Where are all the sermons?

That's a good questions I've been asked recently. The answer, for the most part is: in my head. Over the past year, the majority of my sermons have been delivered without a text or notes. That means there's no text to post. I will scrounge through and see if I have any full-text sermons and post them!

A Commission to Love

Installation of the Rev. John W. Wesley
St. Andrew’s Montevallo, Alabama
January 27, 2010

Numbers 11:16-17, 24-25a Psalm 33, 34
Ephesians 4:7, 11-16 John 15:9-16


As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.

Ah, new love.

Remember the first time you held hands, that first hug, your first kiss. Most of us didn’t end up marrying that first love, that true love from seventh grade – even though we were convinced that this was true love that would last forever.

But when hand-holding time came again, and first kiss time came again .... there was in the back of your mind a tiny fear that the other may be comparing you to someone else – a better hand-holder, a better kisser, better looking or just someone that was better somehow some way.

OK, that may be more me than you, but the truth is that life is complicated. That none of us is the first one to come along, that we are following in the footsteps of others.

I was thinking of this yesterday as I listened to Bishop Sloan give a sermon. It was at the funeral for a beloved colleague, the Rev. Jim Alves. Jim was a wonderful priest, and the service reflected the love that so many felt for him.

And not surprisingly, Bishop Sloan gave a touching and thoughtful and spirit-filled sermon. And as he was preaching, I thought, “Oh no ... some of these people might be in Montevallo on Wednesday night! I’ve got to follow this?”

And worse: “Oh no ... Bishop Sloan’s going to be there, too – listening to me!”

That’s a lots of pressure. Or, at least, it seemed that way at the time.

But then I said to myself, “Hey, he’s only a bishop.”

Actually, I started thinking about all the churches that Jim Alves had served in his half-century of ministry – including my own church – and of just how many folks had preceded him in ministry and all those sermons and all those services.

I thought of all those who had come before. And of how many will come after. How we’re here for the moment, called to ministry in this moment, in this place, with these people. And so we dive in.

And I mean we. All of us together. Called to ministry. Called to abide in love.

An installation is a celebration of new ministry – that’s what it’s called in the Prayer Book. It’s the welcoming of a new minister into a church, a celebration and recognition of the potential in that new arrangement, the serious possibilities of Christian ministry that lie ahead.

It’s a congregation’s way of saying to the new minister, “We don’t really know you yet, but we want you to know that we will love you.”

And new minister, in reply says, “I am here, carrying within me the love of Christ, which I offer to you. My love, the love of our Lord, and all the power that this love carries with it.”

For love is power, the greatest power we are given. Jesus said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Not just a simple love, as in I love ice cream or I love a day at the beach … but as Jesus said, “as I have loved you.” Show agape for one another – show that Godly, all-encompassing love that I have had for you, that I always will have for you.

Show each other the love that knows no end, that recognizes no limits, that refuses to be constrained. A love that picks up the fallen, comforts the weak, warns the mighty, and exhorts the hesitant and wayward.

While entitled “Celebration of New Ministry,” this service could be labeled in the Prayer Book “A Celebration of Love.” In fact, that’s what we could call almost any service in the Prayer Book:

• the Eucharist, for there we encounter in the sacrament our loving Lord in the flesh and the blood;
• a wedding or blessing of vows, for there we celebrate agape and eros manifest in the lives of two people;
• even in a funeral, for that is when we celebrate the passing of a child of God from this life into the next, into the loving arms of a loving parent

All of these are celebrations of love, celebrations of the love of Christ breaking through into this world in specific places, specific times, specific ways.

This is one of those times, one of those places. A joining together of one in holy orders – a person who has committed his life to the saving work of our Savior – a joining of him with a community – a community committed to the work of Christ, a community made up of individuals who, in one way or another, have committed themselves to the love of Christ.

I must emphasize as well one implication of this theme of love. In all the Prayer Book services, we are celebrating community. We celebrate love in community. For ours is not a faith of individuals moving about as atoms bouncing off one another, separate and unconnected. No, we are members of Christian community, we are members of one body … we are part of one another, we together are the Church, we together are the body of Christ. Different parts, as Paul tells us, but one body.

So when one is called to ministry, it is a ministry within a community. When one is called to a life of agape – to Christ-like, Christian love – it is love expressed through others. When one is called to a life in Christ, it is a call that reverberates throughout the whole world.

So the Lord said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel.”

God did not say to Moses, “I’ve made you a minister, so go it alone.” God did not say, “One minister, a group of followers … that seems like a good model.”

No, God in the Book of Numbers said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel.”

And Christ in the Gospel of Luke “appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Luke 10:1-2)

God does not say, “Go it alone.” God does not say, “Do it all alone.” God does not say, “My love is entrusted to you and you alone.”

In fact, the Lord does not really say, “Count out seventy and that will be enough.” For seventy is the Bible’s way of saying many. You have been anointed by the Lord. You have been filled with the Spirit. You are a bearer of the agape of Christ. Now share your gifts. Find many and share your love with them.

Fill them with the love of Christ. And commission them with their own ministries—commission them to care for others, to lift up others, to listen to others, to teach others, to fight for others, to cry with others, to pray with others, to worship and praise the Lord together.

And commission them to bring others to Christ. To fill them with the love of Christ that they may continue to be his for ever, and daily increase in the Holy Spirit more and more. And then charge them with doing the same to more and more that the Body of Christ may grow more and more.

Commission them to feed the poor, to clothe the naked, to resist evil, to raise up students, to comfort the elderly, to soothe the sick and dying, to seek and serve Christ in all persons.

Commission them to love.

We celebrate ministry tonight in this installation. A new ministry in an old place. An old love born again in a new people. A ministry of not one, but many. A ministry of love that will bear fruit, fruit that will last.

May God the Father give you whatever you ask, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

The Trinity on the Square

Trinity Sunday
June 7, 2009

This is perhaps the least favorite Sunday of most preachers in our liturgical tradition -- Trinity Sunday. The day on which we consider the nature of the Trinity, the makeup of our Triune God, the relationship of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, how three are separate but one, how there are three persons but one God.

If you visit a large church with several priests, you’ll find on this day that the rector has more likely than not delegated the task to an assistant or associate or seminarian or intern-- to anyone who finds it awkward to say no to the rector.

You can imagine that Deacon Stan does not find it awkward to say no to the rector.

So that I can say I’ve done my liturgical duty, I’ll suggest that during a long sermon sometime you open the Book of Common Prayer to the small print in the back and there you’ll find the Athanasian Creed. It’s tough reading, but if you try it sometime you’ll find that it tells us that God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That the Father is God but is not the Son or the Holy Spirit. That the Son is God but is not the Father or the Holy Spirit. And that the Holy Spirit is God, but is not the Father or the Son. Not three ways of acting, but three beings in One.

So if the bishop asks, you can say I cleared that all up for you.

I’ll be honest with you. The fine points of theology haven’t been on my mind this week. Our community and God in our community has been what I’ve been thinking about.

I read this week about a study by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam. He makes a compelling point about churches and their communities. His studies show that churchgoers make their communities better places. I know that sounds obvious to you and to me, but his research does bear some explaining.

He says that churchgoers volunteer more and join up for projects that improve their communities. Not because they think Jesus wants them to clean the park or coach Little League or that maybe they’ll get to heaven quicker if they do. His point is that church communities are, for the most part, healthy places. You make friends in church, you’re making friends with good people.

It’s what he calls a “moral community.” And when members of that moral community influence others, it’s most likely for the good. And when someone from your moral community asks you to clean the park or coach Little League, you’re much more likely to do it than if asked by someone from a purely secular association. It makes sense to me. And if you look around your community, I think you’ll agree.

When you’re in a healthy community, you know it. You can feel it. Have you ever walked into an establishment and felt instantly unsafe, even though you couldn’t put your finger on why? Or felt unnerved in a crowd for no discernible reason? Or found yourself employed in a place that simply felt dishonest or, dare I say, sleazy?

I’ve found myself in all those spots, feeling a sort of sixth sense about a place. I truly believe that we can feel the spirit of a place. It can be good, but a place certainly can have a bad spirit. Even an evil one. Institutions and communities take on characteristics to the extent that they can be said to have a spirit animating them.

When I was a seminarian, I remember my class buzzing about the work of theologian Walter Wink. We were excited about him because unlike so many others, Wink is unafraid of recognizing and naming the spirits that can animate groups and institutions. He turns to the New Testament and uses the Apostle Paul’s teaching about principalities and powers. A corporation or organization or town can have more than a personality -- it can be animated by a power.

“Powers,” Wink says, “are the impersonal spiritual realities at the center of institutional life.” These powers are just what they sound like-- an animating spirit that has power over people. That chill up your spine, that funny feeling you get, that inexplicable distrust -- it’s your recognition of a power beyond the usual. It’s very likely an encounter with evil, with the powers that can and do occupy this world.

There is, of course, a greater power. The power of good, the powers that oppose evil, the spirit that animates us toward the greater good. Such a power can move through our groups and communities like a wind in our sails.

It should not surprise you that this wind is the Holy Spirit, which is breathed upon the earth by the Father. It is God making God’s self known in our lives-- our individual lives and, most importantly to our point, in our corporate lives. Pushing out the other powers that seep and creep among us. But only where the Holy Spirit is invited and is welcome.

It’s not every day that you feel it. I know I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit moving through our community on the Public Square just over a month ago when hundreds and hundreds of people gathered for Megan Brittain Day. I have lived in many places, small towns and huge cities. But nowhere have I felt the presence of the Spirit in a community as I did there, and nowhere else I’ve lived have I more consistently felt its movement.

What tragedy it was that brought us all together on the Square that cloudy afternoon. I stood with my cousin in a sea of blue Team Megan shirts and we wondered at the outpouring. At the love and the sorrow and the feeling of unity that one so rarely experiences.

All for a little girl whose very being was filled with the Holy Spirit. The first time I ever talked with Megan was at a Red Cross Blood Drive over at her church, First Baptist. As we chatted about who we knew in common, she would turn away for a moment to shout out encouragement to one friend giving blood, and teasing another who looked a little faint.

“So are you the official cheerleader?” I asked. She thought about it a moment and said, “Yeah, I guess I am the cheerleader.” And then she turned to call out encouragement to yet another friend.

And there you find the Spirit animating a child, against all logic and reason. And she, in turn, encouraging and supporting others. She in turn sharing the Spirit, the Holy Spirit I felt coursing through all those hundreds of neighbors on the Square.

I felt something else this week. On Friday, at Megan’s funeral, there was the undeniable reality of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Not surprisingly, one of the preachers chose John 3:16 as his text. For just as God the Holy Spirit touched Megan in her life, God the Son touched her in death with his sure and certain salvation.

In that packed church, I found it hard to believe that there were any who had doubts. After a life in the Spirit, a death that defies death itself. For the Risen Christ, we are taught, has conquered death, and in him we find life everlasting.

That is where I have seen God in these last days. God the Father, who created a child and then received her back into his arms. God the Holy Spirit, who moved through a child and then, in a miracle as clear to me as any recorded, moved through a community and poured out its blessing, touching our neighbors as surely as the spring rains. And, of course, God the Son, who offered not just to one but to all salvation from the grave.

There's the Trinity. Not an abstraction in a theological book, but God as God lives in and through and with us, in our communities, and in our lives.

Amen.

On the road with the sheep

The Fourth Sunday after Easter
May 3, 2009

Acts 4:5-12, Psalm 23, 1 John 3:16-24, John 10:11-18


I went to a birthday party in Rome, Georgia, yesterday. I’d never been to Rome, Ga., before, so a friend brought along a handy device that got us there. These things go by a lot of names, but basically it’s a talking map hooked up to a satellite.

Most of you have ridden with such a GPS unit in a car before, and many of you own one. Bishop Sloan told me he uses one to find his way to all these churches he’s never been to before, and he just about always find them.

So this is nothing new to most folks. Thus far in my life, I had gotten along on maps and written-down directions. So this was new to me – but I’m a 21st-century kind of guy and I’m open to new things.

It was a bit weird at first. And being a single man, having a woman’s voice telling me where to turn and what road to take … well, it took some getting used to. And I did.

“Go 800 yards and turn right at Highway Two-hundred-seventy-eight. Bear left. Continue for 27 miles.”

Like I said, weird. But useful.

Riding shotgun on this particular trip was the owner of this little device, a friend and colleague – Fr. Matthew Grunfeld, the rector of Emmanuel Church in Opelika. He and I were visiting a seminary classmate who is a priest at St. Peter’s in Rome. [Georgia, not the Vatican.]

So with two priests locked in a car – and no, this isn’t the start of a joke – with two priests on a road trip you get a lot of talk about… church. And Scripture. Especially the Scripture coming up on Sunday.

What are you going to preach on? I dunno, what are you going to preach on?

Fr. Matthew recalled Bishop Neal Alexander of the Diocese of Atlanta, who preached on this Gospel text at the ordination of a new priest. “Remember,” the bishop said to the new priest, “remember that YOU are not the Good Shepherd.”

That’s important advice that some clergy with big egos might forget.

We priests are shepherds, but not THE shepherd. Not the GOOD shepherd.

The Good Shepherd – not “good” as in ranging somewhere on a scale of bad to excellent. But “good” as in true, genuine, the real deal.

Not merely a hired hand. Not a false shepherd. Not someone who would lead the sheep astray by ignorance or laziness or evil intent.

I as a priest am called to be a shepherd. But not THE shepherd. Note the crosier of a bishop – a fancy version of a shepherd’s crook, reminding bishops that they are shepherds. But not THE Good Shepherd.

We are all but pale imitations of the real shepherd, the genuine, shepherd, the real deal. We follow the example set forth by Jesus Christ, but only in imitation and only with limitation. For there is one Shepherd, one Messiah, one Christ.

I’ve heard more sermons on shepherds than I have actually seen shepherds. Invariably those sermons talk about how dirty and smelly and stupid sheep are and I always come away a little uncomfortable with the shepherd-sheep metaphor. You’ve probably heard that sermon.

But from some of what I’ve heard preached, and from what little I’ve seen of them in action, I find that shepherds don’t do a lot of talking.

For one thing, they’re out there alone with the sheep and maybe a dog for company. So they whistle a lot – to the dogs, not the sheep – giving direction to that hard-working canine assistant.

And the sheep? They get nudged along from place to place, pushed around a little and herded by the dog. They get nipped at the heels a little when they head off in the wrong direction, but otherwise pretty much seem to think that they’re headed where they want to go.

All this time, they are watched over by the shepherd, who doesn’t want to lose a single lamb, no matter how small and pitiful.

There’s not a lot of explicit direction from the shepherd, especially not in words. The shepherd tends to be found walking alongside or behind the sheep. Keeping an eye on where they go, hoping they end up in the right place.

Out in the field, you don’t hear: “In 800 yards, bear right to the barn.” You do get nudged along, maybe herded back in a little. Less explicit direction, more community protection.

That’s something else my friend and I talked about on that car trip – community. He raised that classic preacher conversation-starter: “It’s said that most preachers have one sermon in them that they preach over and over. What’s yours?”

I told him that mine is probably on the topic of “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and that the sermon probably ends with “And that’s why you need to pray more.”

Fr. Matthew said that at his church, his go-to sermon theme probably has been about the importance of community. His church has gone through some difficult times before his arrival, and Christian community needs to be preached there.

And here. And everywhere.

We talked it through and, for the first time, it dawned on me that Christian community is a strong theme running through these texts for Good Shepherd Sunday.

Most often, I and the preachers I have heard have concentrated on the shepherd, and noted in passing the smelly and stupid nature of the sheep. But rarely have I thought through the other implications of this Gospel and these other Scripture readings.

“The Lord is my shepherd” – my shepherd. He leadeth me. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me.

I tend to read the 23rd Psalm as regarding me and the shepherd – not the shepherd and a greater flock. I tend to read the Gospel of John and think of me and the shepherd.

That’s one of the peculiarities of our language, that the noun “sheep” is both singular and plural. So I read it as the good shepherd lays down his life for me – when in reality the good shepherd lays down his life for me AND for the many.

He is my shepherd AND your shepherd – the good shepherd for us and for those unknown – those “other sheep that do not belong to this flock.”

For me and for the many. For you and for the many. For those known and unknown, of this flock and the many others. For all the world.

Another part of this image I have let go unconsidered on too many occasions is the notion of the responsibility of the sheep. Yes, the responsibility of the sheep.

This is the part where the shepherd and sheep metaphor breaks down a little – actual sheep do not do much caring for one another. Perhaps they’re spending too much time being smelly and stupid.

But the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is only a partial image – only one of the many ways that Jesus talked about himself and his relationship with Creation. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, but he calls upon us to be shepherds as well.

Not just bishops and priests, not just deacons and Lay Eucharistic Ministers. Not just ECW and EYC and Sunday School Teachers and Bible Teachers.

Not just those with a robe to wear. Not just those with a title.

Just the saints, you and me. Just the saints. The sheep. They’re all the same. You and me, individually and all together. The saints and the sheep, the followers of Christ. All those who follow – as crazy as it sounds – all those who follow are called upon to lead.

Not to give directions – “In 800 yards sign up for coffee hour.” Not to boss or nag or drag along. But to lead as a shepherd does. To watch out for one another, to be responsible for one another, to care for one another. To lay down a part of your life for another. To love one another.

We are told this in the First Epistle of John: “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.”

The Good Shepherd is with us and in us. We are by him, and with him, and in him. We are called to be with one another, in this one flock, leading one another by loving one another.

By being a Christian. By becoming a shepherd.

Amen.

Thomas, My Twin

The Second Sunday of Easter
April 19, 2009

John 20:19-31


I’ve always felt a bit sorry for Thomas the disciple In the accounts of the ministry of Jesus, you don’t hear much about Thomas. We know he was a twin—in Greek they called him “Didymus”—the twin.

But we don’t learn much more. We don’t hear bad things about him or strange things or even good things. Which tells us that he was a good disciple, at the very least not doing less than expected. We would have heard about that. So not Peter, perhaps, but certainly not Judas.

So for someone who followed Jesus throughout his ministry, and who later, tradition tells us, went on to preach and witness to the saving word and works of our Savior Jesus Christ … well, we mostly remember him for one moment of doubt.

Doubting Thomas.

What if we were remembered for our one moment of doubt? Or for one moment of anger? Or, heaven forbid, in a well-preserved snapshot from one embarrassing moment? What a nightmare!

I can just imagine being remembered for … for perhaps that day in 7th grade English class when it was my turn to read aloud and everyone laughed because I thought the word debut should be pronounced as it’s spelled. I can just imagine how it would feel if today I were known as Michael De-But.

I’m not, thank goodness. But Thomas – he’ll always be Doubting Thomas. Because we see one moment frozen in time, that moment when he doubted.

The fact is, it would be unfair to freeze anyone’s life to one moment. Because that’s not how life works. One moment you’re headed in one direction, the next moment somewhere different.

I know that much of my life has been filled with incidents of the world turning around on me, handing me one thing when I expected another. Jobs, relationships, even homes.

A snapshot wouldn’t do justice to the richness or, to be honest, the confusion of that life.

I know that when old high school and college friends find me these days, they’re often surprised that I’m not a reporter or copy editor. That’s the snapshot they have of me in their minds.

And I’m often surprised to find out things about them – about how the lawyer now teaches fly-fishing, and how another has moved from the executive suite to the classroom.

I’m also saddened to hear about deaths, about accidents, about layoffs in so many fields.

And on they change – from happy to sad and back again, from career to career, from one thing to another. One change after another in my life and in the lives of those around me. We think we want one thing, but something else is handed us. We think we have one thing, but it turns out to be something else.

We aren’t handed a roadmap, especially one that guarantees no detours. Parts of life lead us down unimaginably wonderful roads. Other parts, for some, into places impossibly dark.

We don’t rest in one place forever, or even for very long. And that’s what makes it so hard to sort life out into good and bad, happy and sad, what’s desired and what’s not. Often, it’s all these things at once.

I look back on some of the most difficult times in my life and, to my great surprise, I consider them the good old days. In fact, how many times have you heard someone talk about the good old days and realize they were talking about the Great Depression? How many times in our lives do we find that rather than simply trying to make the best of a bad situation, we find that there are wonderful things to be had in these hard times?

When we are at our happiest, we don’t expect the difficulties that are sure to come. When evil comes round, we lose faith in ever again finding the good. We simply don’t believe it possible because it goes against all common sense. We don’t have faith in it because there’s no logical reason to have faith.

And there you find Thomas.

Like the other disciples, he fled as Jesus took his cross to Golgotha. Like the other disciples, he was hiding from the Romans and the Jewish officials. Like the others, he was in despair.

Jesus was gone. Why go on hoping? Why go on living?

And by a stroke of luck – good or bad – he was not in the room with the others on that Sunday night when Jesus came walking in. Thomas was not there to hear Jesus say, “Peace be with you.” Thomas was not there to see his hands and his side.

The other disciples did not have to go on blind faith now. They had seen, they had heard, they had proof for their faith. Thomas, poor Thomas, he had only the word of his fellow disciples.

Thomas had believed in the words of Christ, but why believe these men? These same men who had scattered, who had broken their promises, who had fainted when Jesus said stay awake. They probably were hysterical, conjuring up images in their fear, grasping at phantoms as the desperate so often do.

And that’s where we see Thomas, that’s where we remember him.
And that’s where we so often find ourselves – where we would always be remembered if life were a snapshot and not a journey. That’s where we so often are – being told the truth but refusing to believe. Knowing the truth but succumbing to doubt.

We experience great joy – birth, love, gentleness, the sweetest things life can offer. And then we are shocked when we experience the pains of life and so often convince ourselves that sorrow is the fullness of life and that joy … well, that joy is a phantom to be grasped at but never reached.

We experience the Resurrection moments of this life – healings and renewed friendships and gifts of a new day. And then … and then we forget these minor miracles. We forget their power and ask – nay, demand – that the Resurrection be proved all over again.

Here we are a week after Resurrection Sunday. A friend of mine said it’s too bad that we have to hear the Thomas story so quickly after Easter, that it’s a come-down.

I disagree. I think it’s a step up.

I think my friend was over-optimistic, assuming that we couldn’t have forgotten the joy of the Resurrection so quickly, that thinking about Doubting Thomas would be bringing us down from our Easter high.

But in this week, I know that I’ve forgotten. I know that after the moving liturgies of Holy Week and the joyous explosion of song and praise at the Vigil and Easter morning … that after all that, I descended rather quickly and predictably into the grumbling minutiae of everyday life.

The power outage and the limbs in my yard and trees fallen over in the yards of my friends. The bills and the overdue tax return and the conversations with friends and parishioners whose lives just aren’t hanging together in the way they wish.

Perhaps if I had a snapshot of Easter sitting on my desk. A snapshot hanging from my car visor. A snapshot slipped into my wallet. To remind me of the joy, to reassure me of that joyous time.

I was there with Thomas, already forgetting, already doubting. Hand me something to make me believe. Show me something to help my weakness.

And to Thomas, on that evening, surrounded by his friends, it was given. And Thomas said, “My Lord and my God!”

And to me, on this morning, surrounded by my friends, it is given – given to me by my Lord and my God.

A chance to remember in the body and the blood. A chance to see the proof in the hearts of the faithful. The promise of the peace that passes all understanding, a promise from the Risen Lord of peace, of joy, of resurrection. Today, like Thomas, I will not doubt, but believe.

Amen.

The Importance of Letting Go

Sunday of the Resurrection
April 12, 2009

John 20:1-18


This Sunday of the Resurrection is a glorious day, one that Christians look forward to the entire year. Popular culture has a Christmas fixation, suggesting that our faith centers on that day. But the teaching of our faith, the core of our faith, points to the Resurrection. Points toward this day, Easter. The day Christ arose.

And he is risen, alleluia.

I hesitate, though, in saying that this is the most important day of the year. I get nervous about pointing to any one thing as the most important.

A couple of years ago, I was interviewed for a newspaper story on the Easter Sermon, based on the idea that the Easter sermon is the most important one of the year. That’s an idea I don’t really agree with … and anyway, I sure don’t like that kind of pressure!

Back when I was teaching students how to be newspaper reporters, I’d tell them to avoid questions like, “What’s the one most important thing?” or “What’s your favorite something?” or “What’s the funniest or tastiest or most bestest ever.”

For one thing, our brains tend to shut down when he have to eliminate everything else …. for example, if I were ask you, “What’s the absolute best restaurant meal you’ve ever had?” That’s hard to answer. But if I ask you, “Tell me about one great meal you’ve had,” then you probably have something to say.

If I asked you to name some of the most important things in your life- not just one, but many- I'll be you could close your eyes and see many of them. I close my eyes and think of going fishing with my brothers, of trips, of births and deaths, some things happy and others hard, but all of them important.

Well, that's one thing about “most important.” The other thing is, I’m always nervous about saying something is “most important” because thinking that way tends to disparage other things, make them seem less important than they really are.

Christmas is by no means unimportant. The Ascension, All Saints, the Epiphany … the list goes on. We’ve got a year full of Christian feasts and fasts. All important, and I don’t want to get into the business of comparing them. They’re all important parts of the Christian year, of the Christian faith. So if you ask me if Easter is the most important, I’m going to say, “Yes … except for all the others.”

No single service is most important, and no single service or sermon contains the whole of the Gospel message. No single part of the Gospel, or of the whole Bible for that matter, is so important that it stands absolutely on its own. Luther called John 3:16 the “the heart of the Bible, the Gospel in miniature.” But John 3:16 on its own does not sustain us, does not fully instruct us outside the context of the Gospel in its fullness.

But imagine if John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life – imagine that this verse were taken away from you. You had it once, but now it’s gone. That it once sustained you but now has been taken away.

Or imagine that the Exodus story – the whole salvation of the Hebrew people from slavery through the Red Sea into the Promised Land. Imagine that this story, which may once had given you such hope, imagine that it were taken away forever.

Or the psalms – never more to hear “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

Or even your hymns – no more “Faith of our Fathers,” no more “Amazing Grace.”

Where would you turn, what would you do? Where would you turn for consolation in time of grief if all of Scripture were to be yanked away? Where would you turn for words of praise in times of gladness? What would lend shape to your faith, to your daily journey through this life?

And worse … imagine, if it’s possible, that Jesus were taken away from you. What utter devastation. What an empty, unimaginable hole in your life.

And there … there you are with Mary Magdalene on this Easter morning. The tomb is empty and she cries, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

The disciples who came, they left for home. But Mary, she stood there crying at the tomb. Where else was there worth going? One place was as good as another now … now that Jesus was gone, now that there was nothing good left. Now that there was a dark, empty tomb where once there had been life. What to do but cry, what to do but weep?

“Woman, why are you weeping?”

They were angels. “Why are you weeping?”

Mary was so distraught that the sight of angels meant nothing to her. All she could see was what wasn’t there – her savior. “They have taken away my Lord.”

“Woman, why are you weeping?”

This time, not an angel, but her Lord. And she was so distraught that the sight of the risen Savior meant nothing to her. All she saw was someone who wasn’t who she was looking for – Jesus, her friend, her very life.

For Mary, it all changed in a moment. From weeping to a cry of joy. From despair to hope. All in a word – “Mary!” A word that told her that Jesus recognized her when she could not recognize him. A word that said, “I am here. I have arisen. Alleluia.”

If she could have, Mary Magdalene would have held onto that moment forever. That moment of instantaneous joy, when her heart was refilled and her spirit renewed, when Jesus said her name and she knew that he was risen – that she was not alone and, indeed, never had been and never would be alone. That moment of joy, that flashing moment of immortality of the soul.

Jesus knew this. Knew that she would hold onto this, this most important moment ever, that this would become her whole life compressed into a moment like no other. And he said, “Do not hold onto me.”

Time had to move on. The Son had not yet returned to the Father. Jesus had not appeared to the disciples. There was much to do. For him, for her, for the world. “Do not hold onto me.”

Ah, but she wanted to. And we want to. To hold onto that one moment, that one day, that most important time in our lives, whatever it may be. But there is more to life than a moment.

In fact, there is more to salvation than a moment. More than a life decision, more than a warming of the heart, more than the moment of commitment.

There is what we do with that commitment. There is what we do with The Word. There is what we do and how we live and what we continue to believe once we see that Jesus has risen.

Jesus said, in effect, “Yes, I am standing here at this most important time, the moment of resurrection … but go. Let go and tell the others. Let go and be a witness. Let go and spread the Gospel.”

How hard for Mary. She had lost Jesus once, and now … and now? How hard for us. We have a moment in time that defines us, that we love dearly and now … and now? How very hard.

Mary is able to turn and go because she knows that once risen, Jesus cannot and will not leave her ever again. She does not have to hold on because he will not let go.

This most important moment will stretch on through the rest of her life, forever more. For the Risen Christ would live in and through her as she told the Good News of Christ and lived the life of the Christian.

The Psalmist says, “On this day, the Lord has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” But this day, the Day of Resurrection, will pass. And tomorrow will come and tomorrow after that, and one day will tell its tale to another.

There will be no need to hang onto this one day, this one service, this one moment with Christ. Do not hold on, because this most important day, this most important message will remain with you, remain in you.

When you see the Risen Christ in the hearing of the Word, in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup … when you have seen the Risen Christ in your neighbor’s heart … you then can go out into the world to say, like Mary, “I have seen the Lord.”

And others will see the Lord as the Lord lives in you.

Amen.

Heavy Lifting at Easter

Easter Vigil
April 11, 2009

Mark 16:1-8


I started out Holy Week a little under the weather, which is not the way you want to start Holy Week if you’re a priest.

Deacon Stan, who quietly keeps an eye on what I’m up to around here, gently suggested that perhaps if I didn’t try to do too much and do it all single-handedly, then maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t wear myself out and be so susceptible to every little bug that comes around.

Well I say that clearly the man’s a lunatic and can’t be trusted.

Or maybe, just maybe, he could have a point there.

Do you know someone like that? Are you someone like that? Someone who thinks you have to do all the heavy lifting, all alone, without help?

Many of us reach that point, but from different approaches. Some give a theatrical sigh, say “Oh don’t worry, I’ll just take care of it myself” and then do alone what we probably could have gotten others to help us out with. Sometimes that comes from getting insufficient help one too many times.

But sometimes it comes from drawing the wrong conclusions from one or two bad experiences– you’ve probably heard someone curse how badly a delegated task was performed and declare, “Well, I guess if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.”

That’s a pretty wrong-headed conclusion, but one that folks often come to. It comes from a lack of trust, sometimes from an inability to communicate well, and very often from an overdeveloped sense of self-worth.

Then there are those who simply don’t get around to asking anybody to help, who just dive into things and take on too much and– well, somebody eventually ends up unhappy. It’s not always intentional with folks like this, but the result is the same– we put ourselves, our own needs, and our own powers at the center of our lives. Other people, their talents and the offerings of their lives – not on our radar.

We want to do the heavy lifting ourselves. All by ourselves.

A friend recently talked to me about a situation in her life and said she’d been advised to pray about that situation. She said to me, “Praying is fine, but it seems like I ought to be doing something about it.”

I told her, “Well, you are doing something about it..”

I said, “By praying, you are keeping it on your agenda – spiritually and logistically. Every day, when you say prayers, you raise it up to God and to yourself.

“And remember that prayer isn’t one-way; it’s a conversation with God. By inviting God into the process, you’re taking responsibility, but you’re also admitting that you cannot do this 100 percent by yourself.”

She said I was starting to make sense, which surprised her! But it wasn’t enough. It didn’t sound enough like real action.

So I said, “I don’t know about you, but when I’m facing a hard issue in my life, I’d much rather pray about those hungry folks overseas and give thanks for beautiful weather and just about anything other than what I’m facing. I’d rather clean my room and pay my taxes and wash the car than sit down and work through the hard things in my life.

“But if I’m praying about it– and I mean really praying about it, entering into an honest face-to-face with God about it– then I can’t duck it. It’s right out there to be dealt with. If you think you’re really praying about something, but then find yourself just letting it lie once your prayer time is over … well, then you’re just playing at prayer.”

She was quiet a minute and I asked her if she’d been praying about her issue. And she said yes. And I asked her what else she was doing, and she started listing all the things she was doing – calling this person, compiling that information, checking off her possibilities and to-do list.

We decided that maybe all that praying was informing those things she was doing, what she considered “real action.” It was real action all right, but action that followed prayer – it came out of that prayer, it was a result of that prayer.

I think she was getting it. She was getting it right. She was getting her priorities in order by asking God directly for help in her life. By wrestling with an issue with God on her side. By telling God, “I’m going to work on this, but I can’t do all the heavy lifting by myself.” She was getting it right.

I sometimes get it right, but not nearly often enough. My friend won’t always get it right. You won’t always get it right.

When we fail, we’re probably trying to do it all alone. When we get it right, we’re asking someone else to help take up that load– asking Jesus to walk beside us, to be in conversation with us, to remind us that we are not alone.

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother James, and Salome brought spices, so that they might go and anoint the body of Jesus.

I’m gratified to see from Scripture that one Mary or the other had not sighed, rolled her eyes and said, “Don’t worry, I guess I’ll just take care of it myself.” They were together

As they walked on that morning toward the tomb, they began wondering aloud, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”

That strikes me as important. Maybe it’s just a throwaway line, meant to set up the reader for the coming surprise. But I’m struck by what they say: “Who will roll away the stone for us?”

This is something important, don’t you think? It’s a bit like heading off to the cemetery with the casket and saying, “Hmm, I wonder who will dig the grave for us?” This is a major effort, not something these three women could handle themselves. Perhaps in their grief, they simply didn’t think of such details.

Have you ever seen a picture of an ancient Middle Eastern tomb and the stone that would cover the entrance? One method was to cut a large stone wheel– taller than a man– and position it so that when you pulled out the block, it would easily roll down across the entrance. Moving it again– well, that was easier said than done.

But on they went, Salome and the two Marys; on they went to the tomb, assured that it would work out.

I don’t know if they prayed on it. I do know that in the time after the crucifixion, they would have been in prayer. Prayer for understanding of what had happened to their beloved friend. Prayer for the power to make it through this horrible time of grief. And prayer that they would– somehow, someday – be reunited with Jesus.

All I know is that St. Mark the Evangelist tells us that these women did not make this particular problem a stumbling block. He says they knew what needed to be done, would do it together, and then– if there were any problems, such as that large stone, they would seek help.

They would not do all the heavy lifting themselves. To their surprise, and perhaps in response to their prayer, the stone had been rolled away. Had it been rolled away by the young man in the white robe? By Jesus himself?

It didn’t matter. Not really.

The stone had been rolled away. The heavy lifting had been done. Jesus was there once again, to walk and talk with them, to guide them on their way. To continue their conversation – now face to face, tomorrow in glory.

A conversation in prayer. Prayer that will help to lift our burdens today, and tomorrow, to lift us up to see him face-to-face in glory.


Amen.

Ashes on the outside, change on the inside

Ash Wednesday
February 25, 2009


The prophet Jonah was told to go and preach. To preach to the Ninevites. You know what happened. Jonah tried to run and God showed that you can run but you can’t hide.

Jonah fled by sea, but was cast into the deep and was consumed by the great sea creature, who spat him out onto the land. So Jonah trudged on to Nineveh, that land of sinners, the very center of all that was evil in God’s sight.

Oh, that God would smite them, Jonah wished. Smite them to the very last person, great and small, as a testimony to God’s vengeance on those who do not follow the Lord.

The Old Testament is filled with prophets like Jonah, who come breathing fire, warning of the smiting that will come if Israel and its cities and its people do not repent. Amos and Obadiah and Micah and more. Stop sinning, they warned, repent and turn back to the Lord. Follow the Lord’s will.

Feed the poor and show justice to the downtrodden and be generous in your wealth and be honest in your dealings. Do these things and avoid disaster, do these things and avoid damnation on the Day of the Lord.

Jonah is perhaps my favorite because he believed in repentance and preached it – but he was a sinner in God’s sight. Jonah thought he knew more than God, so he risked displeasing God by refusing to tell the Ninevites that it was their duty to please God.

We see what the story of the prophet Jonah is all about when the Ninevites do repent and put on ashes and sackcloth and plead for mercy. They are spared and Jonah is crazed with anger. The story is about Jonah, not the Ninevites. The story is about how we are to listen for God’s will and obey it – not to use God’s words for our own ends, for our own pleasures and agendas. God is God and we are … well, we are but dust, and to dust we shall return. We are what God makes of us and no more.

Today’s readings are not from Jonah, but Jonah has been on my mind this week as I have meditated on the ashes of Ash Wednesday. Because I want to be like the Ninevites.

They put ashes on their head in a sign of submission and meekness and repentance. They were so eager to please the Lord that they put ashes on all their animals, taking no chances on God’s mercy.

That’s what I want to do. Throw on some ashes, show God how he should be pleased with me, and move on. Simple repentance, quick mercy, easy grace.

If it were only so. But Jonah’s story shows that God wants something more. He wants true inward conversion, not only outward action. That’s why so many of the Old Testament prophets railed against Temple worship practices. Amos said, “I hate, I despise your festivals… Take away from me the noise of your songs.”

Amos and the others weren’t condemning the idea of true worship, but they were condemning the hypocrites who thought they could fool God with beautiful worship and sacrifices when their hearts were black with sin. Do not burn offerings or sing songs of praise, Amos said, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Repent in your hearts, he says, and show it with your actions. Do not merely throw on ashes in repentance, but be truly repentant in your hearts. Do not merely show up for Temple service but make yourself absent when a brother is in need. Do not merely offer ritual sacrifice but fail to give in time, treasure, and talent when the church, your community, your nation cry out in need.

The day is coming, the prophets warn, the day is coming. They do not ask for conversion just because a deadly deadline looms over us.

They ask for conversion because there still is time in our lives, time to repent of our sins, time to make good on our better impulses, time to live out in our day-to-day existence the belief and the love and the power that we claim when we douse ourselves in ashes in a mark of submission and meekness and – yes – repentance.

The prophet Joel cries out, “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” And in that beautiful phrase, he says, “rend your hearts and not your clothing.” Be changed within, not merely without.

This is what Jesus means when he tells us to practice our piety behind closed doors. The great prophets always pointed to God and not to themselves. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus, the Lamb of God, and not to himself. Jesus is telling us that we are to be like the great prophets, to point always to God and God’s gifts, not to ourselves and the gifts we claim as our own.

It is a call to meekness, to humility. It is a call to quietness in a clanging and boisterous world. It is a call to charity in a world of greed, to austerity in a world of excess, to love in a world of hate.

It is a call to prepare for the Day of the Lord. Not in fear, but in joy, because the Lord, Joel tells us, for the Lord will have pity on his people. The Lord “is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”

The Lord will see our love, the love we have in our hearts. The love we show in our ashes – yes, in the ashes we don in this ritual of repentance and meekness.

For the Lord knows when we worship in sincerity and love. And the Lord knows when we truly recognize and admit to ourselves that we are but dust and to dust we shall return … ah, but what dust!

We are dust made by the Creator. We are dust that leaps to life with the breath of the Lord. We are the dust that is held, in love, in the palm of the hand of a merciful God.

Amen.