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I can connect anything back to Star Trek.

Home is Where Your Light Shines

Epiphany, Matthew, Sermons

Year A, Epiphany 5: Matthew 5:13-20
Sunday, February 5, 2017: The Church of the Holy Cross, North Plainfield NJ

“You are the light of the world…Let your light shine”[1]

In today’s gospel passage from Matthew, we hear some of Christ’s teachings from what happens after the Sermon on the Mount. In anticipation of his crucifixion and resurrection, Christ calls us as his followers to be the light of the world – to be the light of Christ in a world where it is always tempting to give in the darkness of things like hopelessness and unkindness. We are called to be bright. As humans, nothing we give light to in our physical world is meant to be hidden. We don’t use candles, headlights, and lamps just to hide them in a box to be left unseen. When we give something light, we expect it cast its glow all around. Doesn’t it stand to reason that God expects us to shine with the light God has bestowed on us as well? When God called light into being in Genesis, God called that light good.

Christ tells us today that we are the light of the world. (Think about how beautiful that sounds). It is our great gift and our responsibility to let our light shine.

I know that it can be tempting to feel self-conscious about shining, but think about all of the times someone else shining has made you brighter. Let me tell you about a time that someone’s light left a lasting glow on me:

In my second semester of college, I sat behind a woman named Tanya in my history class. We didn’t interact much, mostly in a “talk to the person next to you” kind of way or in the venting mutual frustrations before-or-after class kind of way…but we interacted enough that I recognized her when I ended up sitting next to her again in a literature class the following fall. This time, we spent more out-of-class time together as study buddies and collaborators on group projects, where we balanced academics with cobbler-baking and movie-watching. Still, our friendship didn’t really stick until our third class together during my third year at Delaware. This time, our cobbler-centric study parties extended beyond the semester and our time together became less and less focused on studying.. and more and more on being good friends. When I shared with Tanya my discernment of feeling called towards the priesthood, it didn’t shutdown or redirect our conversations. Instead, it deepened them. As we talked about how we each experienced Christ in our lives, I felt called to invite Tanya to church. She’s maybe the second person I’d ever invited to church and having her join our campus ministry made it a richer experience for our small but mighty student community as well as St Thomas parish, which sponsored the ministry.

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Tanya and I used to joke that God knew we were supposed to be friends, and that’s why we got all of those chances to get it right by having all of those classes together in college. Tanya could be reserved, but as she learned to trust me with the bright shining light got put in her, my life and my faith became made richer. She was unwavering in her faith in God and God’s providence. She was always gracious, and even when life was not gracious to her, she was unwavering in her faith in God and God’s plan. She had a great eye for God winks! Tanya was gracious, grateful and faithful even when she spent her post-graduate school years battling a brain tumor that took away her independence. Seeing her light shine so beautifully connected me to Christ in a new way through the piece that was in her. On the days I feel like my light is going out, the gracious, grateful, and faithful glow of her Christ-light is one of the most inspiring that still shines on me and helps me start to glow again.

We are the light of the world, and we are called to shine. Like the candles we hold each Christmas Eve when we sing Silent Night and all our individual lights combine to make the whole church glow, except that we’re called to be light everywhere. I can’t talk about light without quoting the first chapter of John: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.”

I know that the annual meeting can be stressful, for us and for many of our church neighbors, in this diocese and in others. I also know that the transitions we’ve been through as a community have brought us much change in not a lot of time. We are not alone in this challenge either. But I’ve also called this place home long enough to know something else. For all of the years we’ve faced stressful annual meetings, we’ve still shining, maybe brighter than ever because we’re so determined to overcome any darkness that might dare creep across our Holy Cross horizon line. Christ’s light may not have led our community where we expected; I talked to you last week about just how hard the Holy Spirit laughs when we try to overplan – but we are most definitely called to shine.

I’ve grown a lot in the light here – the light of this community and the light in each of you, who I am so much brighter for knowing and loving and journeying with.  But last week, after church, when I stayed to lend my heart and hands to Neighbors Feeding Neighbors, I was reminded that there are still new ways I can find Christ in all of you and in this place I’ve known as long as I could know anything.  I remembered hearing about this program, when it first started and was struggling to grow, but last Sunday, I experienced it in action. This room full of people from all walks of life – young and old, families and singles – who came to eat the food prepared and coordinated by people in this room and to claim warm winter clothes donated by Betty’s Basement – another example of what cool things can happen when our light shines in a new way. At Neighbors Feeding Neighbors, I got to be amazed at the light of Christ shining forth from Holy Cross in a new way that connected to all of these new people and that showed me that even in a community I’ve called home forever, I can still find more of Christ’s light. It’s been blowing my mind and making my heart glow all week.

We are the light of the world. We are not meant to hide ourselves under a bushel or behind closed doors. We are not called to play it safe by glowing in the all of the same familiar ways. We are called to glow like fireflies on a summer night, shining in the darkness and stretching our wings as far as we can to light up the night with love as boundless as the sky and full of new places to explore. We are called to take risks and shine in new ways  – think about the beautiful new way Christ’s light is shining through Neighbors Feeding Neighbors!

We are the light of the world. Let’s shine, shine, shine!

[1] Matthew 5:14, 16

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.

General Seminary Commencement 2016: A love that binds friend and stranger

Seminary, Sermons, St Patrick's Breastplate, , , , , , ,

Matthew 28:16-20


Jesus said to them… “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age”

To the end. From the beginning.  The alpha and the omega. Christ within us all, stirring and working within us to answer a call to be part of the community life within this place, and for those of us about to graduate, to go forth into the world having fulfilled this seminarian-shaped piece of that call.

My story is full of Christ beside me in so many wild and crazy and beautiful new ways in my time here. The comfort of the daily rhythm of chapel life, and the occasional whimsy of pranks. Fellowship with friends over wine around all sorts of tables. In the ringing of the bell in the tower. The people I started loving the moment I first heard them speak, and the people I have loved who I didn’t even think I’d like.

But I don’t think anyone here needs to hear a sermon about the radiance of our King of Glory in the beauty of springtime flowers blooming, rainbows cutting across the sky, children laughing and loving someone so deeply that your heart swells so big that it reaches your toes. Christ in the hearts of all who love us.

That’s Glory of God 101.

I’ve seen enough Grace made manifest in enough people here to say with confidence we’ve got it covered that Christ is with us in rainbows and butterflies.

Christ is with us always.

Always means not just when we feel Him in the sunshine or when we see Him in our favorite people or when we’re doing something that makes us feel really proud of ourselves and that we’re sure Jesus is going to want to hang up on His heavenly refrigerator when we present it to Him next time we go to pray.

Always means that Christ is within us through all of our least favorite parts of our stories: the parts when we screw it all up. When we say nasty things about what someone wore or how colossally they stuck their foot in their mouth or how they failed at something daring they set out to achieve. Christ is with us when we fail to disagree in a way that honors our baptismal covenant.  Christ is with us when we avoid the light of a truth because we’re too afraid of what it means. We can close our eyes and cover our ears and turn our backs and stomp our feet, but resistance to this truth is futile.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier to take comfort in the fact that Christ loves us so unconditionally that He is always there to help us avoid making that particular mistake again, if we let Him in? If we let each other in?

Christ is with us always.

Each September, as part of the ritual that ties all our stories together, each new class prepares to sign the book chronicling nearly 200 years of matriculates, Each September at matriculation we join together in singing St Patrick’s Breastplate:

Christ be with me. Christ within me
Christ behind me, Christ before me
Christ beside me, Christ to win me
Christ to comfort and restore me.

Restore. Restoration from any breaking down. For all the love I’ve learned so far, my story includes walls tumbling down, too. All of our stories have these ups and downs.

But Christ has the power to restore us from any deaths in our spirit that might interfere with our ability to experience the Gospel of Life, if we’re willing to take the time and do the work and name whatever the problem is – rather than pretend it simply isn’t there.

What does acknowledging Christ in times of danger even look like?

This past January, I had the privilege of going to South Africa on the General Seminary pilgrimage – something I highly recommend to every single person in this room – and as part of this wild ride, my fellow adventurers and I had the honor of dining with Fr. Michael Lapsley, who graced our campus with his presence two weeks.  Lapsley was one of many people whose stories and perspective helped enrich our class’s understanding of South Africa’s long journey of ending apartheid and continuing journey of restoration. One of the great many things Lapsley has done with his life is to found something called the Institute for the Healing of Memories. He believes that the entire human race has been traumatized by what we’ve done, what was done to, and what we failed to do. He believes the key to moving past this trauma is to have our stories acknowledged, reverenced, recognized, and given a moral context. Through his institute, Lapsley seeks to create a space that is secure for people to bare their wounds and move from victim to survivor to victor through being courageous and vulnerable enough to speak their truth.

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Christ is with us always.

To fully acknowledge the Christ within us, we all must be courageous, too, when we go out through those gates and into the city. But having courage like Christ means we need to be brave enough to be truly vulnerable.  If we want to go out there and inspire the world with a love like Christ, then we need to follow the model of our God – who so yearned to be in deeper relationship with us that our God led by the example of stepping out of a heavenly, glorious, comfort zone and taking on an infinitely more vulnerable way of being – frail, fragile, human flesh. Christ before us. The word made flesh, tabernacling among us.

The love doesn’t stop there. Obviously.

In case taking on frail human flesh for us wasn’t enough of a vulnerability, Christ died naked, nailed to a cross in the crucifixion and that violent, vulnerable, Good Friday nightmare – was the death that preceded the resurrection. Think about that. There’s no big, beautiful resurrection without the crucifixion. That is mind-blowingly miraculous vulnerability! That’s God’s love for us. That’s Christ.

And Christ is with us always.  

We are never going to get it all right, out there or in here. But if we spend our whole lives hiding from the truth of the errors we make or too afraid to speak a truth that goes against popular opinion because we’re afraid, then we’re living in the kind of fear that perfect love like God’s casts out.

And even if we’re cowering, there’s no sure way of avoiding having the crowds of the passion play yell “crucify him!”  or “crucify her!” at any of us.

And for all the pain involved in standing in front of the angry mob…
It’s that COURAGE!
It’s that VULNERABILITY!
It’s that TRUTH!
That gets us to resurrection and new life!

We wouldn’t have a resurrection without a crucifixion.

Christ loves us with a love unafraid to be truly, deeply vulnerable because He knows that’s the path to new life.

How do we experience rising again if we don’t fall down?

In the words, of St Patrick’s Breastplate, here is my prayer for us all:
Christ be with us, when we go out of these gates into the city.
Christ within us, help us love more deeply
Christ behind us, call us out of our comfort zone.
Christ before us, continue to inspire us with your example of deep, vulnerable, love
Christ beside us, help us help each other rise back up when we dare greatly enough to fall.
Christ to win us over to a better way of life.
Christ to comfort and restore us. Always.
Christ is with us, always.

We have already bound this love unto ourselves. Let us dare to live it.

Love like Big, Boundless Skies

Sermons, , ,

I preached the following sermon at St Thomas Episcopal Church in Newark, DE, where I worshiped and was involved in campus ministry when I was at the University of Delaware. The propers are for the Fifth Sunday after Easter C, focusing on the gospel, John 13:31-35.You can watch it here.

“Everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”

Christ calls us to love and honor all people.  It’s one of the foundational promises of our baptismal covenant and the subject of many a passage of scripture. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that love is patient and kind and bears and believes all things. It’s a lovely passage. But you don’t have to worry about my preaching on it today.

For me, I know all this talk about love makes it tempting to write today’s gospel off. I know to strive to hold the door for people behind me, to hold my tongue when I’m tired and grumpy, and to hold off on tailgating the car going the incorrect speed for its lane choice.  I mean, I’m trying to be good and to be kind.

Jesus said “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another”

How does Jesus love his disciples that isn’t covered in 1 Corinthians?

When Jesus first called his disciples, they weren’t wandering around like baby ducks looking for a mother to imprint on and to follow. They were people like you and me, waking up and going out into the world with one or more jobs to do.

Picture it:  you’re waiting tables at a café or checking out customers in a grocery store line. In your frantic, mad rush, you turn to your next customer and there’s JESUS and he says “Hey, I know this is how you put food on the table and a roof over your head and that you’re shifts not ever for another few hours, but you should stop everything you’re doing and follow me.

“Now.”

That’s scary. That’s wild. That’s outside my comfort zone.

That’s Jesus loving his disciples by inviting them into a new way of being, – should they dare to accept such a radical love – and spread wings they might not even know they had.

And that was just the beginning!

Following Jesus around in this new way of being did not guarantee any sort of glamour or social desirability.  I think I can say with confidence that there was no “Disciple of the Month” award that came with a modest Applebee’s gift card. Jesus’ love that called the disciples into a radical new way of being also called them to love everybody. The real everybody. Not just everybody in their neighborhood or where they used to work or who they went to school with. Jesus’ love called the disciples – and still calls us – to love the people we like to pretend we don’t see or only exist in the form of being causes we give our money to.  People who are forced to sell their bodies. People who talk to themselves when they ride the train. People who we can smell when we walk by them, making it harder to pretend they’re not there.

Jesus’ big transformative love doesn’t allow for the big invisible walls our society can put up to keep us separate from people less desirable than we are.

Jesus’ love called the disciples to invite them to dinner. This love believes we should all come to the table together.

This past January, I had the incredible honor of returning to South Africa for 10 days with my ethics professor, Fr. Michael Battle. Towards the end of our trip, we had breakfast with Desmond Tutu and one of my classmates asked him what his greatest passion is. His answer: Freedom. It was at the heart of Tutu’s passionate work to end apartheid in South Africa and still visible in his support of his daughter Mpho’s plans to marry another woman, the center of much discussion in Cape Town around the time of our trip.

“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another”

Talk about a love that transforms! Tutu’s leadership and passion for freedom helped to transform a nation and break down the barriers established under apartheid and inviting an entire nation into a new way of being.

You never know when the Holy Spirit might come lovingly knocking at your door and inviting you into a new way of being. And while these outrageous acts of Grace are about as easy to predict as finding a door to Narnia (never the same way twice), we do have some control as to how ready we are to welcome such big love. Where might there be invisible walls that keep up from making space within our very own hearts?

A few days ago, I was going for a walk with one of my classmates. We were talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly in the great world of Job Searching in the Episcopal Church.  It’s a pretty big church out there, but in all the pressure to find a job, it can be tempting to force ourselves to fit into a good-enough one. To think the fit is close enough to right. To convince ourselves that we won’t be clipping our wings enough to even notice.

But if we’re contorting ourselves to fit into this new space, it doesn’t sound like we’ll be leaving much room for the Holy Spirit to make a Graceful entrance. I don’t mean to underestimate Her so much as to acknowledge just how distracting that kind of contortionism can be.

This conversation about the church prompted my friend to share a bit of her personal experience from earlier in her life. She told me how she had been tempted many times to make that same mistake in relationships. To force herself to fit. To clip her wings a bit to see if that might turn “good enough” into “good.”

It didn’t.

If you’re clipping the magnificent and unique set of wings God gave you to fly with in the one-of-kind way God is calling you to fly, you’re doing it wrong.

If your love for someone is shaped like a birdcage, contains any sort of latch, or requires wing-clipping; you’re definitely doing it wrong.

And that’s wehn my friend said something else to me that sounded a lot like Bishop Tutu’s passion for freedom from birdcages of inequality and injustice and abuse.

She said: “You know how I knew my husband was the one for me? I didn’t have to even think about clipping my wings. He was already shouting, ‘FLAP HARDER!’”

That’s the kind of image that lines up with Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.

A love that invites you to spread your full wingspan and SOAR requires a lot of space. Those boundless skies have a lot of big, scary, stunningly beautiful room for transformation.

Jesus said “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another”

 “Just as I have led you with love that transforms you, you should love one another in a way that breaks down barriers”

Flap harder. Tell your friends.        

 

Atonement & Suffering

Seminary, , , ,

We witness and experience suffering in our world on a regular basis: devastating weather events, violent crimes, unexpected health complications, and other kinds of trauma. In the overwhelming firehouse that has been the discussion of atonement theology this semester, where is suffering?

Theories of Atonement

Ransom theory, the main theology of atonement for 1000 years, cites Christ’s purpose on earth was to pay a ransom to the Devil to get humanity back. One of the interesting components of this theory is that under it, the devil is just as powerful as God. Christ isn’t just saving us from sin. Christ is saving us from evil. By defeating these powers, Jesus saves humanity from our suffering.

Satisfaction theory focuses on the problem of our sin as something  we cannot reconcile ourselves. God created humanity, so only God could absolve humanity. In the Incarnation, God became human to save us, since sin can only be forgiven by God. There’s no issues of the devil being on par with God. While suffering isn’t explicitly mentioned, if it is associated with sin, then it creates a very problematic answer to the problem of suffering…

Penal substitution, as previously discussed, focuses on the law and Christ bearing the punishment for our sins, suffering in our place. It’s confusing in terms of suffering: if Christ is suffering the punishment for our sins, then what did we do to deserve suffering?

Moral influence theory (my favorite) states that Christ was sent by God because God loves us. It’s big with the warm fuzzies and does not have the problem of violence that the other two theories are often criticized for:

“Indeed how cruel and wicked it seems that anyone should demand the blood of an innocent person as the price for anything, or that it should in any way please him that an innocent man should be slain – still less that God should consider the death of this Son so agreeable that be it he should be reconciled to the whole world?”[1]

This theory of atonement leaves more room for the human heart, but raises the question: if all you need is love, where is there room for suffering? Is all suffering evil?

For those of who who’ve seen the wonder that is Inside Out, we know that happy rainbows and butterflies and glitter cannot fix everything, and for those of us who’ve done CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education), we recognize Sadness’s amazing counseling of Bing Bong, as she helps him process his grief and name his feelings. Even Joy eventually recognizes the importance of sadness! Our visible signs of suffering, even from the smallest indications of strain, cue others that we need help, support, and comfort.

How do we handle suffering on a societal level?

While cultures of over commitment and putting on a brave face generally seem to handle suffering by avoidance (not the CPE recommended approach), when I try to think of an example of acknowledging suffering well, one stands out about all the rest: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

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There are some brilliant documentaries on this that know far more than I do; I know enough to know just how much I have left to learn!

Here, after the fall of apartheid, South Africans from all walks of life were invited to tell their stories[1]: the crimes they witnessed, and the injustice and violence they or their loved ones experienced. Even more, white South Africans who had served in police forces could be granted amnesty in exchange for their truths too, in hopes of helping people who left wondering about what had happened to their loved ones to get the answers they needed to properly grieve. The numbers are staggering:

  • Over 6,750 statements were received from witnesses
  • 1,355 hours of recordings were collected
  • 7 national events held[2]

Just stop for a second and think about what an amazing undertaking it is to support people in truth-telling about such a deep wound on a national scale. Perhaps places where small-scale reconciliation didn’t quite go as planned should take a page from South Africa’s book. There are plenty of pages to choose from; the final report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is six volumes!

How do we translate this success to a personal level?’

In an earlier post, I mentioned that my group and I had the privilege of dining with Fr Michael Lapsley during our pilgrimage to South Africa in January. Born in New Zealand in 1948, Michael Lapsley went to Australia as a teenager to study to be a priest, and in 1973, he went to South Africa to serve as a chaplain for the Anglican Student Federation in Durban, where he was required to be a priest to black, white, and coloured students. His activity in the anti-apartheid movement led to his being exiled from South Africa in 1976. Lapsley continued his anti-apartheid work in Lesotho for several years, but when it became unsafe to remain there, he relocated to Zimbabwe in 1982. In 1990, his life changed when he received a mail bomb packaged as a religious magazine, triggered by his opening the cover. This act of terror inflicted serious injuries on Lapsley, who lost both his hands and sight in one of his eyes in the blast. By 1993, he had recovered sufficiently to serve as the Chaplain of the Trauma Center for Victims of Violence and Torture in Cape Town during the Truth and Reconciliation Process.

Fr. Lapsley’s journey up to this point inspired him to found the Institute for the Healing of Memories, which focuses on creating a safe space for people to tell their story and work through their grief in a parallel process that builds on the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He believes that his own success in working through his experience is a result of his story being acknowledged, reverence, recognized, and given a moral context, so he seeks to create a space that provides these four pillars for others as they process their trauma. A nation needs to focus on the political, social and economic for its well-being and people needs to focus on the physical, emotional, and spiritual for theirs.

Fr. Michael Lapsley spends 3-4 months per year in the United States doing Healing of Memories workshops.

The space between the suffering of the crucifixion and the joyous, redemptive miracle of the resurrection is the tension we must navigate as we lead and as we serve.

 

 

[1] You know how I feel about storytelling

[2] Truth and Reconciliation Commission: By the numbers

[1] Reid, Patrick V. Readings in Western Religious Thought. 2 vols. New York: Paulist Press, ©1987-1995, 195.