis, here!”
It is then, when I find myself in times of trouble, that I need Mother Mary to come to me, speaking words of wisdom: “Do whatever he tells you.”
When I hear those words from Mary, I think of the things that Jesus has always told everyone to do: Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give to the poor, welcome the stranger and the outcast, visit the sick and incarcerated, and love your neighbor as yourself. There is so much wrong in this world that I have no power to fix or control. What I do have power over is my own choices. I can choose to give in to despair and cynicism, or I can choose to be the kind of person that Jesus was by doing the kinds of things that Jesus told me to do.
The popular author (and dedicated Episcopalian) Brené Brown refers to this power-to-choose as “micro-dosing hope.” She says:
“I have no access to big hope right now, however, I am asking myself how I can support the people around me. The people on my team, in my community. How can I make sure that, in the maelstrom of my emotions, I stay committed to courage, kindness, and caring for others regardless of the choices made by others? Doing the smallest next right thing is hard, but sometimes it’s all we’ve got.”
There is a particular community of Christians that has been practicing this principle for more than a millennium: the Benedictine Order of monks and nuns. They were founded in the early sixth century by St. Benedict of Nursia as a community committed to round-the-clock prayer. Every three hours, starting in the middle of the night, they would stop whatever they were doing and chant psalms in the church. Their practice forms the basis for the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, which we use in The Episcopal Church today.
The Benedictine commitment to a life of prayer also opened their hearts to the practice of radical hospitality. Whenever strangers would present themselves at the monastery gates, the monks and nuns would welcome them as if it was Christ himself knocking at their door.
Over a thousand years later, the monks and nuns of the Order of St. Benedict continue to live by their rule of prayer and hospitality. In fact, they have a community just 30 minutes away from here by car: St. Gregory’s Abbey of Three Rivers. This small group of Episcopalians has lived by the Rule of St. Benedict since their founding in 1939. [NOTE: Your current rector is an oblate of St. Gregory’s Abbey. If you would like to know what that means, please feel free to ask me after the service or stop by my office sometime.]
This dual-commitment to prayer and hospitality led the Benedictines to establish sustainable communities with adequate food, shelter, healthcare, and education. The stability of the monasteries made it possible for the Benedictines to preserve the cultural treasures of Western Europe, even as the Roman Empire was collapsing around them.
The entire goal of Benedictine monasticism is to become the kind of person that Jesus was by doing the things that Jesus told people to do. The monks did not set out to save civilization, but the miracle is that they ended up doing so, almost by accident.
This historical example presents us with a possibility for how we too might transform “water into wine” by putting the teachings of Jesus into practice in our own lives. Beyond voting in elections and writing letters to our elected officials (both of which we should absolutely be doing), there is little we can do to directly effect the biggest problems of the world. We can, however, “do whatever Jesus tells us” by putting into practice the things he taught his disciples. We can take care of each other and the most vulnerable people in our community by feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, sheltering the homeless, welcoming the outcast, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Each of us can choose to be the kind of person that Jesus was.
This, I believe, is the secret for making it through tough times. In the days to come, I pray that each of us (myself included) will understand the reassuring words of Jesus: “Don’t worry ma’am/sir/friend, everything is fine.” I pray that each of us (myself especially) will heed the advice of Mary: “Do whatever he tells you.” I pray, most of all, that we will become the kind of people that Jesus was: Transforming the water of crisis into the wine of hope.
May it be so. And “may the God of peace give us peace at all times in all ways” (II Thessalonians 3:16).
That is St. John the Baptist’s message to the people in today’s gospel.
Allow me to explain:
Judea, in the time of John the Baptist, was a very tense place to live. Approximately 170 years before John’s time, about as long ago as the American Civil War is from our time, a revolutionary hero named Judas Maccabee overthrew a foreign tyrant who had tried to forcibly eradicate Jewish culture. For the next century, the Jewish people enjoyed a period of semi-independence under the leadership of the Maccabee family, known as the Hasmonean dynasty. Over time, the Hasmoneans themselves became entrenched in their power and gradually fell out of favor with the people. When the Romans conquered the region, they hand-picked King Herod and his sons to be puppet rulers who, while powerful due to their allegiance to Rome, were almost universally despised by the common people.
In their vexation, the Jewish people remembered the golden days of Kings David and Solomon, when Israel was prosperous and free. They dreamed of a future time when God would send an “Anointed One” (Heb. Mashiach/Messiah; Gk. Christos/Christ) who would liberate the nation from foreign domination and restore the people to spiritual purity.
When John the Baptist started his movement in the Judean countryside, people began to get excited. He was a priest, by lineage, but he didn’t act like any other priest they knew. He was young, charismatic, and energetic (though some wondered, “What’s up with that hair?”). Most of all, he was unafraid to speak his mind and call out the corruption he saw in the ruling elites. As word spread and this grassroots movement picked up speed, the people began to speculate that John might be the anointed leader they had been hoping for.
This scene is an excellent example of the psychological concept of transference. Transference is what happens when people project their own hopes or fears onto another person. If you’ve ever fallen in love, then you know what I’m talking about. You spend all day thinking about this person and will gush about them to anyone who asks: “Oh, they’re so wonderful; they’re so perfect; they’re my whole world; they’re my everything!” If you’ve never had that experience yourself, just listen to love songs on the radio and I promise you: You’ll hear it. The way infatuated people sometimes talk about their beloved almost makes that person seem like some kind of deity.
We don’t just do this with our romantic partners; we do it with political and religious leaders too. Parishioners or constituents think a particular leader embodies everything right (or everything wrong) with the world. Once again, our projections elevate a person to the level of a deity (or a demon) in our own eyes. Neither of these things is true, of course. Our partners, presidents, and priests are neither angels nor devils. They are ordinary human beings, fabulous and flawed, just like the rest of us.
The problem with projecting our hopes and fears onto others is twofold. First, as I already said, it stops us from seeing them as real human beings, which they are. Second, projecting onto others prevents us from doing our own inner work of self-awareness and self-improvement.
Let’s try an exercise: To find out where you are making projections in your own life, I invite you to think about someone who brings up big feelings for you. Please don’t say any names out loud (especially if that person is sitting next to you). This is just between you and God.
This could be anyone…
The feelings could be good or bad…
Think about what qualities, in that person, evoke these big feelings in you…
Now (and this is where you have to be very honest), ask yourself: “Where do I see those same qualities in myself?”
When we project our feelings onto other people, we unconsciously assume (in the case of positive projections): “If I could just be in a relationship with this person, or elect that candidate, or attend this church, then I would automatically possess the qualities I admire in them.”
Conversely, in the case of negative projections, we unconsciously assume: “If I could just get rid of this partner, president, or priest, or if I could somehow fix them, then I would no longer have to be reminded of the things I don’t like about myself.” That’s the danger that comes with projecting our feelings about ourselves onto other people.
Of course, the same thing holds true when other people project their feelings onto us. Sometimes, their projections help us to see something we need to work on in ourselves. But other times, all we can do is step back, take a deep breath, and say, “It’s not about me.”
Other people are neither angels nor demons; they’re just people. Of course, it’s perfectly normal to have opinions about them, to agree or disagree with them, and work together to solve problems in our relationship or society. But the fact remains that our fellow human beings are unique individuals, in their own right and on their own journey, and no one can do our inner work for us.
John the Baptist, in today’s gospel, understood this truth. He saw clearly the hopes and fears that people were projecting onto him, speculating whether he might be their long-awaited Messiah, and he denied it outright.
“It’s not about me,” he said, in effect, “but one who is more powerful than I is coming, and I’m not even worthy to untie his shoes.” The people pointed to John with their hopes and fears and John, very wisely, pointed them back toward Jesus. That is the first duty of every faithful leader in the Church. Furthermore, pointing to Jesus is everyone’s duty to their fellow Christians.
The Risen Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, who lives in our heart of hearts, loves us unconditionally, and knows us better than we know ourselves, is the only one qualified to guide our inner work.
John said, when people came to him with their projected hopes and fears, “It’s not about me; it’s about Jesus. Jesus is the one you’ve been waiting for, not me. I baptized you with water; he will baptize you with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to bring you the clarity you need in order to sort out the wheat from the chaff (the good from the bad) in your own soul.”
To borrow a rhetorical image from the Buddha, John the Baptist is “a finger pointing to the moon.” So long as people are looking at the finger, they’re looking at the wrong thing; they need to look where the finger is pointing. John, the faithful prophet, is pointing them to Jesus.
Kindred in Christ, my prayer for you this week is that each of you would look to the presence of the living Christ in your heart of hearts, that you would know yourself to be fully known and loved for the fabulous and flawed human being that you are, and that you would go forth in the blessed assurance of that love to extend the same grace to your fellow fabulous and flawed human beings.
I pray that you will be you, so that I can be me, and we can be us together, giving glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says, “Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.”
This statement is a testimony to the infinite breadth and unfathomable depth of God’s unconditional love. This fact about divine love was the single most important truth in the life of our friend, Pat.
Jesus’ statement begins with that all-inclusive word: Anyone.
Jesus makes no provisos or exceptions to the kind of people who are welcome in his presence. The divine welcome is not limited to any particular ethnic background, gender-identity, sexual orientation, social class, political affiliation, or even religious belief.
Jesus says this particular invitation is addressed to “anyone who comes to me.” Now, this addendum might seem like a barrier to some. People like to talk about having a “come-to-Jesus moment” when they need to face a difficult truth. This is understandable, considering that Jesus is the kind of spiritual teacher who will not let the delusions of powerful people go unchecked. To others, “anyone who comes to me” might sound like it only applies to those who identify as Christians. This too is understandable, but that’s not what Jesus is talking about here.
Jesus’ open invitation seems merely polite, but in fact, it flies in the face of a divided world that would prefer to separate insiders from outsiders, based on any number of artificially-manufactured categories. But Jesus doesn’t play that game. In the words of the late spiritual author Rachel Held Evans, “What makes the Gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out but who it lets in.” For Jesus, “anyone” means ANYONE!
Think about all the different kinds of people who come to one another, in big ways and small, throughout the course of a day: at work or school, in line at the store, walking down the street, or coming home at the end of the day. According to the sacred Scriptures of the Christian tradition, Christ is present in each and every one of these people we encounter (including the person we encounter in the mirror). Whatever we do unto others is what we do unto Christ himself.
“Come to Jesus” is a phrase that applies, not only to difficult conversations or religious epiphanies, but also to the many ways in which people meet each other in the humdrum of daily life. Jesus understood this, which is why he taught his followers to “love one another as I have loved you.” When we meet one another in an attitude of love, the Christ in us is loving the Christ in them, whether we realize it or not. When we do so, we complete a spiritual circuit that increases the energetic flow of love in the world.
Pat understood this truth at a deeper level than many others care to do. It drove his spirituality and informed his activism for social justice.
Pat once told me a story about his confirmation. For those who may not be Episcopalians, confirmation is a ritual where a young person, after an extended period of study and reflection, “confirms” the promises made by their parents and godparents at their baptism. It’s the Christian equivalent of a Bar Mitzvah in the Jewish tradition. Confirmation is the moment when a young person becomes an adult, in the eyes of the Church, and chooses to follow the way of Jesus as their own spiritual path.
Pat told me that, when the bishop laid hands on his head and prayed for the Holy Spirit to enlighten him, he felt unworthy of undergoing this ritual because he didn’t think he had studied as hard as he should have during his time of preparation. There were questions to which he still had no answers and commitments that he still did not understand. He felt that the bishop must be making some kind of mistake in confirming him, so God would surely intervene and stop the ritual from taking place.
But that is not what happened. Instead, the bishop laid hands on Pat’s head and prayed the traditional prayer:
“Defend, O Lord, this thy Child with thy heavenly grace; that he may continue thine for ever; and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more, until he come unto thy everlasting kingdom.”
What Pat experienced, in that moment, was an unconditional love, which transcended his lack of understanding and sense of unworthiness, yet fully accepted and embraced him anyway. His young mind was unable to fully comprehend this love, so he persisted in his belief that there had been some kind of mistake.
Pat’s doubt and felt sense of unworthiness propelled him into a lifelong journey of spiritual searching and reflection. He spent time in churches and monasteries. He prayed fervently and read books. In time, he decided that what he was learning should propel him into action to make this world a better place, so he marched, worked, and organized to help those who were less fortunate than himself. He loved his family and friends, his wife, sons, stepchildren, and grandchildren, to the best of his ability. As many of us know, he was far from perfect, but his life was driven by a passion to experience and express the depth and breadth of divine love.
I believe that God answered the bishop’s prayer at Pat’s confirmation. When I look at his life, I see a man who was richly defended with heavenly grace, daily increasing more and more in the Holy Spirit. Pat expected to be “driven away” at confirmation because of his unworthiness, but instead he found a Lord and Savior who said to him: “Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.”
Pat’s favorite theologian, Paul Tillich, wrote extensively about this unconditional love. He says:
You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!
As his chaplain and pastor for many years, it was my honor to reflect this observation back to Pat before he died, just as it is my very great honor to celebrate his life with all of you today. I pray that, today, in this gathering of remembrance and thanksgiving, each and every one of you would know and feel yourselves to be loved and accepted by the same love that took hold of Pat’s mind and heart.
It does not depend on your faith, understanding, or worthiness to be effective. This love is real, whether you believe in it or not. It is yours, whether you want it or not. This love holds you close to God’s heart with a gentle power that is stronger than the force of gravity, which holds the galaxies together. Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, and however you believe today, you are loved with a love that will not let you go.
The only thing this love asks in return is that we complete the circuit by loving one another with that same unconditional love.
In memory of Pat, and in the light of this love that embraces us all, I pray that you will love one another today and remember always that you are loved by a love that says, “Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.”
Here is the video of the entire service. The sermon starts at 32:23.
“Jesus began to weep.”
John 11:35
This brief verse, John 11:35, rendered even more concisely in other translations as, “Jesus wept,” is well-known as the shortest verse in our Bible. For that reason, it was a favorite among students at the Christian high school I attended, where our teachers required us to memorize a Bible verse each week.
As a teenager, I liked this verse because it was short, but today, in my middle age, I have found other reasons to love it. I continue to love John 11:35 (“Jesus wept”) because it puts the grief of our fully divine and fully human Lord and Savior on full display and, thereby, it gives us mere mortals permission to grieve, when we feel the need to do so.
Grief is a tricky subject. We pragmatic Americans tend to think of grief as a problem and grieving as an emotionalsymptom of said problem. When we operate under this misconception, we try to solve the “problem” of grief by making the “bad feelings” go away. This is why so many well-intentioned friends tend to offer so many problematic platitudes like:
They’re in a better place;
Everything happens for a reason;
Heaven needed another angel;
God has a plan;
It’s not up to us to question the will of the Almighty;
Maybe God is trying to teach you a lesson.
If you’ve ever found yourself in a state of grief, and heard this kind of pseudo-theological drivel spat at you by well-intentioned believers, then you too know just how unhelpful such slogans can be. These kinds of “bumper sticker theology” serve to comfort the minds of the bystanders more than the hearts of the bereaved.
Through my years of service as a hospice chaplain, I have come to realize that the beliefs that “grief is a problem to be solved” and “grieving is a feeling” are fundamental errors. Grief is not a problem; it is a process, and grieving is not a feeling; it is a skill. And frankly, speaking as a fellow pragmatic American, grieving is a skill at which we tend to be very, VERY bad.
If we were to look for a culture that is more skilled at the art of grief than our own, I think we need look no further than the Jewish culture of our Lord Jesus. Jewish culture tends to understand the process of grief better than our own. Our Jewish neighbors have, over the course of several millennia, developed a practical approach to mourning that guides people through the process of grief in a systematic way.
During the first stage of grief, between the death of a loved one and their funeral, Jews recognize that people are in an initial state of shock. The bereaved are exempted from performing many of the commandments of the Torah while they process the loss of their loved one. For the first week after the funeral, they are said to be “sittingshiva,” where they are not expected to go to work, leave the house, or even prepare meals. During this time, friends will visit the family to bring food, sit with them, tell stories, and say prayers. Gradually, after this week of sitting shiva, family members will begin to reintegrate into society. There are certain limitations placed on their activity for the first month and the first year after their loss. After that first year, life has more-or-less returned to normal, but they still pause once a year to remember their loved one on the yahrtzeit, the anniversary of their death. Jewish culture understands, better than American culture, that grief is a process and grieving is a skill that must be taught and can be learned.
In today’s gospel reading, we get to see an example of Jesus sitting shiva with his close friends, Mary and Martha, after the death of their brother Lazarus. What’s amazing about this passage is how Jesus meets each of the sisters where they are, according to their distinct personalities. Both sisters begin their conversation with Jesus in the exact same words:
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
John 11:32
And then, with Martha, the more practical and intellectual of the two, Jesus engages in a theological discussion about resurrection; with Mary, the more emotional and contemplative sister, Jesus says nothing, but simply weeps.
Though we know, from the rest of the gospel story, that Jesus is about to miraculously raise Lazarus from the dead, that knowledge does not stop Jesus from being fully present with these bereaved sisters in their grief. Jesus knows what he is about to do, but he still takes time to meet people where they are.
The most beautiful thing about the Christian faith is our belief that God, in Christ, has entered fully into the human experience, including our experience of grief and death. Divine omnipotence does not create a stoic barrier between us and our feelings, but allows us to enter into them more fully. Real faith enables us to skillfully navigate the troubled waters of grief, charting a steady course between the way things are and the way they ought to be.
When I, as a hospice chaplain, am invited to the bedside of one who has recently died, I notice how often the bereaved family members feel ashamed of their grief. While I stand silently by, they sometimes say to me, “I’m sorry for crying; I know they’re in a better place and I should have more faith, but I just miss them so much!”
Those are the moments when I, as their chaplain, will break my silence by referring to the very Bible verse that inspired this sermon. I say to them, if they are Christian, “When Jesus visited the grave of his friend Lazarus, the Bible very clearly tells us that ‘Jesus wept.’ If it’s okay for Jesus Christ himself to weep at the death of a loved one, then it’s okay for you to do it too.”
As further evidence for my position on this matter, I would cite St. Paul the Apostle, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 4, verse 13:
“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”
1 Thessalonians 4:13
St. Paul does not say, “so that you may not grieve;” he says, “so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Grief is a very good and natural part of human life, even for the life of a Christian. Grief, as I like to say, is simply “love in the past tense.” Others have said that grief is just “love with no place to go.” Grief is not a sin. Grief is not a problem to be solved. Grief is a normal process, which we all must go through. Grief is a natural consequence of love, which our Lord Jesus commands us to do.
Kindred in Christ, I want you to hear today that there is no shame in grief; it is simply “love in the past tense.” If you feel sad because you are working through the process of grief, I want you to know that Christ is with you in your grief and this shortest verse of the Bible, “Jesus wept,” is spoken for you this day.
The grief that you experience might be for a loved one who has died; it might also be because of the loss of a job or the end of a relationship. Your grief might be part of coming out of the closet, because you yourself or someone you love is not the person you thought they were. The grief you experience might even be because of something good, like getting married, having a baby, graduating from school, or retiring from a career after many years of faithful service. All of these events are good things, but each of them also involves the end of a previous identity and way of life.
Whatever the source of your grief is today, I want you to know that it is healthy, normal, and good. Jesus Christ does not stand in judgment over you for your grief, but kneels down in the dirt and weeps with you for your loss.
I pray that you will take this mental image with you into your experience of grief. I pray that it will give you the grace to go easy on yourself while you are going through the process of grief. I pray further that your self-acceptance, and your faith in Christ’s acceptance, will give you the wisdom to have mercy on others who are going through their own process of grief.
Through it all, may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, our Lord. And may the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be amongst us and remain with us always.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 