The Presentation, 2 February 2020

Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
Gospel: Luke 2:22-40
February 2, 2020

My grandson not long after he was born.

Hey, what happened to the 4th Sunday after the Epiphany?  Our bulletin covers and scripture inserts, today, are all entitled with “The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple.”  Some of you have heard me say before that I thought it would be fun to have Episcopal churches in Galveston compete in a liturgical quiz bowl.  This may never happen, but I still want to prepare you, so here ya go with an explanation of the missing 4th Sunday after Epiphany.

In the Book of Common Prayer, near the front of the book, beginning on page 15 is a section on the Church Calendar.  The 7 principal feasts, or holy days, are listed first and include 3 on fixed dates: All Saints’, Christmas Day, and the Epiphany.  According to the rules (rubrics), whenever one of these principal feasts occurs on a Sunday, it will take precedence over however that Sunday might have been designated otherwise.

Then, we find on page 16, a list of three other holy days that take precedence over a Sunday: The Holy Name, The Presentation, and The Transfiguration.  The Presentation is a feast appointed on a fixed day, February 2, every year.  But when it occurs on a Sunday it takes precedence.  So if you are ever representing Grace at a liturgical quiz bowl and you get the question: “When Epiphany 4 and The Superbowl and The Presentation all occur on the same Sunday, which of them will govern the liturgy for that day?”  Now, you know the answer.  Go team!

Our Gospel reading describes the occasion of The Presentation...but first, some background.  According to the Law of Moses, every first born boy literally belonged to God.  At the time of the Exodus, when the Egyptians were dealt the final blow, the firstborn male of every household died.  But God spared the firstborn of each Hebrew household where the blood of a slain lamb was painted on the doorposts.  So, from that time all firstborn boys were henceforth thought to belong to God.  The way that devout families recognized this claim was The Presentation. This involved presenting their boy child at the Temple in Jerusalem and redeeming him, that is, buying him back from God.  According to the law, the price was a choice lamb to be sacrificed at the altar.  But lambs were expensive, and the law made an allowance for families who could not afford a lamb.  Families could redeem their child less expensively with 2 pairs of birds.  Jesus’ humble family origin was underscored by this more modest sacrifice.

In Luke, Jesus’ family is said to have visited the Temple every year, but we have stories associated with only 3 times Jesus actually entered the Temple.  Once in the final days of Jesus’ life, when he most likely precipitated his arrest by disrupting Temple sacrifice by driving out the merchants.  Then, again when Jesus was 12 years old, he stayed behind unbeknownst to his parents who eventually found him sitting and conversing with the teachers.  Needless to say, Mary and Jesus were upset. Jesus was in big trouble.  And first of all, Jesus was brought to the Temple not long after he was born, in order for his parents to fulfill the law by redeeming their son with a sacrifice.  

With each Temple visit something about Jesus was revealed.  He was shown to be both fully God and fully human.  So, near the end of his life, God’s justice shines out when Jesus confronts the Temple practices that excluded the poor.  He said, “You have turned it into a den of robbers.” In speaking truth with his “fully-God” authority, Jesus incurred the ire of the religious leadership.  Fully human, also, Jesus was vulnerable in the face of those who were seeking his life.  When he was 12 years-old, Jesus, stayed behind after a family visit to the Temple. In this way, he demonstrated devotion to his heavenly Father’s house.  But when corrected by his parents for going missing, Jesus was respectful and obedient to them as the law required of any normal child.  And, at the Presentation, Jesus is redeemed by his parents as would be the first born boy of any devout family, but then he gains the notice of 2 exceptional individuals, Simeon and Anna.  In a profound twist, Jesus is brought to the Temple to be redeemed but is, at the same time, proclaimed to be in himself the promised redemption of God, the very embodiment of God’s Love.  Jesus is the One who will redeem the world from Sin.

So, on the Feast of The Presentation, we are celebrating when Jesus was brought to the Temple for the first time and revealed to be both fully human and fully divine, God embodied in flesh, and blood, and human history.  We refer to this as the Incarnation, and it is astonishingly good news for us that Jesus was both fully God and fully human.  As one of us, Jesus was able to lay down his life.  As the Son of God, Jesus was able to defeat death and win for us eternal life.  

I don’t have to tell you that we live in a broken world with lots of stuff to worry about.  We live in a world deeply divided; we live in a world where novel diseases emerge and spread rapidly; we live in a world beset with calamities: earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, and impending climate change.  Bottom line: if the best we have to offer in the face of these challenges is selfishness, nationalism, and corporate greed, we are toast!  

But, there is good news that our world desperately needs to hear. The fallen nature of humanity is not the final word.  As the Episcopal Branch of the Jesus movement, we have a share in spreading this good news in the way we treat others, in the things we say and do.  The call is to live each day in a way consistent with faith that Love has already won. We belong to something that is greater than the challenges we face.  Bottom line: we are loved by God and God’s love is stronger than we could ever ask or imagine.  The Presentation gives us a window into this Love. AMEN.    

Epiphany 3, Year A 2020

Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
Gospel: Matthew 4:12-23
January 26, 2020

Looking from the main entrance to Grace Episcopal
Church, Galveston, just before the Eucharist 1/26/20. 

(Note: Heavy rains overnight left street flooding at Grace and the surrounding neighborhood. A hearty group of 38, most with soaking wet feet, participated in the Eucharist. It would have been quite reasonable to refrain from attending worship under these circumstances....so, as it turned out, those who recklessly waded through the water made an appropriate group to hear the sermon that follows:)

After John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into the region of Galilee, settled in Capernaum, and began proclaiming “good news.” This good news, or Gospel, is summarized in Matthew, “Repent because the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” We have just heard that Jesus brings this news, of the dawning Kingdom of Heaven, down to the Sea of Galilee. To some fishermen there, the Kingdom is experienced as a call to a new vocation.

Later in Matthew’s story, Jesus expands on the good news to a large gathering who find encouragement in the “Sermon on the Mount.” Others will receive the good news in being made whole, in the calming of a storm...even in the unexpected baskets of left-over bread and fish after five thousand people were fed. Repeatedly, the Kingdom of Heaven’s nearness is experienced in different ways by different people and groups. This happens because Jesus brings the Kingdom near to where we are; not where we should be. The hungry experience food, the sick experience healing, the possessed experience freedom, tax collectors and sinners experience forgiveness.

In today’s reading from Matthew, four fishermen are called to follow Jesus on an adventure with the promise of becoming “fishers of people.” The “good news” for them takes the form of Jesus’ invitation to a new life. But did you notice the one character who was apparently not called? The one character who did not go along? Zebedee, the father of James and John, was left behind in the boat. Can you imagine how he might have viewed this call as less than positive? Zebedee’s sons left suddenly, on a whim! Did they consider what leaving their father behind would mean for him? It is not a stretch to imagine Zebedee chiding his boys for being reckless. What are we to make of this invitation for Simon and Andrew, James and John, to leave behind, on the spur of the moment, their families, their responsibilities and commitments?

First, the call is consistent with Jesus message in other places. Leaving the other ninety-nine sheep to go in search of the lost one...isn’t that really reckless too? While at the house of Simon the Leper, a woman will anoint Jesus with extremely expensive perfume. The disciples object to this reckless waste of resources for a very small organization with more pressing priorities. But Jesus defended her spontaneous act of kindness.

This kind of recklessness appeals to me on some level. While, on the one hand, there is risk in making quick decisions without enough thought, on the other hand, I wonder what life would be like without the freedom of spontaneity. Isn’t there a place for stepping out and being open to serendipity? Is some part of our humanity missing, when every decision has to be made in the same calculated way you fill out a tax return? Consider that, on occasion, we do break with convention, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, because it is the only way to be authentic, the only way to be true to our calling.

Second, God’s call to us encompasses all the ways that God is revealed to human beings. Epiphany is the season when the main curriculum is how the Kingdom of Heaven is shown, or made manifest. When I went to confirmation class as a teenager, I was taught that the authority on which our faith is based includes, scripture, tradition, and reason. This is what we refer to as Anglicanism’s “three-legged stool.” That Episcopalians lift up reason itself as an avenue of God’s light means that we are never asked to check our brains at the door when we worship, study, pray, or serve. I value this greatly but am wary of emphasizing reason to the exclusion of the others. When our kiddos were growing up, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time became one of the stories we all read and shared. An Episcopalian, L’Engle was certainly aware of the “three-legged stool.” It is very telling that the antagonist of this novel turned out to be a disembodied brain! Reason can point to God, yes, but beware that reason can also be misappropriated for evil and deception. We are fallen creatures and are all too capable of rationalizing our mistakes to make them look good.

Thankfully, our response to God’s call may tested from the perspectives of scripture, tradition and reason, but this is often in hindsight. Like these disciples in Matthew, sometimes, we are called to respond in the spur-of-the-moment. Now, I like to avoid quick decisions when I can. As a head of school, people often heard me say, “Let me think about that and get back to you.” But, the option to delay is not always available. Sometimes, you sense that waiting to act would lose an opportunity, and you have to trust your intuition.

Might sometimes we ignore to our detriment that religious experience also comes to us as intuition? Perhaps, intuition could be the fourth leg of our Anglican stool.

One of my favorite figures in the history of science is Alexander Fleming. In the 1920’s, he discovered antibiotic properties in saliva. He was suffering from a severe head cold and serendipitously drooled into one of his petri dishes. Later, he would discover penicillin in an equally unorthodox way. I suppose that Fleming was disciplined much of the time, but he was messy enough that his lab yielded unexpected results. And, he was messy enough sometimes...just to follow a hunch. Thanks to Fleming’s willingness to follow mere intuition, many of us are alive today. Perhaps, in figuring out how to move forward in our faith there are times when we too may use a hunch or a feeling. Ponder these in the light of what you know from the Bible and from Church teachings, and ask if they are reasonable.

I can imagine Simon, Andrew, James, and John, all delightfully young and naive, setting out to follow Jesus in the spur-of-the-moment. Does God ever call us to do something that others might see as reckless? Will we be moved to call on someone who is lonely or hurting even though we don’t know them well enough to do something like that? Will we be called to assist a stranded friend even though it might make us late to work? Will we take time to pray even if there is no time to be spared? Will we do something simply for play, not knowing that some profound insight might come of it? The Season of Epiphany is a good time to remember that God’s light shines out in different ways through scripture, tradition, and reason...and yes, sometimes, even intuition. AMEN

Epiphany 2, Year A 2020

Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
Gospel: John 1: 29-42
January 19, 2020

The Holy Children with a Shell by Murillo c. 1670
(The infant Jesus offers his cousin John a sip of water.)
Museo Nacional del Prado

In John’s Gospel the unique mission of John the Baptist fits squarely with the season of Epiphany. Here we see that “the Baptist” is called to identify and reveal the ”One who will take away the sin of the world.” John the Baptist is not God’s chosen leader, not the Messiah, not the light that has come into the world, but an obedient servant called by God to bear witness to the One who is all of these things.


In this sermon, I expound on three things that jump off the page for me in this Gospel reading. First, there is the particular way that John the Baptist discovered Jesus using a test of sorts. Second, there is the curious designation of Jesus as the “Lamb of God.” And, third, there is the concept of “call” and the telling manner in which Jesus calls his disciples. It is only in accepting this invitation that Jesus will be revealed to us. It is in living the life to which we are called, that the life of God is made known...that Epiphany goes from being a story about Wise Men long ago finding Jesus under a star, a story about someone else in another time and place, to being a story about you and me, in our own time and place, actively practicing the presence of God.


Tests and exams tend to bring on anxiety and negative memories for students and for teachers too. But, my most positive experiences with tests come not from those made for school but from those that form critical moments in some of my favorite stories. These are not paper-and-pencil forms or computer screens, but they are trials nonetheless. Think of all of those knights and pages who tried to pull Excalibur from the stone, and none could except Arthur. Think of all of those maidens who tried to get a foot into a glass slipper left behind at the ball, and none could except Cinderella.


It looks like the Baptism of John was intended not only to prepare the way for the Messiah, but also as a kind of test that would reveal something to John. “The One who sent me to Baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain” is the One who will Baptize with the Holy Spirit. This is the One who is the light coming into the world, the One in Whom the Word became flesh dwelling among people, the One who gives the power to become children of God. So, the Spirit, the very life of God, which comes down from Heaven doesn’t just touch Jesus briefly and move on, but remains with him. It is the same word in Greek that the RSV translates as “abide.” And where does Jesus abide? It’s like a lesson in the Holy Trinity: the Son abides with the Father, the Spirit abides with the Son, all three abide as One. The Spirit descends from Heaven in Baptism, and only in the case of Jesus does the Spirit abide. Heaven has been found on Earth, so there the Spirit remains where the Spirit already was. John sees this and begins proclaiming to his own disciples that Jesus in the Lamb of God!


The Lamb of God language may have reminded John’s Jewish audience of the Passover meal. In preparation for the Passover, each family killed a Lamb to serve, and some of the Lamb’s blood was spread on the doorposts of their homes in order to protect from harm. John further joined the Lamb image with cleansing of sin by saying “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” The Lamb was associated with the sacrificial system at the Temple, and this mention helps to foreshadow Jesus death as a sacrifice for sin. In the Gospel According to John, Jesus’ own body replaces the temple. Jesus own body becomes the place where the divine and the human meet. Jesus’ once-and-for-all sacrifice on the Cross supersedes the sacrificial system of the temple. It is by the power of Jesus blood that the wages of sin are paid and we are saved from death’s dark prison. “Destroy this temple,” says Jesus, “and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).


Finally, I wish to note the concept of call, so apropos of the Epiphany Season. We have already seen this in the way that John the Baptist reveals how God called him to identify the one on whom the Spirit remained. Then John identifies Jesus’ own calling as the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.


The concept of “call” continues in the Gospel reading as Jesus is approached by two of John the Baptist’s disciples. They ask Jesus, “Where are you staying?” On one level this is superficial. Jesus, where do you sleep at night? But, the author of the Gospel According to John is skilled at using words with more than one meaning. There is a deeper, spiritual meaning to the question posed that could be easily missed the way this is translated. “Staying” is the same word used to describe the way the Spirit abides on Jesus. So the hopeful new disciples, unwittingly ask of Jesus a spiritual question: “Jesus, where do you abide.” In the Gospel According to John, of course, Jesus abides in the Father. This is not something that Jesus can simply tell. The only way to this revelation, the Epiphany of Jesus divine nature, is to begin the journey of discipleship. So, Jesus says “Come and See.”


So there it is. This “Come and See” is a very succinct way of describing our calling as Christians. It is all Jesus asks of ones who would follow him. Those first Christian disciples went with Jesus and remained with him. It was after staying with him that these two early disciples came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, so much so that Andrew went and convinced his brother, Cephas, also to Come and See. The other disciple, curiously, is never named but perhaps he is the one later described as “the beloved disciple.” This unnamed disciple may well be the author of the Gospel According to John who was wishing not to draw attention to himself...if so, by the words he has written, he has invited countless numbers of others to “Come and See” up to this day and including even those of us called here to be in this holy place! AMEN

Proper 12, Year C 2019

Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
Gospel: Luke 11:1-13
28 July 2019

Our Gospel reading gives us Luke’s version of the Lord’s prayer. It is a bit shorter than the version in Matthew. The longer prayer has some elaboration, perhaps as a result of being used in early Christian worship. (By the way, the Lord’s Prayer we say together at the Eucharist more resembles Matthew’s longer version.) What we have in Luke is probably closer to an oral tradition of Jesus’ sayings, a source available to Luke and Matthew but not, apparently, to Mark where we find no version of this prayer. Even so, Jesus is noted as a person of prayer in all four Gospels. In the context of the Season After Pentecost when the focus is on Christian living, the Gospel reading clearly points us to prayer as a way of life and a source of strength for those who follow Jesus.

We heard today that some of Jesus’ disciples, who had previously followed John the Baptist, recalled that John had talked about prayer. These disciples began to wonder if Jesus would teach them about prayer as well. In a way, of course, Jesus had already been teaching them about prayer. He used what educators know today as one of the most effective instructional techniques in a teacher’s toolkit: the strategy known as modeling. The disciples observed that Jesus took the time to pray even at the height of his public ministry. Sometimes Jesus would remove himself to a deserted place in order to pray, but they knew what he was doing. The disciples came to know that prayer was a priority in his spirituality. Luke tells us, for example, that Jesus spent an entire night in prayer before choosing the twelve he called apostles (Luke 6:12). Eventually, we arrive at the point in today’s Gospel, when the disciples ask Jesus to help them more directly with the practice of prayer.

The subject of prayer could fill books, but I’m going to limit myself to three points that jump off the page for me. First, Jesus models the practice of prayer by addressing his words to one called “Father.” Jesus’ instruction for us to use this term implies that, in prayer, we are speaking as adopted sons and daughters of God. I am reminded of the prologue of John’s Gospel where we find the words: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”

In addressing this prayer to “Father,” Jesus reminds us, from the start, that we are not praying to someone out there, beyond our time and place, who may or may not hear us...something akin to placing a message in a bottle thrown into the ocean. Instead, our prayer is like a conversation with one near to us. At any point along the journey of faith, and especially in times of stress, God may seem distant to us as we pray. The Christian life holds the promise of growth in faith including our consciousness of God’s presence. Jesus models for us prayer as a way to practice the presence of God even when we’re not feeling it, so to speak. Our Presiding Bishop, The Most Reverend Michael Curry, joyfully preaches that the Christian Life is about the transformative power of God’s Love. Prayer helps open our hearts to this Love, and, as a vehicle for God’s Love, prayer changes our lives in powerful ways.

A second point that arrests my attention is that the Lord’s Prayer itself has different types of prayer within it. Jesus’ begins with what we often call “adoration.” When we say to God, “hallowed be your name” we are not asking for anything. It is a statement intended to praise God, to worship God by ascribing holiness. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus instructs us to begin with praise...to enter into a spirit of worship before moving on to other types of prayer.

We next see that Jesus asks for something. This type of prayer is known as “petition.” I suppose that the first thing “petition” brings to mind is that it asks God to take care of our own needs. But, the way Jesus models it, we are instructed first to ask that God’s will be done before we turn to personal requests. Jesus does this when he prays: “Your kingdom come.” In Jesus of Nazareth, the Kingdom of God was established in power and beginning. But it has not been realized in all of its fullness. The completion of God’s will for our world is rightfully placed at the top of any list of petitions.

Jesus continues his model with prayers for daily bread, for the forgiveness of sins, and for protection from temptation. There are yet other types of prayer, well known and accepted in Christian spirituality, that are not included in this brief model. “Thanksgiving” and “intercession,” for example, are not found here but are found elsewhere in Luke. For example, after Jesus heals ten lepers, the one who returns to Jesus to give thanks is told “Your faith has made you well” (Luke 17:19). And, Jesus demonstrates intercession even from the cross when he prays, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (luke 23:34). The Lord’s Prayer is meant to be instructive but not necessarily encyclopedic with regard to the possible kinds of prayer; however, it is arguably the best way to begin and grow a life-changing practice of prayer.

The third, and final, point I wanted to make from our Gospel reading is the call to be persistent in our prayers. Jesus uses the story of the “Friend at Midnight” as a kind of contrast. In this story, there is a friend who comes knocking at the door in the middle of the night because he needs some bread to serve a guest. But you have already barred the door and are in bed with your children. You tell this needy friend that you are not going to help tonight; it’s just too late! But, it doesn’t end there. The friend does not retreat; he keeps knocking. He’s obviously not going away until you give him some bread for his guest...and, thanks to this audacious persistence, you finally, if begrudgingly, get up and give him some bread.

Life shows us that persistence works. We learn that the squeaky wheel gets the oil, the ones who persevere are most likely to achieve their goals; it doesn’t matter how talented you are, if you give up, what you were working on is not happening. Jesus stories usually make a single point, and this one teaches, “If persistence helps you get what you need in this fallen world, then think about how much more your heavenly Father, who loves you as a child, will respond to your being steadfast in prayer.”

We are taught in scripture that God knows our needs before we ask. What we think we need, what we think is best, what we want when we want it, may not be what we need from God’s perspective. Jesus knows what we most need from both the divine and the human perspectives, so he teaches us to ask for the Holy Spirit. Jesus knows that we need the very life of God to dwell in us, to empower us, to give us spiritual wisdom, to inspire us to live one day at a time with the gifts we have been given. In the end, what we need, to live fully, is to know and trust the transformative power of God’s love.

Jesus encourages us to make our petitions known to God and to be persistent in our prayers. I am convinced that prayer changes lives; being persistent in prayer, having some consistency in place and time, trying different types of prayer, being intentional about prayer...thinking beforehand about what and whom we will include, all of these efforts help open us to the transformative power of God’s Love. Of course, let’s not forget about prayers written by others...we do have a Book of Common prayer, after all, that is a treasure trove for our use. I think it safe to say that there is no one right way to pray; perhaps, there are as many ways as there are people. But, when we need a place to start, when words fail us, when we are unsure, know this: Jesus has given a model of prayer that is always there for us. AMEN.

Proper 10, Year C 2019

Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
1st Lesson: Amos 7:7-17
Gospel: Luke 10:25-37
14 July 2019

The Hebrew Bible is full of powerful images… a burning bush, a man in the belly of a fish, a ladder to heaven...just to name a few. In our first reading, God gives Amos one of the most simple yet poignant images of scripture: a plumb line like that used by builders as a vertical reference, but here, used by God to reveal the moral distortion caused by injustice and unchecked greed. Builders know that measurements along the course of a project are essential to success. Sometimes, an error is found and some work must be torn out. It is costly to tear out and do over, but this may be the only way to make the project right.

Per the reading, God measures the northern Kingdom of Israel with a plumb line and finds the nation to be out of alignment. Today’s reading does not identify exactly how Israel had missed the mark, but a full reading of Amos makes this very clear. Elsewhere, Amos bitterly describes the way that those with wealth trample the poor in the dust, taking their land and inhibiting their access to legal recourse. The wealthy build houses of stone with ivory furniture by systematically cheating those with few resources...and even parading their ill-begotten luxuries before God in their places of worship. In the 5th Chapter of Amos, we read God’s strong language of condemnation: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies,” ...but (instead) “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Amos proclaims that God has had enough, the divine patience has been exhausted, so to speak, and God is rising up against the Kingdom with the sword. Israel and its King Jeroboam are finished!

Amos’ message does not sit well with Amaziah, the priest of Bethel. Amos called for change while Amaziah espoused the status quo. Amaziah informs Amos that Bethel is the King’s sanctuary and directs the prophet to go back to his home in the south. Go back to your home and preach to the folks in the temple at Jerusalem...you are from Judah, so go pester them with your repulsive message and let them pay your salary. Amos responds to Amaziah by pointing out his independence. He is not a religious professional but, rather, a herder and farmer.

The story of Amos and his confrontation with the Priest of Bethel has something to say in every generation. The message of this story for us, in our own day, is surely how our own households, our own communities, our own nation are measured by God’s plumb line. There is also a warning for us in the way that the priest of Bethel had become a mere agent of a sitting king. The Christian life includes an awareness that the actions of governments are not necessarily aligned with the will of God. Christians should be prepared that faith will sometimes require standing apart from government and perhaps apart from the economic “soup” in which we live in order to make an effective call for change. We should especially be wary whenever religion and secular government appear too close and mutually compromised!

Fortunately for Americans, standing up for a more just society, is also a way of being patriotic at the same time. The Founding Fathers envisioned the separation of Church and State in order to preserve religious freedom for all. As I understand it, our democracy works best when there are organizations, such as the Church, that can speak with a voice independent of our government.  One recent example is a joint communique from the bishops of 6 Episcopal Dioceses in Texas.  It is a call to action for more humane conditions at the border.

We ignore at our own peril the ways of injustice and unchecked greed in our land. Should we ignore the separation of children from their parents at the border? Should we ignore the price-gouging of insulin and other medications? Should we ignore the abuse of our planet without regard for our children and grandchildren? Should we ignore when a wealthy and well-connected person gets preferential treatment from the courts? In every generation, the Church has a choice...will we be more like Amaziah, an agent of the State and the status quo? Or, will we be more like Amos, a speaker of Truth even when the Truth is inconvenient, unsettling, and unwelcome?

Our Gospel reading is the familiar Parable of the Good Samaritan. The context is the question, “Who is my neighbor?” The one who poses the question is a devout Jew who is doing his best to do the right thing. He wants to do what God requires...he seeks to love his neighbor as himself. “Just tell me who my neighbor is,” he asks. Jesus does not answer the question but instead tells a story about a person who acted like a neighbor.

Jesus guides this man (and us) away from the idea that some people are neighbor while others are not. For Jesus neighbor is not defined by who the person is, where he is from, or how well-connected she is. It is whomever we encounter who is in need...even if that person is different from us. Perhaps, Jesus is recommending we focus more on being neighborly than on defining our neighbor.

Here’s an analogy that has been on my mind lately: I’m thinking about when I was first learning to drive on city streets in Baton Rouge. I was in a “driver’s ed” class sponsored by my school and remember feeling uneasy the first time I got behind the wheel. The hardest part was keeping the car centered in the lane. My first strategy was to find some mark on the hood, an ornament or a crease line, and then figure out where that feature needed to appear in relation to the curb. (Sort of like spot bowling.) This required constant monitoring, but I found that I could keep the wheels off the curb this way...most of the time, at least. I soon outgrew this strategy, and orienting the car became “second nature” with no need to think about it.

I’m suggesting that the need to define neighbor is like needing to monitor a reference point on the hood to keep your car on the road. This is like having to justify yourself by monitoring your performance according to God’s law. It is cumbersome and prone to error. But, in Christ, we have been set free from the law by the transformative power of God’s love. I don’t know how it happened, but at some point, my body learned to keep the car on the road without having to constantly think about it. In the same way, let us aspire to be neighborly as a kind of “second nature.”

Jesus tells the religious lawyer to go and be a neighbor like the Samaritan in the story. Whether it’s loving neighbor or driving a car, practicing a skill helps to change us. I imagine most of us in life are somewhere in between needing a reference point and loving freely those whom God sends our way. Truth be told, the plumb line held up to my own life shows me out of alignment...and chances are it does for you too. That’s what it means to be a redeemed sinner.

The great Season after Pentecost is all about the Christian life. Today we are reminded that we are out of alignment with God’s Law, but more importantly that Jesus encourages us to drive on anyway. There is grace in our trying, and the promise that God’s love will change us. We do not need to obsess on how we miss the mark of any external measure. God promises that Love dwells with us and that this Love changes us from the inside out. AMEN.

Trinity Sunday, Year C 2019

Welcoming Jonah to the Christian Family.

Trinity Episcopal Church, Galveston
Epistle: Romans 5:1-5
16 June 2019

A realtor was driving out in the countryside looking for some property when he noticed a chicken. This bird was running alongside the car and it got his attention because it was keeping pace. Just then, the chicken accelerated moving on ahead of him...and it appeared like the chicken had three legs. It turned a corner and up a gravel driveway disappearing between a farmhouse and a barn. The realtor turned the corner himself and pulled in the driveway. He rolled down his window to speak to a farmer who surely had seen this. “Did you see a chicken running by here just now?” “Yep,” said the farmer. “Pardon me, but it looked like it had three legs. Did you notice that too?” The farmer replied, “Well, yes, that’s how I breed them. You see, the wife and I love drumsticks, but when Jr. came along, we were always fighting over ‘em. I figured that raising three-legged chickens would solve that problem for us.” “I can’t help but ask, said the realtor… how do the drumsticks taste?” “Well,” the farmer replied, “I can’t rightly say because we haven’t been able to catch one yet!”

I chose to begin with this joke to arrest your attention and because it seemed to fit in with the theme of three-ness that is on our plate for today. (It also honors the memory of my father, W.A. Dearman, Jr., who loved to joke about chickens.) This is Trinity Sunday which is the patronal feast, so to speak, of this parish. On this day, preachers all over the world are faced with the task of explaining how one God is described in three persons. It doesn’t seem quite to make sense, and perhaps that is the whole point. It was Augustine who said, “If you think you understand, it’s not God.” My homiletical task is to describe the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. ...but make no mistake, we will not be getting our minds around the divine mystery Who has no beginning and no end.

That three things can be one thing is not unheard of in our experience. Since, my grandson, Jonah, is being Baptized today, and since it happens to be Father’s Day, let’s take some bit of example from Jonah, the 5-month-old. He doesn’t cry much, but when he does it is typically for one of three reasons. I don’t think his cries are audibly different, but depending on the context, he wails as a response to three things. 1) when he is hungry, 2) when he needs to be changed, and 3) when he is fighting sleep. There is but one cry but three different contexts.

A central concept for Judeo-Christianity is that our God is one...our ancestors in faith came to believe that there is only one God Who matters, only one God Who has a claim on us. And this is the God Who intervened in the course of human history to rescue the Hebrew slaves from oppression and bondage in Egypt. As Christians we confess to have been redeemed from the slavery of sin by this same God Who again entered into history only this time en-fleshed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Looking at the concept of redemption can illustrate how this One God can be understood as a Trinity of persons. It’s something like three ways that God has of being God. Our reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans underscores the Trinity by showing the triadic structure of Christian redemption. First, the source of our redemption is the Father by Whose will we were created, while, secondly, the redemptive act on the Cross was made by the Son. Thirdly, people of every age, including our own, experience being redeemed by the power of the Cross because we are guided by the Holy Spirit. Inspired by the third person of the Trinity, the redemptive act comes alive for us as it has come to have a fresh meaning from one generation to the next..

One way to visualize the Trinity is to consider three different church interiors. I think of God the Father, when I imagine this parish back in time when the altar was against the wall. Celebrating Holy Communion meant that everyone, including the priest, all faced the same direction in worship. The emphasis was on God Who is beyond the here and now, beyond the veil of time and space, and before Whom we are not worthy to stand. I think of God the Son when I consider a sanctuary, like this one today, where the altar is pulled away from the wall. The emphasis here is on God in our midst, on God Who is incarnate, on God whenever God is revealed to human beings whether in a burning bush, in the creation itself, and most perfectly in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Finally, I think of God the Holy Spirit, when I visualize the kind of sanctuary that has no piece of substantial furniture as a focal point. Sometimes, there is a speaker’s stand, but it is often de-emphasized, made of a transparent plexi-glass material. At any given point, worship might be led from anywhere as people gathered feel moved to pray or speak. The emphasis is on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer.

I am most comfortable in an Episcopal Church like this one; it’s a lot like the one in Baton Rouge, where I grew up. The emphasis is on incarnation but also on mystery. The Book of Common Prayer provides comfort like an old friend. At the same time, I recognize that our brothers and sisters across the street might find this sanctuary to be way too dark and somber. The point is: it takes all of us to worship God. The truth is: it takes a world of different traditions, with different styles, furniture, and music in order to worship the Triune God.

Baptism is not about being Episcopalian, or Catholic, or Baptist or any other specific religious branch. It is about being welcomed into the family of God, that great cloud of witnesses whose number God only knows. His physical family is represented today in this congregation by his parents and by sponsors, grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles and others who have loved him from before he was born. His physical family represents a variety of Christian traditions. As Jonah grows in many ways, may he also find the religious diversity of his family to be a strength, a living illustration that it takes all of us to worship the One and Triune God. AMEN.

Easter II, Year C

Welcoming Blake to the
Christian Family!

Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
Gospel: John 20:19-31
April 28, 2019

It’s the 2nd Sunday of Easter. Typically on this Sunday a church is not as full as it was on Easter Day. There is less ceremony, fewer family members visiting, no hunting for eggs, or flowering of the cross. Perhaps, because of this comparison to Easter Day, previous generations nicknamed this day “Low Sunday.” But, today, God willing, we will witness the Baptism of a child. We will hear his parents and sponsors pledge to raise the child as a Christian, and the people of this congregation will also pledge to do their part in nurturing his Faith. Soon, we will welcome the newest member in all of Christendom. Today, promises to be anything but “Low Sunday.”

The Gospel reading gives another hint that this is more than “Low Sunday.” I had déjà vu while preparing this sermon….not just because I’ve been preaching for 32 years...but I preached on this same Gospel in this pulpit on this Sunday last year! A check of the Lectionary shows that the same reading from the Gospel According to John is appointed every year for the Second Sunday of Easter. This reading has multiple themes but the primary focus is on the nature of Faith. Believing is so central to who we are as Christians that it bears repeating year after year! It’s a big deal, and it doesn’t sound anything like a “Low Sunday” to me.

In this Gospel, we hear the story of two Resurrection appearances. The first appearance was on Sunday evening, likely the first evening meal after Jesus had risen from the dead. The disciples were afraid and for good reason. Their teacher had been been identified as a threat to Roman authority and brutally killed. Perhaps, the authorities would come after them next….it was best for them to keep a low profile. We get a hint of this in the significant detail that the door was locked. The locked door not only conveys the disciples’ fear but also the power of Jesus’ Resurrection. Despite the doors, locks, and, most of all, despite death itself, Jesus came and stood among them; he spoke a greeting of peace and conferred on them the Holy Spirit to empower them to rise above their fears and to do God’s work.

The first appearance in this Gospel serves to set up the second appearance one week later. The problem with the first instance was that one of the original twelve (other than Judas) was missing. Thomas was not present for Jesus first appearance, and when Thomas eventually heard about it, he was incredulous. Can’t we just imagine what was going through his mind? “These people have lost their minds; they have left their senses; their eyes have played tricks on them.” Thomas said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

The two stories together give the answer to a real problem of Faith experienced in the early Christian community. In the post-apostolic Church, the community after the Apostles, after those who were around for the resurrection appearances, after that big group who, according to Paul, witnessed Jesus ascend into heaven, and after the time of Paul to whom Jesus also appeared...in this post-apostolic community, how is it that people are expected to believe? How do the ones who did not benefit from seeing the Resurrected Jesus with their own eyes...how do these people come to have Faith in Jesus?

Through the Lectionary in the Book of Common Prayer, the Episcopal Church gives us the opportunity to ponder the answer to this question every time the 2nd Sunday in Easter comes around. The spotlight on Thomas’ experience is a reminder that even seeing the Resurrected Jesus is no guarantee of Faith. The disciples in that upper room all saw with their eyes, but they still had to make a “leap of faith” to accept that their teacher and friend was also their Lord and God.

The Gospel According to John tells the story of Jesus appearing to his disciples to establish a first wave of witnesses who would subsequently establish the pattern of one generation witnessing to the next. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God from those who came before us.

The story of how Thomas comes to believe yields at least three things we can say about Faith:

1. To have Faith means to trust. This is the way Faith is used almost exclusively in the scriptures, and it is what Jesus meant when he encouraged Thomas to believe. There may be times when you will hear faith used to describe a set of things to believe. In this sense, the Episcopal “faith” might include such things as the apostolic succession of bishops and the basis of religious authority being scripture, tradition, and reason...but these are just two in a list of things to which we might subscribe. When Jesus speaks to Thomas, he is not talking about things on a list...he is talking about trust, he is inviting Thomas to bet his life on God.
2. Faith is not the same as certainty. If a person is certain, he or she does not need to trust, because he or she already “knows.” Faith requires vulnerability and there is no vulnerability in certainty….there is no “leap of faith,” no mystery. Instead of certainty, Jesus invites us to be open to him, with hearts inspired by the reading of scripture, formed by participation in worship and selfless actions, and guided by careful thinking as well as thoughtful discussions with fellow Christians. Certainty distorts religion. Many forms of extremism are about choosing certainty over Faith. Certainty takes dogma and beats other people over the head with it...or worse...and you find this in religions all over the planet. The suicide bombers in Sri Lanka last week were so certain in their contempt that they were driven to commit atrocities. But, Faith as trust means having an open heart, trusting that God is with us even if we remain reverently unsure about some of the details. Trust in this way also means accepting the possibility that God has spoken to others who worship differently than us and who subscribe to different things than we do. Trust never leads to contempt. Our world surely needs less certainty and more Trust, don’t you think?
3. And finally, we do not create Faith. It is a gift that comes to us from beyond us. In John’s theology, we don’t make ourselves believe...we come to believe when the story of Jesus and the traditions of the Church are passed down to us. Because faith is a gift it is not coercive. People are free to harden their hearts to the Good News. We were created, after all, with the ability to choose. Of all things, God made us with the ability to take God’s invitation to Faith under advisement. In the end, God has shown us in Jesus that we are called to take our place in a family, to join others around a table, so to speak. Jesus even used the term “friends” to describe those who follow him. True friends are not forced or bribed to be loyal; friendship is only so when it is given freely.

So you see, today is anything but a “Low Sunday.” Our theme is the nature of Faith itself, a message our world so desperately needs to hear. And now, we move to the sacrament of Baptism where in Faith we will witness a child being connected forever to something greater than himself. And, we will, with his family and sponsors, promise to pass on the story of Jesus and the traditions of the Church, so that this little one might in time come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing he might have life in Jesus name. AMEN.