What Justice Means: February 1

   Micah 6:1-8 and Matthew 5:1-12                          Year A, Epiphany 4                                                              

                A few weeks ago we renewed our baptismal covenant, which is mostly the Apostle’s Creed with some questions at the end.  The final question is, Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?  The answer is, I will with God’s help.  I would say that most Christians agree that striving for justice is a good and noble thing.  Yet it would seem, we don’t all agree what justice means. 

          We often associate justice with courts or the consequences of unjust actions. In the Bible, justice is only used to talk about punishment and consequence 10% of the time.  The other 90% is caring for the vulnerable.  The Bible even defines who the vulnerable are.  Biblical scholars use the phrase, “quartet of the vulnerable” to refer to 4 groups that the Bible often references when talking about who the people of God need to care for.  These vulnerable groups are the poor, the orphans, the widows and the immigrants.  These were the groups of people who were most marginalized, most at risk when the Bible was written. (Remember that the Bible was written over hundreds and hundreds of years, so this wasn’t just a narrow snapshot in history.) Those groups are still vulnerable, some to lesser degrees than others.  I could give you numerous examples of places in the Bible where care of the vulnerable is mentioned, but that would take a long time.  It’s in the books of the law, it’s in the prophets, it’s in the psalms…it’s definitely in the words of Jesus. Justice is about caring for the vulnerable and the oppressed.

          That is why we can be fairly certain that when Micah writes, “do justice” that is what he’s talking about.  These 8 verses from chapter 6 of Micah are kind of quirky.  It’s hard to know who is talking.  It’s theoretically a conversation between God and the people of Israel, but it would seem that in the first few verses, God’s answers on behalf of the people of Israel.  One Hebrew scholar said this was a good example of God using sarcasm.  He starts by asking, “O, my people, what have I done to you? In what way have I wearied you?”  God doesn’t let them respond.  Instead he basically says, “Let me tell you all the things I have done for you…starting with saving you from slavery.” 

The people then get a chance to speak and ask, “With what shall I come before the Lord….” Then they proceed to give examples of things that they can sacrifice.  But all the sacrifices are rituals and some of them are absurd. Thousands of rams with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Maybe they could have come up with thousands of rams….but rivers of oil? Clearly they are trying to overwhelm God with all that they have, their resources and wealth.

Then God responded with the words that would be quoted by activists, pastors and leaders for thousands of years. “O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God.”  God doesn’t want your stuff, especially those rivers of oil that don’t actually exist.  God wants you to do justice, love kindness and walk with God.

 It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?  We don’t hear the people’s response.  God goes on and frankly, it’s not looking good for the people for the rest of the Book of Micah.  God remains disappointed with them which leads me to believe that they didn’t respond well to his call to justice. I think they decided they would just continue to take advantage of the poor and oppressed and maybe keep up with the empty rituals.  I guess it was easier to find 1000 rams, slaughter them, and burn them than actually doing justice, loving kindness and walking with God.

 In some ways we haven’t changed much.  We still demand clear answers from God and then find creative ways to ignore them.  Over the centuries the church has been very creative when it comes to things we argue about.  I had one colleague whose church spent a year arguing about the carpet.  When Christ Church removed the stained glass windows for cleaning and then decided to keep the clear windows, people left the church. Every church has a story like that.

          It’s so much easier to argue about the details rather than actually doing justice, loving kindness and walking with God.  Doing justice is caring for the vulnerable. It’s ensuring that the people who are being treated horribly are treated well. It’s about relationship and empathy.  We know that’s a lot harder than ritual. 

What about loving kindness? We are all nice people.  We are in the city of brotherly love.  Right? Loving kindness is much deeper than simply being nice or polite.  The Hebrew word translated to loving kindness is hesed.  You see it all over the Old Testament.  One person described it as “reordering life into a community of enduring relations.” Not so easy.  Kindness (in this context at least) isn’t about simply being friendly. It is about our obligations to one another. If one suffers, we all suffer. It means we recognize that we are all in this together. 

We don’t have to look far to find the people who are suffering.  It is the poor, those who have no place to call home, people who are seeking a better life in this country but are being hunted like animals, the children who don’t have enough food, the elderly who don’t have anyone to work on their behalf, the lonely, those addicted to drugs and alcohol….I am sure you can fill in more.  There is no shortage of suffering.    That also means that there is no shortage of opportunities to do justice.

          What about walking humbly with God? Have we finally gotten to one that might be a little easier?  Most people assume that means walking with humility.  We could benefit from some more humility in this world.  Can you imagine how our conversation and policies could change if we all (and I mean ALL) admit that maybe we aren’t infallible, maybe we are capable of being wrong.  Think of the progress that could be made if when we were wrong, we just admitted we were wrong. But I think the emphasis is actually supposed to be on the walking…walking with God.  When the word walk is used in this context, it’s not just about the act of walking…it’s used to describe one’s orientation to life. So the question is, how is our life oriented to God?

          Just in case you are thinking, well that’s just the Old Testament. Jesus wasn’t actually that demanding.  Look at our Gospel reading. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”  The Beatitudes are all about reorienting our lives to God and caring for the vulnerable.  Anytime we try to make that kind reorientation, people get mad…because otherwise Jesus would not have had to warn people that they would be persecuted and reviled.  We see that happening today. People who are protesting in Minneapolis are being killed, arrested—persecuted and reviled.   We can and should lament that—especially the killing, because that is tragic and unjust.  This is what Jesus was warning us about in the Beatitudes.  When we prioritize the needs of the vulnerable, people will be persecuted and reviled. 

That terrifies me. I don’t like being reviled. I don’t want to be persecuted. I much prefer to go along with the flow.  Today scriptures are clear.  “Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God.” Forget the rams and the rivers of oil.  That is not what God wants. God wants justice.  God wants kindness.  Most importantly, God has every intention of walking this walk with us.  Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?  The answer is, I will with God’s help. 

God Through Us: Jan 4

Matthew 2:13-23                                                        

                My son Joshua has played a variety of parts in many different pageants.  He was the baby Jesus when he was 8 months old, then a sheep for a few years.  When he was 2 ½, he was a reluctant sheep.  He was in a very outspoken and independent phase.  I was terrified of an outburst.  But he did fine and then the pageant directors surprised me a little.  They added an epilogue which included the story of Jesus returning from Egypt with his parents. Jesus would have been about 3 when he returned from Egypt, so they put Joshua in the place of Jesus. Joshua wandered back center stage looking extremely confused and a little scared and I found myself tearing up.  They weren’t really happy tears.  It was the first time I imagined Jesus as a scared child being taken out of the only home he had known (which was Egypt) and brought back to a land his parents had fled because their son’s life had been at risk.  It must have been traumatic for them all.

It was unsettling to feel that grief in the midst of a Christmas Eve pageant.  However,  I think that being unsettled can sometimes be good, even at Christmas.  Christmas is wonderful and joyful day, but there can also be a small (or even large) degree of grief in the midst of it.  It might be a parent or a spouse who has recently died, a child who can’t share the holiday with you, a family that is a little fractured…every loss feels that much bigger on Christmas.  So while it’s not typical or comfortable, today we are hearing the story of the sadness and the loss that happened on the very first Christmas. 

            This story from our Gospel today is referred to as the slaughter or massacre of the innocents.  Typically the reading leaves out the part about Herod killing the children under the age of 2 in and around Bethlehem, but I put it back in. I think the people who put the lectionary together were trying to keep the focus on God’s saving act rather than the actions of a corrupt and power hungry ruler.

            However, the author of Matthew put this story in his Gospel for a reason.  Many biblical scholars have pointed out that there are no historical accounts of this mass killing of children under the age of two, but others have suggested that it was not an unexpected act from a man like Herod. He had killed his wife and three sons to protect his power, what was a few dozen children to him when it meant he could protect himself from the future king? 

This all started with the devoted magi who brought gifts to Jesus and his parents.  We all know that story.  Unfortunately since they were following a star, which never provide exact locations, they first went to Jerusalem and told people that they had observed a star and were looking for “the king of the Jews.” This might seem a little far fetched to us, but it was common for people to associate the birth of kings or great men with the appearance of stars.  When Herod heard that these wise men had come from far away in search of a king, he sensed a potential threat. He sought the counsel of his own advisors and they told him that the prophets said that this messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. He called the wise men to him and shared this helpful information with the request that they tell him once they found him so he too could worship him.  Fortunately the wise men were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, so they didn’t.  

            That is where our story picks up today.  Joseph was warned by an angel in a dream to flee to Egypt.  The angel doesn’t tell him why, but Joseph obeyed. (He was very good at following angelic directions.) The family fled in the middle of the night and traveled all the way to Egypt.  Egypt was part of the Roman Empire at the time, but Herod had no control there.  We don’t know why this fleeing was necessary until we hear of Herod’s response to the realization that the wise men didn’t return to him and tell him exactly where this baby was.  Herod ordered the execution of children age two and under. Fortunately, by the time he realized this and ordered this slaughter, Jesus and his parents had already fled, but Herod didn’t know this.  Unfortunately, many children were still killed, leaving families heartbroken in Bethlehem.

Then there is this strange reference to Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children;  she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”  There is only one Rachel in the Bible and she is in Genesis.  She was married to Jacob and bore two children—Joseph and Benjamin.  Neither of them died before she did, thus, leaving people confused by this reference.  It is believed that Matthew included these verses because Rachel is considered one of the matriarchs of the Jewish people.  This reference to her weeping is a reminder of the exile of the Jewish people to Babylon.  No doubt, countless people died.  Even though Rachel had died by the time the Babylonian exile happened and by the time Jesus was born, Rachel still wept for all those children who died.  It was a way to recognize the loss.

The author of Matthew loved to find ways to connect the story of Jesus to the story of the Jewish people.  Matthew is essentially resurrecting these lost voices of the mothers and fathers who lost their children long ago.   By including this in the birth story of Jesus, Matthew isn’t only providing a connection to the story of the Hebrew people, he’s also acknowledging the losses that have happened over the centuries…lives that have been lost through war and tyranny.  Every one of those lives was precious.  Every one of those people who died was a child of God (that includes all the people of Israel and Palestine—all the people of the world).  History forgets, but God never does.

            Why does this story of atrocity appear in the Gospel of Matthew?  Is it to show that Jesus escaped through God’s divine intervention?  If so, what does that say about the children who died? Why would Matthew even tell this story?  I think he knew it was important what kind of environment Jesus was born into--the fear that gripped his family from the moment he was born.

Just like families today who are forced to flee their homes looking for a place free of persecution, Jesus was part of a family that left their home looking for safety.  That is something that everyone deserves...to be safe. Fortunately, Herod’s reach was limited and they were able to find a place they could stay, even for a while.  It’s ironic that we focus so much around Christmas about the story from Luke and no room in the inn, when the bigger story is where they were welcomed.  They were welcomed in a foreign land for years.  Foreigners welcome Jesus and his family.

Once Herod died, they were able to return to their home…but not quite.  They still had to change course. They couldn’t go to the place they planned because of another corrupt leader. They shifted course one more time thanks to Joseph’s willingness to listen to God and follow where God guided him. 

While part of me finds it strange to have this story of heartbreak and violence so close to the Christmas story, another part of me sees that it is consistent with who Jesus was and who he still is. He is committed to not just serving the least of these, but being with the least of these, with the persecuted and the forgotten. 

But there is another piece of this story that we can overlook if we focus on the violence and persecution. Joseph listened to God every step of the way.  It was his faithfulness and devotion that allowed him to hear God’s word and allow it to guide them through life. I understand the importance of action and protest….but as Christians, we can’t skip the step where we listen for the wisdom of God.  Because if we listen, God will guide us on the right path.  We won’t be guaranteed success---at least not success as the world sees it.  Jesus was still crucified even after all that listening and protecting Joseph did.  But if we listen and lay down our pride and need for control, God will work through us. One of the words we hear on Christmas Eve is Emmanuel, which means, God with us.  After Christmas, we need to focus on a different preposition---God through us.  How can we help other by allowing God to work through us?

I used a lot of information from this article for this sermon: Eugene Park, “Rachel’s Cry for Her Children: Matthew’s Treatment of the Infanticide by Herod,” CBQ 75 (2013): 473–85.

Heavenly Army: Christmas

Christmas                                                                                 Luke 2: 1-20                              Christmas Eve is my least favorite time to preach…partly because there are no new takes on this story.  It’s a story we all know so well, in so many different forms.  Yet, I would guess, that there are some things we don’t know as well as we think we do.  I remember my first New Testament class in college. I thought it would be an easy class for me as I had been going to church and Sunday school (which was called CCD in the Catholic Church) every week for my whole life. The professor, probably understanding that some of us were a little overly confident, started with a series of questions that seemed obvious, but were not.  We got most of them wrong.  One he liked to ask was, how many magi were there?  Well?  Anyone?  We all said three but then he pointed out, it never says how many there were, just how many gifts there were.  And the magi don’t even appear in our reading from Luke. 

It is the Gospel of Matthew that has the Kings and the star.  In Luke, we have shepherds and the heavenly host, but no star, no kings.  Those poor shepherds had no star to follow.  The angels told them that the sign they were to look for was “a child wrapped in bands of cloth lying in a manger.”  Bethlehem was (and is) a fairly small town, but it wasn’t that small.  They had to do some searching. 

                Those shepherds were motivated.  An angel had spoken to them and informed them that the Messiah, the Lord, had been born.  It wasn’t just one angel, it was an angel with the multitude of the heavenly host.  Now, when we see this depicted in movies or art, it’s usually a very gentle and bucolic scene.  There is a soft light, maybe one to two angels who don’t look scary or intimidating.  But if that was the case why would it say that the shepherds were terrified?  And that was before the heavenly host showed up. 

Until I started preaching this text, I never considered what a heavenly host meant.  Perhaps a few angels with harps? The Greek word that is translated to host is army. This was heaven’s army, all there to deliver a message.  Ironically, it was a message of peace: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those who he favors.”

                It’s an interesting juxtaposition, an army delivering a message of peace.  God sent this army not to fight, but to tell a few powerless shepherds that the Messiah had come down in the form of a helpless baby.  Most of us have probably held a newborn baby at some point.  They are tiny.  They can’t even hold their head up.  That is how God decided to show up, not with the heavenly army that would have probably been a lot more impressive, but a baby dependent on two humans who also had little power.

                I understand the symbolism of God coming to earth as a human so God could have the experience of walking with us. But sometimes I wonder, why wasn’t God born to a great king or political leader? Then God would not have to sleep in an animal trough.  Jesus would have been protected and his message would have gone farther because important and influential people would have been listening.  Jesus would never had to die because he would have been related to the people in power.  It would have been so much easier.  Or…if you are not liking that idea, Jesus could have been born to the same parents in the same place, but that heavenly army could have stuck around…just in case.  That would have been a lot less risky.  No one would mess with the guy who had the heavenly army backing him up.

                God could have taken any of those options, but no.  God chose to be born like any other child, to parents who were good and holy, but not people with power or influence. I love that about God, but sometimes it also makes me crazy and frustrated.  There are days when I think, we could use a heavenly host right about now, to straighten things out around here.  God has yet to take this recommendation from me. 

                Most days, I feel powerless and a little overwhelmed.  Sometimes that makes me feel weak.  What if we could take our perceived weakness and understand it for what it actually is, vulnerability. The beauty of that vulnerability is that it is something that our creator and savior understands, because he experienced it—as a baby who couldn’t hold his head up, as a young child learning to speak, as a teenager struggling with all the crazy stuff that happens, as a young man who would be abandoned by his friends and then die a horrible death.  That death didn’t make Jesus weak (even though some chose to believe it and maybe still do).  That death allowed him to rise again.  Could he have called on the heavenly host to rescue him from that gruesome death? Yes. But once again, God chose the path that aligned Godself with the most powerless and dejected human beings.

                That is what we celebrate on Christmas, a God who displayed power not with might and armies, but with compassion and love.  Don’t get me wrong, Jesus did miraculous things in his time on earth, but it was never to control people or display his greatness…it was to heal people (their bodies and their souls).  Jesus didn’t defeat the tyranny of the Roman Empire.  If he wanted to do that, he would have brought the army.  Instead, he lived in a way that displayed humility and service.  He died in a way that showed courage and surrender.  He rose again not to bring vengeance on the people who abandoned him, but to forgive them and inspire them.   

                On Christmas, we can and should bask in the warmth of his glory, but also remember that God’s work is not yet done, not even close.   It is up to us, to do that work.

One Person at a Time: Dec 14

 Year A, Advent 3                                        Matthew 11: 2-11                                                                    

           As I mentioned last Sunday, when I was bemoaning the lack of John the Baptist decorations, John the Baptist pops up in two of the four Advent readings.  Last week he was baptizing people in the River Jordan calling out the religious elite.   This week he is imprisoned. John wasn’t in jail for criticizing the religious leaders, he was in jail because he had told Herod that he should not have married his brother’s wife as it was contrary to Jewish law.  Herod was the ruler of Galilee and one other region.  While he is sometimes referred to as King Herod, he wasn’t a king, but he did have a great deal of power.  He had enough power to jail an innocent man and then execute him. 

          Jails and correctional facilities are not pleasant places to be in any time or place, but they were particularly horrific during the time that Jesus lived.  People were not typically in jail awaiting trial.  They were usually awaiting execution.  John the Baptist was a great prophet and a holy man, but it would appear from the question that he asked in the Gospel today that he was having some doubts.  This Jesus was not the man he expected.  Because if he was the Messiah, why would he allow his cousin (and a prophet) to rot in jail?

          Now, a lot has been said about what the Jews expected in a Messiah.  Many will tell you that they were waiting for a military leader, which is true to some extent.  But the reality is that the Jewish people didn’t have one defined view of what the Messiah would look like.  However in our lectionary today, and last week we have two pretty good examples of what some people were expecting.  Last week John depicted a Messiah who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire and would judge the people.  This week it says that John the Baptist sent people to confront  Jesus after hearing about what Jesus had been doing.  What had he been doing? If you read the previous 8 chapters, you will read about Jesus preaching, teaching, healing and feeding. He hadn’t confronted any religious or political leaders.  He had not built an army. There was no sweeping change as a result of what he had done.  In fact, to John (who was in prison) it probably looked like he hadn’t done much of anything.  John had done all this work preparing people for what Jesus was going to do and now he was wondering…is this really who they were waiting for?  I think John was expecting a significant sea change and there was no evidence of that…not yet.

          We see another example of what people were expecting in the Song of Mary.  These are Mary’s words, that she expresses to her cousin Elizabeth (who was pregnant with John the Baptist at the time) after learning that she would give birth to the Son of God.  She said, “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel…” Mary was anticipating this baby she would birth would be someone who would turn the world upside own.  The hungry would be full and the rich would have nothing.  The mighty would be cast down from their thrones. 

          Clearly, that was not what was happening.  The Romans were still in power and corrupt leaders like Herod were in charge and imprisoning the prophets who dared to speak truth to power.  Can we really blame John for being a little disappointed…for wondering if this guy who seemed like a good and holy person was actually the Son of God?

          I can’t tell you how often I have heard in the last year: “What it happening? What is the world coming to? Why isn’t God doing anything about this?”  I feel that too.  I felt that profoundly when I saw video footage of police officers kneeling on the neck of George Floyd. I felt that after seeing children in cages in the United States, separated from their families. I feel that when I see the utter desolation in Gaza.  I feel that whenever I see any hungry child, or any hungry person.  I even feel that on a smaller scale when I am going through a personal ordeal that I can’t see my way out of.  I wonder, why didn’t Jesus fix this when he came 2000 years ago?  Why did he die and then come back from the dead…just so this kind of stuff could continue to happen? I wonder that more than I would care to admit.

          But then I look at Jesus’ response to John the Baptist.  He didn’t get defensive.  Have you ever noticed that? Jesus never got defensive.  He was so confident that he was doing God’s will.  He said to the people who were asking the question for John, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  He didn’t tell them to be patient.  He didn’t say, “Look, I am laying some ground work here, but in a 2000 years billions of people all around the world will be worshipping me and even talking about you during Advent---but you aren’t ever going to get decorations.” 

No, instead, he told him about the individual lives he was changing.  He was helping people see, touching people no one was willing to get close to, bringing people back from the dead, and giving good news to the poor.  He never claimed to be bringing about systematic change or solving the world’s problems.  But he was meeting people where they were and showing love and compassion to people who had not known love and compassion.  He was transforming the world….one person at a time. 

It’s ok to be frustrated with the way our world is right now.  In fact, I think you should be.  It’s even ok to wonder where God is in all this and to be a little impatient. What we can’t be is hopeless. Let’s follow Jesus’ lead once again. Do one thing. Help one person.  If you feel overwhelmed, don’t let that paralyze you.  Not one of us has the power of Jesus. But we each have gifts.  We might not be able to change the world, but we can make change and gradually….ever so gradually, we will change the world.  

Sorting Ourselves Out: December 7

 Year A, Advent 2                                                                   Matt 3:1-12                                                                 

    Like many of you, I have been busy trying to get things decorated and festive.  We have a lot of Christmas decorations as that is a go to present for a priest and there are two priests in our family.  I think we are up to 7 crèches…only one of which we purchased.  Yet you know what decoration you never see—John the Baptist in his camel hair with a dead locust hanging out of his mouth.  Yet, John the Baptist pops up twice in our Advent readings, calling people names, telling them to repent.  It’s a wonder he doesn’t have his own Advent calendar.

It’s interesting that he shows up during Advent for a few reasons. Remember this is the adult John the Baptist.  John the Baptist and Jesus are born within a few months of one another.  What is adult John the Baptist doing preparing us for something that happened 30 years before? John the Baptist was not preparing people for the birth of Jesus— he was preparing people for the reign of God.

Many people at the time thought that he was the prophet Elijah, who had lived 100s of years before and was also a little rough in his appearance.  Elijah did not die, he was taken into the sky in a chariot.  Since he didn’t die, many Jews expected him to return right before the Messiah was to come. Some Jews are still waiting for Elijah to return, which will herald the coming Messiah.  From the few texts we have in the Bible about John, he never said he was Elijah, but the author of the Gospel was obviously trying to make a connection.  If John was Elijah and pointing to Jesus, then that’s further proof that Jesus was the Messiah that they had all been waiting for.

At Christmas, we tell the story of Jesus’ birth…which is a pretty great story. I never weary of hearing that story.  But Christmas is also supposed to be about the incarnation itself, which means that God became a human being and lived among us.  John’s presence in our readings during the season of Advent wasn’t preparing people for the birth of Jesus, but he was preparing people for the life and ministry of Jesus. 

John had a very specific vision of this ministry.  He said, ‘I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me…He will baptize you with  the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

Whenever I read this, I recoil a little. I have to wonder, did John the Baptist get it wrong, or am I wrong about Jesus? Next week we will read another story about John the Baptist after he has been arrested where he asks Jesus if he is the one they have been waiting for, or if perhaps there is someone else coming.  He wasn’t yet convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, because he wasn’t what he expected. To that Jesus responded something along the lines of “I am healing people, raising the dead and bringing good news to the poor. “  Jesus clearly thought that those things were what made him the Messiah, not the winnowing fork and unquenchable fire.  That said, Jesus did talk about the fires of hell a few times in the Gospel of Matthew.  We don’t like talking about that in the Episcopal Church, but it’s definitely there. 

However, I wonder if there might be a way to consider this message that John the Baptist delivered as an opportunity for growth, rather than a judgment.  Typically when we think of the separation of the wheat and the chaff, we see them as groups of people. You are either the good wheat that is gathered lovingly or you are the chaff that is burned in the unquenchable fire.  Fire can be destructive, but it can also refine or purify when the fire is controlled.  At the time Jesus lived, they refined metals like gold and silver using intense heat, which would melt away the impurities. 

What if the fire that Jesus brought was a fire that refined, rather than a destroyed?  When Jesus talked about repentance, I believe he was asking us to look at ourselves, and how we might allow ourselves to be refined.  That refining would require that we release the sins that hold us down, our judgment of other people, our selfishness…whatever it may be.  That is what repentance is, it’s not only examining ourselves, but also accepting God’s guidance as we do so.  It’s allowing God to burn away the parts that get in the way of us being loving, generous, faithful and brave.  It’s not about sorting the good people from the bad people, but sorting ourselves out. 

At the end of the world, Jesus will still judge (if we are looking at it from a Biblical perspective), but I really don’t think that is what we should be focusing on right now.  The way we prepare for the incarnation, which is God in the flesh (God among us), is by acknowledging that while we are flawed and there is room for improvement, being human is at least partly divine because we are children of God.

There is not one single person in this church (or world) who is perfect.  There is not one person in this world who is worthy of God’s love because of who we are or what we do.  And there is such freedom when we can accept that.  What makes us worthy of God’s love—what makes us perfect, is that God loved us first.  When God came to this earth, God decided, these people who keep making the same mistakes over and over again, are worth everything to me.  Maybe, just maybe, showing up as a human, showing them God in the flesh will help them see —see what their worth truly is.  That’s what the incarnation is.  That is what we are preparing for in this season of Advent.  It is about preparation and repentance.  But it’s not about becoming someone else, it’s about returning to who we were created to be, beloved children of God.  That will take some work.  We might need some refining, but it will be worth it.

How to be a King: Nov. 23, 2025

Year C, Christ the King                                                       Luke 23:33-43      

               Many of us know the story of Ruby Bridges.  Ruby was one of four first-graders selected to integrate two elementary schools in New Orleans in 1960. She was sent alone to William Frantz Public School.  Every day she walked into school surrounded by adults screaming threats and insults at her because she had the audacity to attend a school she had every right to be at.

          There was a psychiatrist studying the students who were helping desegregate schools in the south who took a special interest in Ruby.  He was amazed by her courage in the midst of so much hate and bigotry.  He began meeting with her every week to help her through the trauma. Ruby’s teacher mentioned to him that she had noticed Ruby moving her lips as she was walking into school every day. The psychiatrist asked Ruby who she was talking to. She told him that she was praying for the protestors.  He asked why she would pray for those who were so mean to her. She said that was what her parents and her pastor taught her.  She said, “I just keep praying for them and hope God will be good to them. . . . I always pray the same thing. ‘Please, dear God, forgive them, because they don’t know what they’re doing.’”[1]

That comes straight from our reading from the Gospel of Luke.  Jesus prayed that exact prayer from the cross as he was slowly dying, while people mocked him and called him, “King of the Jews.”  This is one of the moments when I want to argue with Jesus.  Are you sure they don’t know what they were doing? These were adults here.  Of course they knew what they were doing.  Scholars have debated this line from the text a great deal.  Who is the they? Is it the soldiers? The leaders who ordered the killing? The crowd?  I am not sure that matters.  It’s so easy to get lost in the minutiae rather than accepting the words that are clear—that was Jesus forgiving the people who were torturing him. One of Jesus’ final acts on this earth was to show mercy to people who didn’t seem to deserve mercy at all.

This is the last Sunday of what we refer to as ordinary time in the church year…the last Sunday before the new church year begins…which is Advent.   This Sunday is usually referred to as Christ the King Sunday.  If you look at the readings, they all have some connection to kings or kingdom.  In seminary, about 20 years ago, I was taught to be wary of this king language.  Some people suggested that instead we refer to this Sunday as “Reign of Christ.”  People were worried that this king imagery reinforced a hierarchical nature of power rather than the humility which Jesus consistently displayed.  He was a servant leader rather than a king.  But over the years I have learned more about the origins of this feast day and I have come to perceive it as one of the more subversive feast days of the church. 

In 1925, Pope Pius created the feast day of Christ the King.  It was less than 6 years after World War I ended, 14 years before the second world war began.  It was the very same year that Hitler published Mein Kampf and Mussolini became the dictator of Italy.  While the right side had won World War I, totalitarianism was on the rise and the pope was close enough to see it all.  Creating a feast day to celebrate the kingship of Christ was a way to remind the world that Christians serve a different kind of king and that king is above all the leaders of the world, whether they recognize that king or not.

All four Gospels say that there was a sign on the cross that said, “This is the king of the Jews.”  If all 4 Gospels agreed on that, then we can be certain that is an important point.  We are so accustomed to hearing this king language for Jesus, we don’t get too surprised when we read this title.  Yet this was probably hysterical to the people who created that sign.  Crucifixion was a shameful way to die.   It was for common criminals, usually criminals who had upset the Roman Empire. They used this spectacle to scare people into submission. This is what happens to people who don’t respect Rome.  Their point was that no real king would die such a death. If he was a king, an army would have been at his beck and call. He would not have to suffer. 

Here is the great irony of the scene…under that sign that mocked him, declaring the title ridiculous…he showed what it was to be a real leader.  In forgiving the people who killed him and telling one of the criminals next to him that he would be with him in paradise---he was showing mercy.  Mercy and love is what defined his kingship, not displays of force or a need to take town the opposition.

So often in modern Christianity, we allow others to define our faith. Instead of dismissing the notion of Jesus as a king because of how the world defines kingship…what if instead, we insist that Jesus is what defines a king, not the other way around?

            I know that many of us are frustrated by the leadership in our country right now, and those who aren’t angry now were probably very frustrated a few years ago.  There is a part of me that keeps waiting for that one person to come out the government and be that leader that we all need and want.  We just want someone to save us, to fix it all.  And I agree that we need better leadership and we need to hold people accountable.  But I also think we need to remember that no person can save us or this country.  It is only God who saves.  God also gives us the strength to save ourselves, so we can help others.

One of the frequent themes in the Old Testament is of the Hebrew people longing for this amazing king who will save them.  God warned them not to rely on a king, but they refused to listen.  They kept praying for some man to be that perfect king and that person never came.  They were always disappointed. God sent Jesus (a very unexpected king) to show us all that what we want is not always what we need.  The Jewish people wanted an all powerful Messiah to save them from the Romans, and instead God came to earth as a human who was then killed by the Romans.  A crucified king who could not save himself, yet somehow saved us all. That is who we worship.  

To many, he died as a failure…but  showing mercy is never failure.  It’s courage.  That display of love and compassion has inspired people throughout history—people like Ruby Bridges to walk through hoards of people screaming and spitting and still manage to pray for them.  Jesus’ mercy and love inspired Mother Theresa, Dorthy Day, Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King and so many whose names we don’t know. It can inspire us all. A king who can inspire that kind of courage 2000 years after he died, that’s a king worth worshipping.  May God’s mercy and compassion continue to inspire us to pray for those who wish us harm and find strength to be the leaders who lead with compassion and mercy.

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[1] https://www.christiancentury.org/first-words/when-ruby-bridges-prayed-her-enemies

What Holy Does: Nov. 2

 Year C, All Saint Sunday                        Luke 6:20-31         

          All Saint’s Sunday can be a little complicated.  We call it All Saints Day, but that’s confusing for a lot of Christians, especially anyone who has spent time in the Roman Catholic Church.  Catholics and Episcopalians share the belief that all baptized Christians (alive and dead) are considered saints.  This is how the apostle Paul used the word saint.   We hear that in his letter to the Ephesians: “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints…” When Paul used the word saint, he was always referring to the faithful, but imperfect Christians. 

What has led to some confusion, is that at some point the Roman Catholic Church created a process of canonization or beatification (and I am simplifying this greatly right now) in which a pope would declare a person worthy of veneration.  The pope doesn’t create a saint as they are already a saint because they are a Christian….the pope declares them worthy of veneration.  What is a bit confusing, is the person then has a “Saint” in front of their name…despite the fact that we are all saints.  I could refer to our baptismal candidates as Saint Matt, Saint George and Saint Owen….but let’s face it, that sounds a bit odd.

          What further complicates All Saints Day is that we read the names of those who have died in the last year and we have baptisms.  Reading the names of those who have died reinforces the idea that you have to be dead to be a saint.  In baptizing people we are reminding one another that saints are also the living.  I wonder if instead of asking what it means to be a saint, it would be helpful to consider what it means to be holy. 

In Hebrew and Greek (which are the languages that most of our Bible is translated from) holy meant to be set apart. To be holy meant to be separate from the world.  This caused some people to physically separate themselves from other people.  That’s why so many in the early church went to the dessert, to seek a deeper relationship with God away from everyone else.  It’s why even today there are Christians who think they should only associate with other Christians, as if non Christians would defile them in some way. 

I think one of the strengths of the Episcopal Church is that while we came from the Church of England, the Episcopal Church was really established in the very early years of our nation right here at this church and they were surrounded by different denominations and religions, very much thanks to the vision of William Penn.  Those church leaders who were around at that time understood that holiness didn’t mean that one had to be separated from those who weren’t like them.

          Yet over the years, especially the last 20-30 years, the Episcopal Church has been criticized for not being set apart quite enough.  We have been accused of going along with popular culture instead of standing up for the doctrines of our faith. Maybe that is true sometimes. Occasionally we can compromise a little too much.  But often we have worked along side popular culture because it’s actually the Christ like thing to do.  Ordaining women at the height of the women’s movement.  Did we do that just because that was what the public was telling us needed to happen, or were we listening to the movement of the Holy Spirit and studying the scriptures as well the traditions of the early church? When we consecrated the first openly gay man as a bishop, were we going along  with popular culture or were we once again moving with the Holy Spirit and as our baptismal covenant says---respecting the dignity of every human being?  I am biased, but I believe we were moving with the Holy Spirit. We have made many mistakes in the church over the years, but we have also corrected a lot of those mistakes, often with the help of people who are not in the church.

          Today, an interesting thing is happening. Popular culture is moving in a different way.   Many are trying to rebrand Christianity, in ways that I think are contrary to much of what Jesus taught. Some are trying to make Christianity the religion of the empire and that was never Jesus’ intention.  We Episcopalians have a unique opportunity right now to be counter cultural, as the church was when it started.  We can be holy in a different sense of the word.  We are not set apart from the world, we are just refusing to go along with what popular culture is trying to sell as Christianity. 

I was struggling with this sermon I asked my 9 year old son what he thought holy meant and he said, “When you host a party, you wash everyone’s feet.”  He didn’t try to define holiness.  He said what it does.  Holiness isn’t a state of being. It’s action.  And that is exactly what our Gospel is about.  After Jesus shared the beatitudes where he lifted up a very counter cultural message he said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.  Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you…”

          It’s probably one of the hardest messages of the Christian faith.  It would be easier to be separate from these people who are hating us, abusing us, stealing from us, begging….  But holiness, and saintliness is not about how we separate ourselves.  It’s how we connect ourselves to one another.  That doesn’t mean we don’t stand for what we believe in even when it is contrary to what others are saying we should believe.  It means we don’t stand alone.  We continue to stand in the midst of the chaos, the crime, the self righteousness, the anger, the hate….all those things we want to ignore.  We stand in the midst, sometimes holding up the others who can’t stand for themselves because they have been too beaten down, too battered.  We stand with them or we don’t bother standing at all.

          This is where the community of the saints comes together. This is why we read the names of the beloved faithful who have died over this past year and we baptize children who have no idea what they are getting into (but have parents and godparents who do) and we baptize adults like Matt who knows mostly what he is getting himself into.  You are not just being baptized for yourselves, but for the whole community, so you have strength to stand for others, the strength to do the hard things like loving our enemies….even the really really annoying ones.  And it’s ok if you are not there yet, whether you are a child, or a young adult, or you are 94.  I am not sure I am ever going to get good at loving my enemy.

          But I worship a man named Jesus who was born as a baby to poor parents and was killed by the Roman empire for crimes he didn’t commit and forgave those people as he was dying on the cross….and then rose from the dead because he wasn’t just a really good guy. He’s God and he showed us all—not just what holiness looks like, but what it does.