Monthly Archives: January 2017

The Three Ingredient Recipe for Transformation

Epiphany, Matthew, Sermons

Year A: Epiphany 4
Micah 6:1-8
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12
Preached at the Church of the Holy Cross, North Plainfield, NJ. Watch it here.

I take a lot of comfort in making plans. When I bake the pies for Thanksgiving dinner with my family, I want to put everything together in just the right amounts and in just the right order. I have a plan and a desired outcome and I know what to expect. It makes me feel more in control to know what to expect, and that’s comforting. In a world I know I can’t control at all, I still like to have a plan to help keep me focused on what’s important. If it’s too precise, the Holy Spirit usually laughs at me, so I just try to focus on the important stuff, like what Micah says today in the last lines of our Old Testament lesson!

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?[1]

This beautiful verse pairs so perfectly with the beatitudes we hear in today’s gospel passage and it gives us a three-ingredient recipe on how to stay in relationship with God, who so unconditionally loves each of us. Micah’s plan is open enough to leave space for all of the chaos of the world, yet focused enough on the key points to give us the direction we need to stay focused on our relationship with God as we navigate that wild jungle out there.

First, do justice. Justice is a transformative virtue that seeks to establish or restore a community, while aiming to balance personal good with the common good.  It is a virtue which seeks to make right within the community all that which has gone awry.  Justice is a virtue that seeks to consider the relationships within the community and hold all up as good.  In our baptismal covenant, we promise to strive for justice and peace among every human being. We say “We will, with God’s help”[2] because balancing good within an entire community requires all of our best as well as God’s grace!

Second, love kindness.  Loving kindness is more than just “it’s nice to be nice to the nice.” It’s more than just that fake, pleasant smile we work so hard to maintain when we kind of want to scream. Loving kindness isn’t merely being kind and doing the kind thing. Loving kindness is finding joy in your heart in the act of being charitable to all of your fellow humans, even the ones who are rude customers of the business where you and rude drivers along the roads you travel to get there and people who push you way out of your comfort zone. Kindness, or charity, is both about affection as well as ethical, righteousness-based, respectful, and true love of our fellow humans. Kindness isn’t always a smile, sometimes kindness requires us to be a loving presence that is brave enough to tell our friend a hard truth and then support them in living through it. Loving kindness requires us to do right to others for the right reasons, rooted in our love of God and of our neighbor.

Finally, third, we walk humbly with God. We commit ourselves to doing our best in our relationship with God, but no matter how much we feel we might be “succeeding” in this, we never let it go to our heads. We do our best to walk with God, but humility demands that we never allow ourselves to fall prey to the temptation to judge someone who is walking differently than we are or whose sins appear to be different from our sins. This one is difficult, especially if we’re doing justice and loving kindness and we’re convinced we’ve found someone who’s diametrically opposed to our God-grounded way of thinking. The temptation to judge or to be proud enough to believe that we as mortals have the power to damn someone is a dangerous temptation. It is the opposite of walking humbly, and we’re not merely called to walk. We’re called to walk humbly. I did not consider myself a prideful person when I graduated from seminary, but last fall, when my first round of job searching ended unsuccessfully, I found myself swallowing more pride than I even knew I had.  Micah does not say this today, but I really do believe that if we don’t walk humbly, we will be humbled. It’s the circle and the nature of our lives.

Humility is vulnerable. The invitation to welcome people in and to love them is vulnerable. Pursuing justice is bold, and when we do it grounded in love and humility, then we’re bolder through that vulnerability. Every Sunday, we gather and proclaim in the Nicene Creed that Christ was crucified, died, and was buried. And on the third day he rose again.[3] I don’t always agree with Paul, but there’s one line in today’s lesson that really packs it in.  Paul writes that some ask for a sign and some as for wisdom, but “we preach Christ crucified.”[4] In order to get to the big and beautiful and light and love-filled resurrection, we have to go through the vulnerable and humbling crucifixion, the ultimate loving sacrifice.

In today’s gospel passage from Matthew, we hear Jesus teach the disciples the beatitudes. Nine statements in which the humble are exalted and blessed and comforted and promised God’s loved. I truly believe that any trouble or worry you carry in your love-filled heart today can be comforted with one of more of these lines.  When I am sad and weary, it helps me to remember: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Rising to the challenge to work to be in the best possible relationship with God requires that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly; this plan is not always easy to follow, not matter how well we know that the benefits outweigh the costs. That’s why Jesus ends his lesson on the beatitudes with the line “Rejoice and be glad.” The road is not always easy and we need to embrace joy wherever we can get it. There’s joyous beauty and working to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly. For all the ways that radical vulnerability can open us up to things that might hurts us, being open and having all of the doors of our hearts wide open like that also makes more space for the Holy Spirit to descend like a dove and fill us with more love and hope and joy than we can possibly imagine…and probably call us into a new radical way of being in the process!

So as you walk out through those red doors today:

Dare to be transformative. Dare to be transformed.

Dare to do justice.

Dare to love kindness.

Dare to walk humbly.

 

 

[1] Micah 6:8

[2] BCP 305: Technically, it’s “I will, with God’s help” but I want to focus on the communal nature of the sacrament.

[3] BCP 358

[4] 1 Corinthians 1:22-23

Fishing Lures & the Great Light

Epiphany, Matthew, Sermons

Year A Epiphany 3
Isaiah 9:1-4
Matthew 4:12-23
January 22, 2017 at The Church of the Holy Cross in North Plainfield, NJ

When I was in high school, my aunt and uncle in Mississippi got a boat. In the summertime, when I was on break from college, I would go and stay with my dad, who lived nearby. On sunny Saturday mornings, when the winds were still and the water was smooth, the phone would ring and my aunt and uncle would invite us to go out on the boat and fish. We’d pack the cooler and race over and the adventure would begin. Many of my favorite memories with my family there are on that boat, even if I wasn’t much of a fisherwoman. I can’t tie a lure to save my soul, and I willingly admit that the one time I can claim “catch of the day” was dumb luck. I can hardly remember a thing about the fish themselves, but the memories of all of us out there together, catching rays and laughing and riding around – those journeys to nowhere and unknown fishing holes – those memories fill my heart to the brim. I came home often with hands empty of fish and a heart full of joy. The real beauty in those fishing trips was in the people I shared those sunny days with.

But just like Jesus and the disciples at the transfiguration, we can’t stay in those big, beautiful, mountaintop moments all the time. Life goes on. Last May, my seminary classmates and I graduated with our Master in Divinity degrees and embarked on our new journeys. We all left our homes and New York to head off to new places. Some went to cities they’d never been to before. More than once, I’ve found myself on the phone with a friend in a new city brainstorming ways for them to meet new people. Each of our ministries may be tied to beautiful and unique communities, but finding community in one’s personal life is an entirely different adventure. I guess you could say that the search for community is much like fishing for people, whether it’s an individual in a new place or a church hoping to grow! What lure will lay the groundwork for new relationship?
In today’s gospel lesson from Matthew, Jesus starts calling disciples. He tells them to drop everything and follow him, saying “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” …but how?

As we talked about a few weeks ago, in his gospel, Matthew is focusing an audience of Jews who are trying to figure out if Jesus is the Messiah. Because they are his target, he’s really focused on the point that Jesus is the fulfillment of all of these prophecies that have come before – like the passage we hear today from Isaiah that is again quoted in the passage from Matthew: “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” In this passage from chapter 4, we again see Matthew continuing to build that foundation which assures that Jesus’ is the fulfillment of these prophecies. It’s comforting for Matthew’s contemporaries to believe this argument. More than just affirming Jesus’ authority, seeing Jesus’ as the fulfillment of these prophecies suggests that everything that is happening – every bit of beauty and every moment of chaos – is part of a larger plan. God’s plan! Gaining a sense of comfort from order – especially the sense that we are part of a much larger sense of order – is comforting, and scripture can be a source of comfort on our craziest days. Furthermore, we need to take that comfort wherever we can get it, because for all of the times the words of the Bible can help us calm a storm, they also call us into radical new ways of ways of being – giant leaps of faith beyond the safe confines of the known world of our comfort zone. We’ve all been around the block enough times to know how this story ends: what makes Jesus Jesus is that he calls us to big, beautiful, radical love that is far more amazing and much more challenging than we could possible imagine!

One of the biggest challenges is that when we go out into these uncharted territories, the armor of light that we wear is not some heavy metal, bulletproof, impenetrable chest plate but instead this “armor” makes us more vulnerable, walking along the road even when we don’t have a map. When these uncharted territories come in the form of a great challenge or profound grief, we probably all react in similar ways. I mean, I know I seek the solace of the ones I love when I feel lost and overwhelmed and brokenhearted. I find great solace in small communities of trusted beautiful souls. Every relationship begins with a handshake, that first invisible hook, luring us outside of our comfort zone and into a new relationship… especially when those uncharted territories find us facing and new place: a new job or a new city where we haven’t formed that community yet.

“Follow me, and I will make you fish for people”

Jesus call to his disciples was also an invitation. In the charge we’re given to fish for people, we’re invited to follow Christ’s lead into big, beautiful, and vulnerable way of being that lures people together and into deeper relationship. Look around this sanctuary! See how Christ has hooked us together with ties like super-strong nautical knots!

“The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light”

Isaiah wrote this prophecy and Christ’s light fulfilled it.
You are the light. We are the light. We’re brighter together, helping each other see the way on the days when one of us might be struggling to shine. There is a unique and beautiful piece of Christ’s light in each of our hearts, and when we answer the call to follow Jesus and to dare to be vulnerable enough to let that light shine, the warmth of that light invites others to do the same. It lures them in. It’s the best kind of fishing for people.

So, dare to follow. Dare to love. Dare to shine.

The Baptism Journey: Roots, Branches, and the Beautiful Light of Christ

Baptismal Covenant, Epiphany, John, Sermons

Year A: Epiphany 2
John 1:29-42
The Church of the Holy Cross, North Plainfield, NJ
[Watch it here]

“And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove’”

Hey, wait, didn’t we just hear this last week? In the last week’s short passage from Matthew telling of Jesus’ baptism, Matthew narrates to us how, when Jesus’ was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended from heaven like a dove and onto Jesus. I told you then and I’ll tell you now just how beautiful I find that image! The Holy Spirit moving gracefully through the air like a bird and into our hearts. But in the gospel of John, John the Baptist says this and continues. Jesus is not only the one upon whom the Spirit of God descends, but also the one with whom the Spirit of God remains. I don’t know about you, but that part about the Spirit of God remaining reminds me of the words we use in our own baptism, when the Bishop or Priest marks the sign of the cross upon the head of the newly baptized, saying “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

While these two passages from Matthew and John depicting Jesus’ baptism do have their differences, both ultimately assert Jesus’ authority over John the Baptist and see the Holy Spirit moving through Christ in baptism. Now, in today’s gospel passage, we not only have a chance to meditate on Jesus’ baptism, but we get to go on a little further and see what happens next – what happens in Jesus’ life the day after he is baptized!

One of my favorite images to use for baptism is the image of a tree: a tree has roots that ground it, a trunk that centers it, and branches that reach out further and further into the world and closer to the sun with each passing year. And the taller and further those branches reach, the deeper the roots go too. In each of our baptisms, we find our roots which ground us in Christ. We find our trunk which keeps Christ at our core and gives us a center from which to grow. And then we find our branches, exploring new ways to take those promises at the heart of our baptismal covenant and live into them out into the world, striving to reach further and further into the big beautiful light of Christ. From roots to branches. None of us are lone trees but a closely-knit forest – all in this together.

So, today, we once again hear the Holy Spirit descend like a dove on Jesus’ in His baptism, then remain with Jesus as we see what happens to Jesus’ the day after this big awesome sacramental moments.  In this second part of the gospel passage, we hear John address Jesus as the “Lamb of God” for a second time in this gospel passage.

It is John the Baptist’s role throughout the verses where Jesus begins to call his disciples to be a witness, to proclaim as he sees Jesus approach, walk by, that Jesus is the “Lamb of God.” And in that proclamation, he is providing testimony as to who Jesus is and points the way so that others come to recognize Jesus Christ.  This was not the expected Messiah/Savior/Deliverer, the one who would be a great warrior!  John the Baptist was proclaiming him a lamb, that which the Jewish community recognized as a sacrificial offering.

So, this time, when John addresses the newly baptized Jesus as “Lamb of God,” two of John’s disciples hear John say this and so they jump ship and start following Jesus. Jesus, being the brilliant God incarnate who is both King of Jews and king of clever parables, notices that these people have started following Him and they tell him that they are looking for a rabbi, or a teacher. No wonder that first promise in the baptismal covenant is to uphold the apostles’ teaching and fellowship. That’s what’s happening here! Right after Jesus’ baptism! Today’s gospel concludes with the calling of the first disciples! One of the two disciples of John who jumped ship turns out to be Andrew, who is so moved by what he learns from following Jesus that day that he gets his brother, Simon Peter, and they sign on with Jesus to be part of the wild, roots-to-branches ride that is following Christ.

After Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan, he goes out into the world, renewed. We come together every Sunday to renew ourselves and to renew each other in the meditation, grace, love, hope, and story of our faith in our liturgy, grounding our roots and connecting our branches before we branch out again as we are charged with carrying all of this love out into the world as Christians.

Today, we hear Jesus embark on a journey into something new; the great journey of teaching and proclaiming the Good New with His trusted disciples. How many times in our own lives have we embarked on a journey into something new in our earthly lives and ended up finding something heavenly – finding Christ in new places? When have you taken a crazy leap of faith with nothing but Grace to guide you? You know, like how Andrew and Simon Peter did today!

Let me tell you about a time I embarked on something new, other than that time i went to South Africa, that I’ve probably mentioned once or twice (or seventy times seven times) to all of you….

A year and a bit ago, in September 2015, I began my last year of seminary.  While I was used to my seminary community and taking classes and going to chapel, I was also embarking on something new. I was making the decision to now be a half-time student and a half-time intern. In addition to my student life at the seminary in New York City, I was now embarking on a 20-hour-per-week internship gig at St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Basking Ridge as a seminarian and sub-deacon. I had a new commute, relying heavily on New Jersey Transit, and a new community, a new boss and mentor, and so many new names to know.  Every Sunday, I would show up and serve in the service, lead the post-confirmation Sunday school class, maybe preach a sermon, and then shake hands at the door and work the room at coffee hour…. Then, I’d pray to retain all those names while I went through six days of pinging back and forth between my lives as student and as an intern during the week. New Jersey Transit felt like my own personal TARDIS, transporting me between worlds. Names will probably never be my strong suit, but story treasuring – both story-listening and storytelling are two of my soul’s greatest and deepest joys, integral to my call to serve as priest. So, I found that as I got to connect with all of these new people in their stories, where the heart is, I got their names right along with ‘em. And somewhere between the candlelit Silent Night of Christmas and the Great Alleluia of Easter this church full of strangers became a church full of people dear to my heart who honored me by giving me the chance to see the bright, beautiful, and completely unique ways that Christ was at work shining in each one of them. I got to see some of that piece of Christ in each one of their hearts. What wondrous love is this? One that seals us by the Holy Spirit and marks us as Christ own forever. We’ll need an eternity to sing on, indeed.

The sixteenth century Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, once wrote:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ’s compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which He is to bless [all] now.

This poem is one of the best examples of what this embodiment of Christ is.  It reminds us what happened at Christmas: God became incarnate – became flesh – in Jesus Christ to embody fully God’s love for the world.  And the poem takes things one step further and calls on us to incarnate Christ in our own baptized selves and to love the world as Jesus did.  We’ve got our baptismal roots in Jesus, and now we’re branching out.

Remember the WWJD bracelets?  Nice reminders to treat others as we think Christ would have.  What if, however, we changed that up just a bit?  What if instead we asked WWJBD?  What Would John the Baptist do? By challenging ourselves to be like John the Baptist, we become proclaimers of Christ.  We call attention to Christ!  We shout out to all who are within hearing distance, “Hey, look!  See!  God is alive.  God is in our midst.  The Holy Spirit is at work in us and through us and for us and even in spite of us!  Roots. Trunk. Branches. Behold!  The Lamb of God!”

As much as we are called to seek and serve Christ in others, to be the embodiment of Christ to others, we are also called just as Andrew and Simon were called  to embark fearlessly on every wild and Spirit-filled, journey that God calls to, so that in all that we say and do we may proclaim: “we have found the Messiah! We have been marked as Christ’s own forever! And each day, we’re called to search for new ways to try branch out and to stretch closer to that beautiful light of Christ!!

 

Promises on the Wings of a Dove

Baptismal Covenant, Epiphany, Matthew, Sermons

Year A: Epiphany 1
Matthew 3:13-17
at the Church of the Holy Cross, North Plainfield, NJ

“May only your word be spoken, Lord, and only your word heard.”

I pray those words every time I preach. They’re a reminder of the call I continue to choose to answer every time I step into the pulpit. In my prayer, I pause, center myself, open my heart, and invite the Holy Spirit in, that She might move through me. That every word I proclaim to you this morning may be God’s.  Along my journey towards ordination, I had several people alert me to the Grace that can happen in preaching. More than one has found that what people tell her they hear is not always the same as what she said. See this space between where I stand and where y’all are sitting? That’s more than enough for the Holy Spirit to descend like a dove and help the words you need most to reach each of you.

Today, as we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, we hear how the Spirit of God descends on Jesus in the waters of baptism. In the gospel account of the baptism we hear today from Matthew, Jesus comes to the Jordan River and insists that John baptize him.  John’s identity as the man who baptized Jesus is foundational to our understanding of who John I, but there are some differences in the way this story is told in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In Luke, the John doesn’t even really baptize; the Holy Spirit does, and in Mark, Jesus is baptized by John but there’s no conversation between them. As writers, Mark and Luke are focused on an audience of Gentiles for their respective gospel narratives as a whole, so when they tell the story of Christ’s baptism, they’re really trying to drive home the message of forgiveness that baptism offers. Since Matthew’s target audience is Jews who had come to follow Jesus and who focus on the fulfillment of God’s purpose for God’s people, Matthew includes the dialogue we hear where John names his call to baptize Jesus and Jesus consents. The gospel passage we hear today from Matthew acknowledges the authority John had while making sure the focus is on Jesus and Jesus’ power in being the fulfillment of a promise – you know, that promise of Christmas we talked about just two weeks ago? Jesus is the promise that we belong to God everyday. Christmas every day – even on this first Sunday after Epiphany.

Part of being the fulfillment of a promise includes Jesus being fulfillment of the law. The fulfillment of prophecy. The fulfillment of righteousness.

Now that’s a message that would help the Christian Jews to remember where they came from and to whom they belonged! Score one for Matthew for driving the love home with his target audience. He’s working hard in this text to build that bridge from the God of Israel to the God who has just called down from the heavens “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased!”

Here’s God telling the crowd that Jesus is the very fulfillment they’d been waiting for. It’s a beautiful message: “Remember where you come from. Now see where you are going. Follow Jesus’ lead.”

When I think about where I come from, it’s right here. It’s this place – this community. To preach on the baptism of our Lord, when I was baptized right over there – It’s quite a full circle moment. This is the community that raised me up and sent me out and welcomed me home over and over and over again. And it all started before I can even remember.

My journey – and each of our journeys – each of our going out and coming back in to this place –  is grounded in the promises that we made, or that were made for us, in our baptism (304):

The promise to continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers

The promise to resist evil and then repent whenever we screw that up

The promise to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ – and proclaim not just with the words of our mouths but with the being of our whole selves

The promise to seek and serve Christ in everybody – even when they’re not willing to seek the Christ in us

And

The promise to strive for justice and peace for all and to respect everybody

Promises, promises. Like many of you, I can’t remember when they were made on my behalf by the people I love back at that font, but I do remember all the Sunday afternoons spent trying to figure out what they meant when I was sitting in a room down that hallway, preparing to be confirmed in my faith as an adult in the Church.

The roots I have in this Church in my baptism – the roots we all have in our baptism – are also our branches carrying us forward. The way we work together to fulfill our promise to continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship and in the breaking of the bread we’re about to share – The way we work together in fulfilling that promise strengthens our shared roots in this place so that we might go out and live our Baptismal Covenant in all places and truly proclaim the Good News of God in Christ in all that we do. Proofreading

In our baptism, we “are sealed by the Holy Spirit… and marked as Christ’s own forever.” (308) We aren’t just Christ’s followers; we belong to Him. These promises of our Baptismal Covenant knit us together to celebrate our greatest joys, to care for each other in times of sorrow, and to support each other when we’ve messed up and need to repent. Wherever we go and whatever we do, we are Christ’s own forever, sealed in that sacrament, and as long as we keep our hearts open, the Holy Spirit will be there ready to descend upon us like a dove.