Category Archives: Sermons

Be the truth.

Mark, Sermons, Year B

Year B Proper 10
Mark 6:14-29

Sunday Sermon – July 15, 2018 from Christ Church Christiana Hundred on Vimeo.

In today’s gospel, we hear about John the Baptist and how his head ended up on a platter. When we first meet John the Baptist in the gospels, he’s described as wearing clothes of camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey, which isn’t the most relatable first impression. We soon learn him to be a a prophet, and the Bible is full of prophets who are given a hard time for all their truth-telling! He is best known as the baptizer of Jesus, although he had been performing this Jewish ritual of cleansing for quite awhile leading up to that moment. When we meet him today, we hear the story of his death, resulting from his regular daily prophetic duty of speaking the truth, even when not in the position of power. And while his death may seem like the end of everything, the Gospel is not a story about the end.

Although, our lives do seem full of endings, don’t they? We’ve all had experiences that brought us to our knees and made us feel like our heads – or perhaps even more often our hearts – were about to be served on a platter. I managed to make it partway through college before I had my heart truly broken for the first time. After hearing our relationship was over, I remember being so hurt and sad and angry. Hadn’t I been loyal and honorable? What did I do to deserve such heartache? Looking back on the resulting prolific journaling, I have to confess: I remember comparing myself to the dog Old Yeller, blindly led to his execution by his loyal companion.

The words we speak have power. In Creation, God speaks as God calls the world into being – and calls it good. Prophetic voices, like John the Baptist’s, gain their power from their fearless – yet loving – speaking of truth, at all times and to all people – and disregarding any earthly power structure that we believe divides us. This is how Jesus spoke to us, modeling for us how we are called to speak to each other. Today’s gospel passage and story about John the Baptist tells us everything we need to know about truth. Truth requires courage to speak, and it cannot be unheard. Truth forces us to face difficult things that we may not always want to hear. Truth transforms our world whether we choose to listen or not.

John the Baptist may have made a strange first impression on us, but you gotta admire the fearlessness with which he speaks the truth to King Herod, telling Herod that marrying his brother’s wife, Herodias, was wrong. It’s easy to speak truth from a position of authority, when people have to listen to us. Among equals, it’s more challenging, (although looking back on how difficult it was for me to be broken-up with definitely made me more compassionate in all the times since that I’ve been the bearer of such a pain-inflicting truth)…. However, to cry out for justice from a position of vulnerability takes great courage. Truth-telling is essential for justice. In our Baptism, we promise to seek justice for all people. In our judicial system, courts of law seek the truth in order to enact justice; distorting one distorts the other.

One of the easiest ways we distort truths is when we’re not ready to hear them; this is true both for truths others speak to us as well as those we are reckoning with with ourselves in our own stories. Herodias, Herod’s new bride, was livid when John the Baptist declared her marriage was unlawful. She would not hear that he was right. She was not prepared to accept that John’s words were true, so she chose to hold onto her anger and wait for an opportunity for revenge, rather than open herself up to accepting the world to be a more challenging and complicated place than she was prepared to accept. When I remember the raw, shocking, pain of my first broken heart, I was angry, too. I was in denial, too. John’s violent death is not a consequence of Herodias getting angry; John’s violent death is because Herodias chose to stay angry. John’s violent death came from Herodias’ refusal to reconcile herself to a difficult truth about her life. But Herodias couldn’t do it all on her own, she needed both her daughter’s and husband’s complicity; Herod clearly has agency, too.

While we’re quick to read Herod’s execution of John the Baptist as simply fulfilling a promise, but Herod’s relationship with John the Baptist is far more complicated. While Herod probably didn’t appreciate being called out about his unlawful marriage, today’s gospel also says that Herod knew John was righteous and holy. Furthermore, Herod enjoyed listening to John but found him confusing. Another sign of truth can be feeling the transformative power of something, even when we don’t’ yet comprehend what that power means. Because of this, Herod feared John and protected him. Herod feared the truth he did not understand. When I moved past the anger of my broken heart, I still had to navigate the fear of moving forward living by a different set of rules than the ones I’d become accustomed too. When Herod told his daughter that she could ask anything of him, he chose to behead John the Baptist, rather than risk his position of earthly power by breaking his oath to her in front of all his honored guests. It’s a lot like that time – much later in Mark’s gospel – when Pontius Pilate leaves the decision to the people and believes moving forward is as simple as washing his hands. When we’re outnumbered, it’s tempting to look for security in any earthly power we have, just as Herod and Pilate do, forsaking what we know is true for what we believe is security. Herodias’ role in the violence of this passage came from anger; Herod’s role in John’s violent death came from fear. How we respond to truth doesn’t change how true it is but it does affect our relationship with God.

After John’s gruesome death, his body is brought to the tomb by his disciples; an act that mirrors what Jesus’ disciples will later do for Jesus. Both men cautioned us to resist temptation with their honesty about its perils. Both died violently when humanity failed to resist temptation and chose an easier path. John practiced the cleansing ritual of baptizing. The most important truth of all is: Jesus, in his death, cleansed us from all our sin and promises us eternal life in the resurrection the ultimate transformative act in which God takes death and gives us eternal life.

Shortly after that first heartbreak, shortly after that season of anger and fear but still in the stage of comparing myself to Old Yeller, a priest friend of mine posted a picture of himself blessing a beautiful, Yeller-like Golden Retriever. The caption read “This is Yeller. He’s a cancer survivor of 16 years with a lot of wisdom in his eyes.” Apparently, I was a different kind of Yeller than I thought. In that moment, I learned that when we have the courage to hear and accept the life-changing truths that we all must to face, we are also accepting how we are transformed by them and with them and in them. In our transformation, we actively participate in the resurrection and affirm our faith in God’s ability to breath new life into any death, any heartbreak, any supposed ending that comes our way.

One of my favorite quotes is Gandhi’s “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Today’s gospel passage teaches us that, in order to do that, we have to be the kind of truth we wish to see in the world.

 

Palm Sunday 2018: Looking Back on to the Moment of Triumph

Eucharist, Holy Week, Lent, Palm Sunday, Sermons, Year B

Year B Palm Sunday
Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem
The Teaching of Jesus in the Temple (adaptation of Mark 12)
Preach at Christ Church Christiana Hundred in Wilmington, Delaware

Three years ago, I spent Holy Week as a seminary intern at a small church plant in Brooklyn. I processed with palms through Bushwick, prayed through the night after Maundy Thursday, walked the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, and embraced the joy of Easter. Being too far away to make it home to my family, I met up with some friends, lay leaders and clergy alike, for a festive Easter feast, full of exhausted laughter than rang out into the streets of Chelsea late into the night. The next morning, our Easter Monday sabbath, I embraced the resurrection triumph by sleeping in and then started to play on my phone to procrastinate getting out of bed. And I got a message. A picture popped up of one of my dear friends and housemates during my year in South Africa, someone I’d shared many laughs with, crowded around our kitchen table. My friend, my sister in Christ, Tylenia had died, suddenly, at 23 in some senseless car accident. I dropped my phone onto my chest, and it felt like a punch. All the glory of Easter vanished and suddenly I felt like I was back walking the stations of the cross. It was finished. Again.

The most important thing to remember about the gospel stories we’ve just heard is that these are the lessons that Jesus wanted to focus on conveying before his arrest and crucifixion; in these teachings, we hear what Christ knew was most important for us to remember as we begin our journey into Holy Week. Jesus’ knew that there were dark times ahead for the disciples and for all of his followers; he knew his death was coming even though they did not. Jesus called them – and still calls us – to do our part to stay in right relationship with God, so we’re prepared for whatever life throws our way. We’re beginning our journey through Holy Week and Christ is giving us a roadmap to follow. The story of Jesus’ teaching in the temple and the story of the Last Supper follow Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem but foreshadow the journey we’re embarking on as we begin Holy Week, and the story of the Passion that we’ll hear later in the service.

First, when we hear the summary from Mark 12 of Jesus’ teachings in the temple, we hear several rapid-fire stories of different teachings, with one common thread: to draw us closer to the kingdom of God. Jesus tells us which commandment is the greatest: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and all our soul, and with all our mind, and all our strength. And to love our neighbors as ourselves. Then, Jesus praised the widow for giving all the had to God. God isn’t after the contents of our pockets: Chap Stick and credit cards. God wants us to offer up our whole hearts, our whole selves. Our Heavenly Father wants our whole trust. To love God with our whole hearts – to give all that we have like the widow did – we don’t only have to focus on God, we have to focus on loving each other, too. In real love, we let our guard down, which is why when we lose someone we love, we grieve. When I lost Ty, I remembered our laughs at the kitchen table in our home, our first University of Cape Town rugby game, our adventures traveling around the city. All the times we shared in joy and commiserated with each other in sadness. Grief longs for the community of shared joy as well as shared support in times of sorrow.

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In the second part of Mark 12, we hear the story of the Passover meal: the narrative of the bread and wine that the disciples shared at the Last Supper and that we retell every Sunday. When we share the bread and the wine – Christ’s body and blood – we take in his life so that we can live in him. Part of the Eucharistic prayer is the retelling of the story. We say together: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” (Book of Common Prayer, 363). In our prayer together, the bread and the wine become the body & blood of Christ. They become a sacrament, a vessel of God’s Grace. For there to be a sacrament – any sacrament – the faith of the people is required. A priest alone in a room cannot consecrate bread and wine. Just like in the first half of Mark’s gospel: we love God better by loving each other. We’re all in this together

When I was on pilgrimage to Jerusalem last month, one of the great joys of my time there was the people, both my fellow pilgrims as well as the people we met along the way. On our last day in Jerusalem, we visited the site where the procession of palms began. Then, we made our way to Gethsemane, the garden where Jesus and the disciples went on the night before his arrest and crucifixion. There is a beautiful church where we prayed, and outside is a beautiful garden of olive trees. But if it weren’t for the evangelizing of one of my dear fellow pilgrims, I would’ve missed the very best part. If you stand in just the right spot, in the middle of all of those twisted trees, where Jesus prayed, awaiting the grief he knew was coming. If you stand in just the right spot, you can look through the trees, towards the walls around Jerusalem and see the Messiah’s Gate, the gate Jesus rode through in the triumphant entry we just read about at the beginning of the service. You can see the glorious gate framed by the knotty olive trees of Gethsemane.
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Isn’t always just so that you can see the place of triumph so clearly – and yet just out of reach – from the place of grief? It’s a summary of the full spectrum of human emotion that we go through during Holy Week. Between the triumphant entry of Palm Sunday and the joy of the resurrection at Easter, we have the grief of Holy Week, the grief of Jesus’ passion and death. What makes the griefs we experience in lives so powerful – what made my grief for my friend so powerful – is that amid the darkness of grief like twisted olive trees, we can see – just out of reach – our own Messiah’s gate – our own place of great triumph, and – more importantly – great love. In Holy Week, we experience the ways God is with us through all of that – which makes coming out the other side in Easter even more powerful! The people I’ve grieved live on in me, Jesus’ teachings live on in us.

One of the hardest parts about grieving Ty from so far away was that there was no one around me who knew her, nevertheless loved her. I don’t think I was able to completely accept losing my friend until 10 months later, when I went to South Africa and had lunch with two of our other housemates, who could sit in Gethsemane with me and acknowledge how much we still miss her, and look back longingly at the Messiah’s gate, our glory days just out of reach. To fully appreciate the joy of the resurrection, we have to acknowledge the grief of the passion and crucifixion. I invite you to join us this week on that journey, for our Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. Jesus’ glorious entry into Jerusalem led into the teachings we heard today in the summary of Mark 12. Part of loving God with our whole hearts is loving each other with our whole hearts, and sharing in the sacramental life together. And we need all the connection points to God – all the love and glory and laud and honor – we can get when the moments of triumph in our lives give way to experiences of grief and hardship. So, let us live that teaching and sow love with each other as we gather around the table today, and sacrifice our praise and thanksgiving to God, having faith in that love to be our daily bread, next time we get caught spending a long night in Gethsemane, with our glory days just out of reach, we can endure because of the love that keeps watch with us.

Something Better Than Gold

Lent, Sermons, The Psalms, Year A, , , , ,

Year A, Lent 3
Psalm 19
Christ Church Christiana Hundred, Wilmington, DE

This Lent, my colleagues and I committed to preaching on the psalms, an exciting challenge for all of us. More than usual, this sermon evolved over the course of the morning’s services, so the video does not include the Jordan River bit that I prayerfully extroverted, then added to the script below.

Sunday Sermon – March 4, 2018 from Christ Church Christiana Hundred on Vimeo.

One of my practices at the end of the day is to recount the things that I am grateful for. Sometimes, my gratitude for the riches of the day blinds me from my gratitude for my journey to the day. I’m grateful for my education. In high school, I always knew I would go on to college. I was quiet, but I did well in school. Generally, I was quite a rule-follower, too; I wanted to do the right thing, you know? Even if my vision for my life didn’t always line up with my parents’, I didn’t want to let them down. And though I went to high school in a post-Columbine world, I felt safe. I can’t imagine what it feels like for high schoolers now. I am overwhelmed by the violence and the pain it causes. It sounds like the youth of our nation are fed up, too, as they vocally cry out and peacefully march. Some schools are threatening suspension or loss of prom or graduation for students who walk out. In an age where competition for college is greater and greater, no one wants a stain on their application. How can they choose between securing their future and securing their present safety – our future? It’s challenging enough to do the right thing when the answer to the problem is clear; what happens when we can’t figure it out?

In the heart of today’s psalm, Psalm 19, the psalmist tells us about the glory of doing things “God’s way.” He spends three verses – verses 7-9 –  on the Lord’s law, testimony, statutes, commandments, fear, and judgements; many of which are fairly synonymous. Together, these things make up the God’s will, for our world as a whole and for God’s call in each of our lives. When we say the Lord’s Prayer – the prayer Jesus taught the disciples –  God’s will on earth is what we’re praying when we say “Thy Kingdom come.” Praying for God’s kingdom is praying for a world that follows God’s call as a community and as individuals. The Psalmist describes following each piece of the way of the Lord as reviving the soul, giving wisdom, rejoicing the heart, and always enduring.

In verse 10, the Psalmist summarizes of God’s law and testimony as more desirable than gold and the sweetest of honey. An important thing to know to fully understand this verse is: During the Old Testament times, honey was a rare enough commodity that it was considered a luxury, more on par with gold than it is by today’s standards. So, for all the soul-reviving, wisdom-granting, heart-rejoicing, and always-enduring aspects of the Lord’s commandments – the way of life we pray for – these things are not only associated with items of the highest value but with items that are rare.  See, even for knowing that God’s will for our lives is best, most enlightening way of life that offers for the greatest reward: we get to verse 12 and the psalmist says “Who can tell how often he offends? Cleanse me from my secret faults”

The Psalmist, just like us, struggles. The Pslamist knows that God’s law is the best way to live – something better than gold – but he also knows that it’s hard to figure out how to do the right things.  Do any of us know how often we offend? How many secret faults do I have that I am blind to? When we join together in saying the confession there’s that line about “things that we have left undone.” When I say the confession, I’m more comfortable in naming ways that I may have fallen short than I am in having to acknowledge that I might have some blind spots. The first two thirds of today’s psalm are all a set up for the last third: the psalmist is asking God for help to do the right thing. “God, please keep me from making the same mistake again, and while you’re at it, please help me make fewer new mistakes.” Sometimes, part of the challenge of doing the right thing means knowing what the right thing is.  Our lives are filled with some pretty murky waters.

Last month, during my pilgrimage to Israel, I had the great joy of renewing my baptismal vows while standing in the Jordan River. While the way of life that these promises calls us to remains clear, the waters of the Jordan River are actually quite murky. Standing knee-deep in that river, I couldn’t see my feet, but I could still recommit myself to my baptism, no matter how much lack of clarity surrounded me.

Lucky for us, our Lord and Savior is Jesus, who spent a good portion his earthly life wandering around healing people because of their faith or the faith of those around them. I’ve heard the story of Jesus restoring the sight of the blind beggar; it helps me keep the faith the Christ can restore my sight to the blind spots in my heart that keep me from seeing which is the right decision.

Thomas Merton, a twentieth century theologian and writer, penned one of my favorite prayers, which is known at the “Thomas Merton Prayer.” I couldn’t help but think of it, when I read today’s psalm. It begins; “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going” and continues “the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.” Don’t we all want that desire? When I struggle to discern God’s will, I take comfort in believing that that desire to please God does please God.

For all the psalmist’s pleas to God to help him discern God’s will and follow God’s law,  he is clearly aware of God’s presence. This whole journey of declaring the glory of God’s will and begging for strength to follow it begins with the psalmist reveling in the glory of God’s creation; “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows God’s’ handiwork.” Every day. Every corner of the earth. Every glorious sunrise and sunset. God is visible in God’s creation. God reveals Godself in Creation. While the psalmist makes it clear the glory of following God is even greater, these first verses provide us a roadmap that Creation is the first place we are to look for God: the trees and the flowers and howling wind and the warm rain… and us. Humanity. We are a part of Creation. There is a piece of Christ in every human heart. We get to know God better by getting to know each other. We are agents in helping to manifest God’s transformation at work in all of our lives; thy kingdom come, indeed!

One of the reasons our life together as a Christian community is that when we share our faith with each other – whether it’s in a church, in a Growth Group, on a night ride home, or sitting on a rooftop in some strange city – it makes us vulnerable. When we are vulnerable with each other, we reveal Christ to each other and get to know God better.  One of the promises we make in our Baptismal Covenant is to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers.”  All of these things are connected: apostles’ teaching and fellowship. Because learning about God and being in community together are inextricably linked.  When I am struggling to do the right thing, I can ask for help. When I can’t see what the right thing is from where I am, my friend can tell me how things look from her perspective. We’re all in this together, and I am so grateful. I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine figuring it all out on my own.

We all know the right thing is usually not the easy thing. It’s made harder still when we can’t even identify the right thing. But we have us. Our community. When I say the “Our Father,” I take comfort in the our, in the prayer’s line  to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive.” There are no I’s in the Lord’s Prayer, or the Confession of Sins. We need the support of everyone in the church to welcome someone in Baptism. Our Sunday mornings are filled with this communal language because we are all in this together. One step at a time. It’s the only way we’re going to navigate God’s law and live a life richer than gold. Thy kingdom come, indeed.

 

Resolutions: Listen for Your Calling

Achievement Unlocked: Preach a sermon that incorporates the Matrix

(Also, this is probably the only way I’d ever preach using pill imagergy 😉 )

“Follow me.” Christ’s words to Phillip are also calling us. God calls each of us into a new way of being, and we choose whether we answer, and whether we follow.

It’s the second Sunday after Epiphany and the second Sunday of our new sermon series: Resolutions. How can we resolve to be better Christians with the gift of each new day, month, year? Last week, Stephen reminded us that God isn’t calling us to do things because “we’re supposed to”. The choices we make with our lives – the choice to be here – should be about what quenches our thirst and feed our hearts. Following Jesus is the best way to quench our thirst, and for all the ways we follow Jesus by keeping the same covenant to love God and to love each other, God also has a unique call to each of us. God doesn’t care about checking boxes. God knows the best way to nourish the unique piece of Christ in each of our hearts and call us into something bigger. We have to listen, and we have to keep our hearts open to all possibilities, as we chose to go right or left, north or south, red pill or blue pill.

Have any of y’all ever seen the Matrix? In The Matrix, the protagonist, a hacker named Neo, has spent much of his life searching for answers about the world he lives in and the nature of reality. Even within the wild imaginings of brilliant sci-fi, we can all relate to seasons of searching for answers in our lives. In time, all of Neo’s searching causes some strange things to start happening to him: things that don’t make any sense or that he can’t explain. Just as Neo starts to fear for his life, he gets the opportunity to sit down with a man named Morpheous, who has all of the answers he’s been seeking but who warns him that these answers don’t come easily and he needs to decide if he’s willing to take on the weight of listening to such a big truth. Morpheus tells Neo he has two choices, offering him either a red pill or a blue pill. He can take a blue pill and wake up in his bed, believing whatever he wants to believe OR he can take the red pill and embrace this new Wonderland-like reality he’s stumbled into, and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Could you ever imagine giving up all you know to leap wildly into something more? How can you even be sure that a wild leap is the right one?

I don’t know about you, but sometimes, with all the noise of loud radios and long to-do lists, I worry my own ability to listen. What if I get distracted? I don’t want to miss my cue from the Holy Spirit. Luckily, we have the story of God calling Samuel to comfort us in these seasons of worry. God called Samuel’s name four times before Samuel answered. Samuel heard a voice but didn’t know the source. When Samuel didn’t know what was happening, God persisted. God persists with us, too. If you know me well, you know I can be rather strong-willed, so I’ve tested this. Thoroughly. God’s will is stronger. God knows that God knows us better than we know ourselves.

God knows we sometimes need to hear things more than once, because God knows us. God knows each and every one of us, In today’s gospel passage, Jesus calls Phillip, and Phillip calls Nathaniel. When Nathaniel approaches Christ, ready to follow, Jesus exclaims about Nathaniel’s honesty. Nathaniel is shocked that Jesus already knows him so well, asking “Where did you get to know me?” Christ sees every part of us, even the parts of us that we don’t yet see of ourselves. God sees all of the good and all of the bad and loves us so completely all the same and it is from this complete, radical love that God calls us, each and every one of us to that path that is best for us and unique to us in the choices we make for our vocations, our relationships, and the rabbit holes of life that we might be bold enough to explore.
Christ called Phillip and Nathaniel differently from each other and differently from how God called Samuel. God called Samuel repeatedly and by name. Jesus spoke directly to Phillip, saying “Follow me”, but Jesus knew that the best way to call Nathaniel was not with clear instructions from an unfamiliar face. So, Jesus sent Phillip to find Nathaniel, and Nathaniel’s call consisted of a longer explanation spoken through someone Nathanael already trusted. One of the many benefits of there being a piece of Christ in every human heart is that God’s call to us can come through the mouths of those around us, friends and strangers. With Nathanael, Jesus knew he needed to hear from a friend, whether or not Nathanael knew he needed to hear his call that way in order to be able to answer it.

When Eli helped Samuel figure out God’s call, Eli taught Samuel how to answer readily – to say “Speak, for your servant is listening” Samuel’s answer surrenders his own will in favor of God’s will and the transforming power of God’s love. Part of being a good listener means hearing even the things that we don’t want to hear, that we’re not ready to hear, and that don’t fit with the vision we thought we had of what our lives should be. To let go of the false reality of the blue pill and the choose the life-altering truth of the red one. To be completely open to the transformation of God’s radical love, we need to surrender any expectations we might have that limit its ability to fill our hearts. We need to say, “Here we are, the servants of the Lord, let it be with us according to your word”

God knows us better than we know ourselves. God knows everything we are and everything we can be, even the things we may think we cannot be – or haven’t yet figured out we can be. God called Samuel as a boy knowing who Samuel could grow into as a man. God’s patient persistence journeys with us throughout our lives and through every transformation. Our God is the god who from the darkness created heaven and earth, all that is seen and unseen. Our God is the god who defeated death, and who promises us eternal life. Just as God did these things on God’s time, transformation that happen on God’s time, regardless of what our idea is of how things should go.

Our lives are a series of choices. Shouldn’t we all be striving to be brave enough to choose the red pill? Choosing to answer God’s call is a choice we can make every day. It is a part of all of the other choices we make about how we focus our time and energy, our work and education, and our love for all of those around us. Let us resolve today and every day to choose God: to choose to listen and be in relationship; to choose to join together each Sunday and quench our thirst in the waters of baptism and feast on the grace, as we break bread together at the altar. to choose to be open to every possibility God might be calling us to, even the ones that we’d never imagined. “Speak, Lord, your servants are listening”