Deuteronomy 30:15-20
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37
Psalm 119:1-8
Preached on February 12, 2017 at the Church of the Holy Cross, North Plainfield, NJ

Happy are they who seek the Lord with all their hearts.[1]

As I was meditating on today’s scriptures and their common thread of upholding the law, I noticed that this is not the only thing they have in common; in today’s scripture passages, we hear a lot about minding our hearts. Now, I’m not talking about minding our hearts in the Valentine’s Day sense, although all of this heart talk is seasonally appropriate. I’m talking about not getting stuck in our heads  – on reason alone – when we’re trying to think through something in a world that requires a focus on something greater. Interestingly enough, it’s the scripture passage that doesn’t use the word “heart” that captures this best.

The only reading today in which the word “heart” doesn’t appear is the reading from 1^st Corinthians. Typical, that Paul would be difficult. I guess that’s how we know that the Holy Spirit is there though, isn’t it? 1 Corinthians best PR [2] is the passage about love that people read for weddings or write in Valentine’s, but this letter – and the rest of the New Testament letters – are about so much more. The letters from Paul that we read in scripture are the story of the early church being formed. The leaders who are persecuted in Acts are persecuted because they dared travel from city to city in the early world and proclaim the gospel and convert people to way of Jesus Christ. Our church’s bold commitment to being counter-culture is in our deepest roots.  The city of Corinth, the destination of the letter we’re reading from today, was a key city in Greece, but for all of Paul’s evangelism, he couldn’t stay there forever. That just wasn’t his call. Nevertheless, he writes to the people of Corinth as his brothers and sisters in Christ to help them mend their hearts. In the first half of today’s New Testament reading, we hear that there is division among the people of the Church in Corinth. Paul cautions us against a way of life focused only on “human inclinations” – followed our own individual agendas to best take care of ourselves as individuals. In order to avoid jealousy, quarrelling, and other things that cause us to sin by dividing us from our neighbors, we need to focus on God’s agenda. As Paul writes to the people of Corinth in today’s passage, for all of the good work of humans to found the church and share the fellowship, it is always God who makes our faith grow and who calls us to live and love more richly by following Christ [319]

We are each given minds that work in different and beautiful ways, as developmental psychologist Howard Gardner addressed in his brilliant work on the eight-to-ten different kinds of intelligences he believes we all possess in different quantities, but in addition to our ability to reason in whatever type of intelligence God has given us, we must also be careful stewards of our hearts. After all, in today’s reading from Deuteronomy, what keeps the Israelites from hearing God and living into God’s commandments isn’t their ears or their mind’s ability to process the words.[3] What the Israelites are told to do is to keep their hearts turned to God above all. Our hearts know whether we are keeping God’s commandments because they can feel whether what we’re doing is good and is bringing us closer to God or whether what we’re doing is sin and is causing division.

In a few days it will be Valentine’s Day, the pressures of which can be challenging. Couples can enjoy hearts-and-candy bliss, if they can rise above the pressures of perfection. Those of us not part of a couple can enjoy a day spent with beloved family or friends, celebrating other kinds of love, but for anyone who is struggling with loneliness or recovering for a particularly potent heartbreak, the day can be filled with sadness or misery, accentuating feelings of loneliness , invisibility, or simply being “not good enough.”

Loneliness is also common at Christmas time, a fact that is easy to forget in spite of hearing stories like “A Christmas Carol” or “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. The Grinch, whose bitterness from one bad day, one bad turn, one rough morning commute, one time he encountered a problem before his morning tea turned into a bitter, grumpy, grinchy-ness with so much unprocessed grief and anger that his heart turned away from God  – that’s how, over time, a heart can shrink down to two sizes too small. Clearly, the Grinch didn’t come to church and listen to sermons that called him to be Christmas everyday; after all, he could hardly stand the one.

The Grinch had deep-seated wounds.  Though we do not know what the cause of these wounds are they are wounds that kept him from being in community. They were wounds that kept him from accepting what good about him.  They were wounds that convinced him that others did not accept him for who he was, so he lived alone with his dog, max.  The Grinch’s insecurity around these wounds gave him the kind of bitter thoughts that Matthew cautions us against in today’s gospel passage – the kind that poison our hearts.[4]

All of this poison in his heart made him steal Christmas from every Who in Whoville, but what makes this story so beautiful is how it backfired. For all of the things that the Grinch stole, he couldn’t steal what irked him most about Christmas: the part where every Who gathered together and held hands and sang out joyfully. See, every Who who sang knew what mattered, what brings us together every week: the Love. I remember standing on those blue steps in Junior Choir and singing “Love the Lord will all your heart and soul and mind and strength. I will love the Lord with all I am.” Whole self love. Love with an open heart for the Holy Spirit to descend like a dove and help us grow with God. Love that transforms. The collective love of every Who in Whoville helped transform the Grinch, whose heart grew three sizes that day, wide open, transformed by love, and swelling with space for the Holy Spirit to work through him and love him, with the beautiful grace we live into each Sunday when we, too, pray for the forgiveness of our sins.

Last week, I revealed to you all how when my own job search dragged on. For a time, I struggled to keep my insecurities from poisoning me by making me believe that I wasn’t good enough.  “Not enough” is not in our God’s vocabulary and it is not a phrase that will bring us into a deeper relationship with our Creator. Like Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences teaches us that there are many ways to try to qualify the beauty of a brain, we as followers of Christ must remember that our God fed five thousand people with two fish and created us in perfect, Goldilocks approved, just-right proportions, whether we are part of a pair or not.

Like the Grinch, we each carry around our own wounds. And like the Grinch we can choose to hold on to them or let them go.  We can choose to work through them or let them work on us.  We can choose to walk with them or flee from them.  If we choose to face our wounds and walk with them then we are able to discover that we are loved by God just as we are, and that the Holy Spirit, in a mysterious way, is living at the center of the wound, descending upon us all like a dove even when things get messy and loving us with a love that transforms even with all of our imperfections.

So just how do you walk with wounds that are so deep and so alienating?  The answer Paul gives is Christ and the crucifixion.  Christ who understands and identifies with our loneliness.  Christ who carries our wounds. And by doing so, shows us the God who loves us.  It is in Christ that we can learn we belong – belong to a community of the wounded.  It is in Christ that we learn that we are loved, in spite of our woundedness.   And it is in the community of the wounded who encounter the living God in Christ, in whom we are healed, through our life together; our shared journey; our open, swelling, hearts; and our Baptism.  Baptism reminds us of the story of God’s love that comes to us amid our woundedness to give us healing and life. Baptism, just like weeping, requires water. It also reminds us of dying and rising with Christ, whose ugly death in the wounds of the crucifixion was a necessary stop on the journey to resurrection, and sets us on a path of walking with our woundedness in order to find life therein.

So as you walk through those doors today, walk boldly in all your strength from God and all of the imperfections of your wounds, knowing the Holy Spirit can descend upon your heart in joy or in pain. As the psalmist writes, Happy are we who seek the Lord will all our hearts[5]: all our hearts and souls and minds and strength. All our love. All God’s love. All that we are, wounds included.

[1] Psalm 119:2

[2] 1 Corinthians 13

[3] Deuteronomy 30:15-20

[4] Matthew 5:21-37

[5] Psalm 119:2

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.

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

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