Out of the Ashes

On March 7, 2025 By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Ash Wednesday

On Labor Day 1973, my mom and dad, then newly married, were in an apartment fire. Dad was the first in the building to wake up and smell smoke. He ran down the hall, banging on doors to alert the neighbors. Mom, meanwhile, took a quick glance around the room for anything essential. Thinking to herself, “The only thing I can’t replace is my wedding pictures,” she grabbed the album and ran. When I called Mom this week to ask permission to share this story, she recounted the story to me again: “So, there was your mother, without wallet or car keys, standing outside in nothing but her checkered nightgown, clutching a photo album!”

Sudden brushes with mortality have a way of reminding us about what really matters. The crisis itself wakes us up to what is most important. Too often, we humans have a tendency to get overly attached to our creature comforts, bad habits, and pet projects. We often miss the forest for the trees, when it comes to evaluating our priorities in life. Sudden crises can sometimes be useful in helping us clear out the junk and rediscover who we truly are.

In the penitential season of Lent, the Church provides us with a way to consciously engage in this kind of self-reflection without going through the inconvenience of a sudden crisis. During these forty days, we can intentionally choose to recognize and let go of the extra clutter in our souls and refocus our attention on what really matters.

Spiritual writer Richard Rohr, calls this, “the spirituality of subtraction.” He says that, often, the true task of our spiritual practices is not to add something that we need in our lives, but to help us let go of what we don’t need. The season of Lent is a good time to practice “the spirituality of subtraction.”

Lent is about getting underneath the cluttered surface of life and rediscovering the “the treasure hidden in the field” of our lives. Today’s Scripture readings give us a few hints about how to do that.

In the first reading, from the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophet Joel tells the people, “Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Joel 2:13). In ancient Hebrew culture, the tearing of one’s clothes was an outward sign of grief or penitence. Joel is encouraging the people to go deeper than the outward gesture and focus instead on the inner meaning of sorrow.

Jesus, in a similar fashion, warns the people in today’s gospel, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). The point of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer, according to Jesus, is not to make us look good and pious in front of our neighbors, but to help us reorient our hearts toward God.

Almsgiving, fasting, and prayer are all traditional practices associated with the season of Lent. In a world economy based on greed, self-indulgence, and power, the practices of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer are like cloths that we use to wipe away the extra grime on the surface of a mirror, so that we can then see our true reflection smiling back at us once more. In order for these cleaning tools to be effective, we have to stop caring what others think about us and face the honest truth about who we are.

Many of us live with an unspoken fear that, underneath our collected junk of ego-centric debris, there is no true self. We think, “Who am I without this job/degree/car/house/status/money/relationship?” Sometimes, it can even be a negative thing that we have nevertheless come to identify with: “Who am I without this trauma/rage/illness?” We worry that, if we let go of these things, there will be nothing left of us.

The hardest spiritual truth to believe, the biggest leap of faith to take, is to let ourselves become skeptical of our delusion there will be nothing left of us when the debris of our egos has been swept away.

Lent is, traditionally, the time when new converts to the faith prepare themselves to receive the Sacrament of Baptism. For those who have already been baptized, it is a time when Christians prepare themselves to renew that covenant at Easter Vigil. In Baptism, each of us hears again the message that was proclaimed by God over Jesus, at his baptism: “You are my [Child], the beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). Beloved children of God is who we truly are, whether we realize it or not, whether we believe it or not. The spiritual exercises of Lent are tools given to help us return to this most central truth of our lives.

The message of Jesus, in today’s gospel, is that there is something there, waiting to be rediscovered. In fact, Jesus says, what you find underneath all that junk is who you authentically are, as the beloved child of God. St. Paul writes, in the New Testament, “Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Colossians 3:2-4).

Christ is our life. Christ is our true self, fully present, though hidden under the clutter of our fragile egos.

Kindred in Christ, Lent is a time when we can return to awareness of this central truth. Lent is a time for letting go of those things that no longer serve us, or our true purpose in life. Lent is a time when we can rediscover what really matters and who we truly are as beloved children of God.

I encourage you, during these forty days of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer, to do what my mother did on the night of that apartment fire: Take a glance around the room of your life, to think about what really matters and what cannot be replaced, so that you can then let go of what matters less. Like my mom, you may find yourself standing outside on a cold night, without wallet or car keys, but safe, alive, and holding on to what really matters.

May it be so, and may you rediscover who you truly are as the beloved child of God.

The Way We See Things Matters

On March 2, 2025 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon3 Comments

Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany.

Click here for the biblical readings.

The way we see things matters.

For example, when I worked as a hospice chaplain, one could say that I was a highly trained professional, providing expert care for my patients’ spiritual needs. On the other hand, one could also say that I was simply “heaven’s UPS guy,” making special deliveries to the pearly gates. It depends on how you look at it.

The way we see things matters.

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

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

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

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

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

Julian writes that God,

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

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

The way we see things matters.

In today’s gospel, we get to see the beginning of the Christian worldview taking root in the minds of Jesus’ disciples, Saints Peter, James, and John. We read that Jesus takes these three friends up a mountain and there, far away from the bustling crowds, “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white” (Luke 9:29). While this might sound like the beginning of a commercial for laundry detergent, no sales pitch was forthcoming. The gospel writers preserved this story in order to express the way they saw Jesus. For them, Jesus was more than just a good man or a wise teacher; he was full of divine radiance. In later centuries, the bishops of the Church would develop this experience into the doctrine we now know as the divinity of Christ.

One of the things that makes Christianity unique among the religions of the world is that we find God in a person. In Judaism and Islam, Moses and Muhammad are respected as prophets who proclaim the divine message. In the Buddhist tradition, Siddartha Gautama is the enlightened sage who reveals the Eight-fold Path. In Christianity, on the other hand, Jesus Christ does not reveal the message, but is the message itself. Christians find God in Jesus and, through Jesus, we find God everywhere else.

This is why Jesus refers so frequently to nature in his parables. When people ask him to tell them about the kingdom of God, he says, “Do you see those crops growing in the field? Do you see that woman baking bread? Do you see that farmer sowing seed?” Jesus invites us to “consider the lilies of the field” and “the birds of the air” as reminders of God’s presence. For Jesus, all of these mundane occurrences are revelations of the divine.

The way we see things matters.

If our worldview is shaped by the class warfare of Marxist communism or the market forces of industrial capitalism, we will see the world as an endless fight for survival. If our worldview is shaped by (so-called) Christian nationalism or (so-called) Islamic terrorism, we will see the world as a battleground over who is right and who is wrong. But when our worldview is shaped by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our Transfigured Lord will show us a transfigured world that glows brightly with the radiance of God.

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

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

He writes:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
(Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 156-157)

What does this vision of the Transfiguration look like, when we live it out on a day-to-day basis?

Earlier this week, one of our parishioners at St. Mark’s came into the office and shared a very meaningful, true story with me. It stands out as a reminder of what life could be like, if we tried to see the world the way Jesus sees it. I share that story now with her permission.

Our parishioner is an elderly lady who had been feeling sick all week. After several days, she finally felt well enough to go to the grocery store for supplies. Upon returning home, she was struggling to unload the groceries from her car in the bitter cold. As it happened, a mailman was driving by at that exact moment. When he saw the lady struggling, he parked his truck, got out, and carried the groceries into the house for her. It was a relatively small gesture of neighborly kindness, but it meant the world to this lady. She thanked him profusely, and was absolutely floored by the next thing he said:

“Well ma’am,” the mailman said, “I just figured that’s what Jesus would do.”

This response blew me away. This is what life could be like, if we saw the world the way Jesus sees it.

Kindred in Christ, the way we see things matters.

I encourage you this week to draw inspiration from the great spiritual masters like Jesus Christ, Thomas Merton, Julian of Norwich, and that mailman from Coldwater, Michigan. I invite you to become followers of Jesus, to see the world the way he sees it, full of divine glory. I invite you to look at your fellow beings on this Earth, not as enemies to be defeated, but as neighbors to be loved.

May this Christlike way of seeing transfigure you from the inside out and lead you out to transfigure this world in the name of the God whose name is Love, and in the name of the Love whose name is God.

Amen.

Loving Hard in a Hard World

On February 23, 2025 By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany.

Delivered at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Coldwater

Click here for the biblical texts.

Sermon recording:

Photo credit: Image of Archbishop Desmond Tutu by Elke Wetzig (Elya), CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

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.”
Prayer by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Rooted: Choosing Deep Connection Over Quick Fixes

On February 16, 2025 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for the sixth Sunday after the Epiphany.

Delivered at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Coldwater.

Click here for the biblical readings.

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.

As Jeremiah said to his people:

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord.”

“They shall be like a tree planted by water.”

“They shall not fear when heat or drought comes.”

“They shall never cease to bear fruit.”

May it be so.

Amen.

You Are What You Eat: Communion as Living Sacrifice

On February 2, 2025 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord.

Delivered at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Coldwater, MI.

Click here for the readings.

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, “This is 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).

Amen.

The Amazing Grace People

On January 26, 2025 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church,
Coldwater, MI

The biblical text is Luke 4:14-21. Click here to read.

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 21^st 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).

Do Whatever He Tells You: A Practical Guide for Turning Water into Wine

On January 19, 2025 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment

Sermon for the second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C.

Delivered at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Coldwater.

Click here to read the biblical passage.

“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.]

[Click here to learn more about St. Gregory’s Abbey, Three Rivers.]

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).

Love in the Past Tense: Grief Without Shame

On November 6, 2024 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment

Sermon for the Feast of All Saints.

The text is John 11:32-44. Click here to read it.

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 emotional symptom 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 “sitting shiva,” 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.

Amen.

Newness of Life

On April 17, 2022April 17, 2022 By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Easter Vigil sermon.

The text is Romans 6:3-11

Dearly beloved, we gather together this evening to celebrate the mystery of resurrection.

The resurrection of Christ is the central event of the Christian faith. In the season of Easter, we remember how the disciples, in some way that defies rational explanation, experienced Jesus as alive after his crucifixion and death. Many historians over the past two millennia, secular and religious alike, have debated the evidence about what really happened on Easter. What they all agree on, however, is that something significant happened that set Christianity apart from other Messianic Jewish movements of the time (of which there were many) and that the unanimous agreement among the earliest Christians was that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Tonight, I will not presume to settle this longstanding debate about the historical facts. Such questions matter deeply, but I leave the resolution of factual questions to archaeologists, historians, and biblical scholars better equipped and better educated than myself. Christian faith in the resurrection is about more than just picking sides between competing sets of alternative facts.

Resurrection, as I said at the beginning, is a mystery. As such, it is more than an historical event that happened once upon a time in Jerusalem; it is an eternal event that is always happening, in every time and place. That is why I say that we have gathered to celebrate the mystery of resurrection, and not merely commemorate it.

When we celebrate something, we give honor to an event that is also an ongoing reality. When we gather together for a birthday or an anniversary, we don’t just remember a birth or a wedding, we celebrate the ongoing reality of a person or a marriage. The Church does the same thing in our celebration of the mystery of Christ’s resurrection.

St. Paul elucidates this aspect of celebration in the passage we read tonight from his Letter to the Romans. Paul writes:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

For Paul, the mystery of the resurrection is an eternal event, in which we all participate. The ritual that makes this eternal event real to us is the Sacrament of Baptism. In Baptism, Paul says, we come to participate consciously in the death and resurrection of Christ. The significance of this conscious participation is primarily ethical, according to Paul. He says, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.”

Paul’s presentation of death and resurrection in Baptism is akin to philosopher John Hick’s description of the spiritual journey as “the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness.” According to both Hick and Paul, the spiritual journey of death and resurrection is a paradigm shift of Copernican proportions, in which our fragile egos come to realize that they are not, in fact, the center of the universe. In the mystery of death and resurrection, we come to embrace the reality that our true selves are rooted and grounded in the sacred energy that is eternally giving birth to the cosmos. Our individual selves are temporary manifestations of that energy, like waves on the surface of an infinitely vast ocean. Our true life, as it were, “is hidden with Christ in God”(Colossians 3:3), and this eternal life is one over which death has no final victory.

Dearly beloved, the mystery of resurrection is not limited to a single event in first-century Judea, but has been unfolding from the beginning of time until now, and I have every reason to trust that it will continue to do so in perpetuity. Furthermore, the mystery of resurrection is not limited to Christians, humans, or even planet Earth, but is active in all corners of the universe simultaneously.

I do not ask you to tonight to put blind faith in these statements, simply because they have been spoken from a pulpit. I invite you to examine the facts for yourselves.

Approximately sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid more than six miles wide slammed into Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. The impact made a crater 110 miles wide and twelve miles deep, deposited a layer of iridium in soil around the planet, and set off our planet’s fifth mass extinction. Seventy-five percent of all life on the planet, including the dinosaurs, were wiped out by the environmental devastation unleashed by this impact.

There can be no debate about the profound destructiveness of this event, but there is a wonderful and creative aspect to the story that is often overlooked. During the time of the dinosaurs, mammals were small in size and few in number. Tiny shrew-like rodents huddled together in underground burrows in order to avoid the gargantuan lizards that dominated Earth’s surface.

Unlike the reptiles, natural selection had gifted these little mammals with a powerful new tool in their brains, called “the limbic system.” The limbic system is the part of our brains where emotions are produced. It governs our social relationships and allows us to make more complex judgment calls than the basic survival instincts of our brain stem. Because of the limbic system, mammals were able to care for their young andform bonded family groups. Those little rodents were more to us than just vermin infesting the forest floor; they were our great-great-great grandparents.

When the dust finally settled after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, our mammalian ancestors cautiously emerged from their underground dens and began to explore the surface the Earth. In time, they evolved into primates with a highly developed neocortex (that’s the computer part of our brains) and, eventually, into humans.

So, the asteroid impact that caused the death of the dinosaurs also led to the evolution of new forms of life. Because of our cuddly mammalian ancestors and their beautiful little limbic systems, this cataclysmic extinction event opened the door for deeper expressions of love than had ever existed before on planet Earth. And you, the people sitting in these pews tonight, are the direct descendants of those brave and loving creatures.

Here, in the very fabric of our planet, we discover the mystery of resurrection at work on a timescale that predates the human by millions of years. There is also, in this discovery, a profound harmonization between the scientific story of nature and the biblical story of creation. Dr. Francis Collins writes, “God has now given us the intelligence and the opportunity to discover [God’s] methods… For me scientific discovery is also an occasion of worship” (Time Magazine, August 7, 2005).

Turning from the Christian story of Easter and the scientific story of creation, we can also findthe great mystery of resurrection at work in our lives today. In every life, it is said, a little rain (and not a few asteroids) must fall. Each of us endures moments (or seasons) of crisis, in which we die a little (or a lot) to one way of being and rise to another. Perhaps a job or a relationship has not turned out as expected; perhaps a diagnosis or accident has derailed one’s plans for the future; perhaps a person or community, in whom one had trusted, has utterly betrayed that trust. Even happy events, like weddings and graduations, can be occasions of death for one’s former way of life.

Like most parents, I can remember that there was once a time before I had children, but I no longer have any emotional access to that memory. Since becoming a father, my energy, my time, and (Lord knows) my money are no longer my own. Adapting Paul’s words to my present circumstances, I can definitively testify that the luxury of my formerly child-free life has been “buried with Christ by baptism into death,” but I can also testify that the experience of parenthood has opened my heart to greater depths of love and raised me to “newness of life” in ways that I could never have imagined. In my life as a father, and in my life as a Christian, I must come to admit that I am no longer the center of my own little world. Instead, I am but a speck of dust in company with my fellow specks, orbiting around a much greater center of our being. My self-centeredness has died and been resurrected as wonder and love on a cosmic scale.

This Easter, I invite you to consider the many deaths and resurrections you have endured in your life. I invite you to ask yourself: What are the cataclysms and crises that brought an end to an old way of life for you? What helped you make it through those days? What new insights and perspectives did you gain from those crises that you continue to carry to this day? Finally, looking at the present challenges in your life or the world around you, what new possibilities might be emerging from just below the surface?

As you ask yourself these questions, I pray that the answers you find and the meaning you create will lead you to “newness of life” in the mystery of resurrection. Whoever you are, whatever your personal beliefs or faith tradition may be, and in whatever way is most meaningful to you, may you journey alongside us Christians in the spirit of our Easter proclamation: “Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!”

Improvising a Life

On January 3, 2021January 4, 2021 By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

It was my great privilege to be a guest speaker at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Southwest Michigan this morning. I am so thankful to be able to celebrate with this lovely faith community and make lots of new friends!

The meditation on which the sermon is based is the following video by Abigail and Sean Bengson.
I highly recommend watching it before listening to or reading the sermon.
It will lift your spirits and provide context for my message.

Here is a video recording of the message.
I apologize for the scruffy sound of the microphone on my shirt.
I didn’t realize that was happening during the talk.
If you would rather read than listen, the typed manuscript is posted below.

As I begin, I would like to express my sincere thanks to several people for the opportunity to join you in celebration on this beautiful Sunday morning. I would like to thank your minister, the Rev. Gy Ludvig-McCartney, for inviting me to join you and share my thoughts with you today. Our thoughts are with Gy and their spouse Patti this morning. I would also like to thank your Director of Religious Education, Miriam Epskamp, for her kind and helpful guidance in helping me navigate the technical challenges of online church during a global pandemic. Finally, I would like to thank all of you, the lovely people of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Southwest Michigan, for your warm welcome into this sacred space and time on this first Sunday of the year 2021. It is a great honor to participate in your worship service and I hope to make an inspiring and informative contribution this morning.

I love the video of the ‘Keep Going On Song’ for several reasons. First of all, it sends a message of hope and compassion in a year when we sorely need it. It comes from fellow travelers who were struggling through 2020 just like the rest of us. They used their powers of creativity to bring a little more light and goodness to a world that was (and still is) feeling like a very dark and lonely place.

But more than that: I love this video as a musician. The way that the singer improvises around the chord progression and returns to the chorus is magnificent. There is an orderliness in the structure of the song, and there is also chaos in the improvisation. This song could never be sung the same way twice.

I would like to talk with you today about this unfolding interaction. When order and chaos come together, they form something that is neither one nor the other. Nor do they reach a compromise between the two extremes. What they form is something new that includes and transcends both order and chaos in their fullness. The word I would like to use for this new thing is creativity. And creativity is what I would like to talk about with you today.

Creativity, understood as an emergent property of the interaction between order and chaos, is fully present in the natural world. I can see it happening particularly in the process of biological evolution, which has been happening on this planet for the last 4.5 billion years, and is still continuing today.

As many of you grownups will remember from your high school biology classes, there are two main components to the engine of evolution. The first component is genetic mutation. This the chaotic part. A mutation is a copy error that occurs in our DNA during the process of cellular division (mitosis). Something in the code unexpectedly changes, which alters the way the new cell functions when the code is read. Often, these errors are harmful to the new cell, but every now and then, a mutation happens that is actually helpful.

Now, the question arises: How do our cells decide which mutations are helpful and which ones are harmful? Well, that’s where the second component of the evolutionary engine comes in.

Genetic mutations cause changes that give either an advantage or a disadvantage to an organism’s chances for survival in its environment. A mutation, for example, that allows a cell to digest a certain kind of food in an environment where that food source is abundant will have a survival advantage. In other words, the new cell that can digest the food is more likely to survive than the cells that cannot digest that food. When this new cell later divides into daughter cells, it passes on its mutation to the next generation. The other cells, meanwhile, are more likely to die before they can reproduce. The name that biologists have given to this process is natural selection.

Natural selection is the orderly component of the evolutionary engine. It takes the errors provided by genetic mutation and determines which ones will provide a survival advantage for the organism. The process itself may be blind, but it is certainly not random.

Critics of evolutionary theory have sometimes used an imaginary example to explain why they think a blind process could not produce the immense diversity and complexity of life that we have on this planet today.

“Imagine,” they say, “a monkey in front of a computer, randomly pushing keys on the keyboard. What are the odds that this monkey could accidentally produce a Shakespearean sonnet? The odds are infinitesimally small.”

The purpose of this thought experiment is usually to demonstrate the idea that something as beautiful and complex as a Shakespearean sonnet can only be produced by a conscious entity with the intelligence of William Shakespeare. “So,” they say, “there must be some kind of intelligent designer at work, consciously directing the process of evolution in ways that are not random or chaotic.” Most proponents of this intelligent design hypothesis use this thought experiment as an argument in favor of the existence of God.

But there is a key piece that intelligent design proponents leave out, and that key piece is natural selection. If we were to adapt the monkey/computer thought experiment to account for natural selection, we would have to add something like the following:

Imagine that there was some kind of system in place that rewarded the monkey with a banana each time it pressed the correct key in the correct order. Over time, the monkey would be able to realize and remember that pressing certain keys in a certain way gave that monkey an advantage. And now, imagine that there was some way to keep each correct letter on the computer screen while erasing the incorrect letters. Finally, imagine further that there were millions of monkeys working on this project at the same time, and each time a monkey anywhere pressed the correct key, the letter on the screen would be kept. Suddenly, it is not at all inconceivable that the monkeys might be able to produce a Shakespearean sonnet in a very short amount of time! And all this would happen without any of the monkeys being aware of the literary masterpiece they were creating. (See Endnote 1)

This is how the creative process of evolution works. It uses the interaction between chaos and order to improvise increasingly diverse and complex forms of life, up to and including you wonderful homo sapiens who have gathered together online to reflect on the meaning of life this Sunday morning.

Music and evolution are not the only places in the universe where chaos and order come together to improvise bonds of creativity. We humans, individually and collectively, have an opportunity to make our own unique contribution to the ongoing creativity of the universe.

You and I experience the interaction of chaos and order in our lives on a daily basis. The chaos has been particularly evident over the course of the year 2020. We are currently living through a global pandemic that has claimed nearly 2 million lives, so far. We have endured quarantine, lockdowns, and violent reactions against those lockdowns. Frontline medical workers, such as myself, have put our lives on the line to care for those who have contracted and sometimes died from COVID-19. We have all witnessed (and some of us have participated in) protests against acts of police brutality that disproportionately impact people of color in the United States. Many of our fellow citizens (including my wife) have been tear-gassed, beaten, and shot by the very officers we commission to keep us safe from unlawful acts of violence. We Americans have endured the spectacle of a particularly contentious presidential election and watched in horror as the legitimacy of that electoral process was called into question by those who have sworn to uphold it. The collective chaos in 2020 has indeed been particularly evident.

In the midst of chaos such as this, it is not uncommon for humans to grasp at straws for meaning. We say things like, “Everything happens for a reason.” The more religiously inclined among us might say, “God has a plan.” In the midst of chaos, many of us might ask, “Why is this happening,” or, “What is the meaning of life, anyway?”

I think we humans tend to ask these questions because we are afraid that the alternative to an orderly plan is a universe that is entirely chaotic and meaningless. We have already observed, however, that life is not entirely chaotic or orderly, but the product of a process that includes and transcends both chaos and order: the universe is a creative process. (See Endnote 2)

I would like to propose a new question this morning: What if the meaning of life is not something we find, but something we make?

The making of meaning is how we humans participate in the process of creativity. Things happen to us that seem chaotic: The lost job, the failed relationship, the missed opportunity, the unforeseen disaster, or the chance encounter. What is ultimately important about these events is not the events themselves, but the story we tell ourselves about them.

When a relationship ends, we can say to ourselves, “That’s just proof that I will never be loved in the way that I want to be,” or we can say, “I have made many mistakes in this relationship, but I will work on myself, learn from my mistakes, and act differently the next time I am in another relationship.” When a baby unexpectedly dies, we can say, “This is evidence that I am just not ready to be a parent,” or we can say, “I will join a support group to help other parents, who are enduring this inestimable loss, and make a way through the darkness of grief.” We cannot control what happens to us in life, but we can decide how we will respond to our chaotic circumstances.

When the unexpected happens, will I choose respond with faith or fear? Will that which does not kill me make me more cynical or more sensitive? Will I use my experience of pain to hurt or to help? The choice is up to us.

May the powers of creativity, compassion, and courage, which are already within you, be your guide, your strength, and your hope as you go out into the world. May each of you become meaning-makers in the midst of chaos, today and every day.

So say we all.

Endnotes

1. I adapted the extended metaphor of the monkeys at the computer from Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett.

2. I am indebted to Karl E. Peters for the conception of creative process as an interplay between chaos and order, especially in regards to genetic mutation and natural selection. See especially his book, Dancing with the Sacred: Evolution, Ecology, and God.

Hopping Hadrian's Wall

Tag: sermon

Out of the Ashes

The Way We See Things Matters

Loving Hard in a Hard World

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

(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

(2) Nonviolent resistance

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

3. Eucharistic Prayer D in the Book of Common Prayer sums it up beautifully (p. 373)

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:

2. On a smaller, more personal/local scale

(1) Nonviolent Communication Strategies (Marshall Rosenberg)

V. Conclusion

Rooted: Choosing Deep Connection Over Quick Fixes

You Are What You Eat: Communion as Living Sacrifice

The Amazing Grace People

Do Whatever He Tells You: A Practical Guide for Turning Water into Wine

Love in the Past Tense: Grief Without Shame

Newness of Life

Improvising a Life