Wounded Jesus: April 12

   John 20:19-31                                     Year A Easter 2   

             I grew up with three older brothers.  They were a rowdy group, often getting in trouble, frequently injured.  They taught me to judge potential friends by how many scars they had.  They said, if someone doesn’t have any scars, they clearly aren’t good friend material. (I guess it was just a measure of toughness for them.)  I didn’t use that tool for judgment very often, especially since I was 9 at the time, and not many 9 years old have a lot of scars.  That said, it’s something I have always noticed.  Scars can provide snap shots of you life on your skin. 

For a long time, my most impressive scar was from a knee surgery I had in 10^th grade. I gained a few more scars over the years, but they all pale in comparison to my MRSA scar.  A few years ago, I got a serious infection in my leg.  It was resisting all antibiotics and since they were worried I might lose my leg, they decided just to open it up and pour the antibiotics in.  They did this three times over a one month period.  The problem was, when you open up the same part of a leg that many times, it doesn’t heal well.  I had an open wound for almost 6 months. They tried everything: stitches, staples, several wound vacuums and finally they cauterized it….which is burning. 

The whole time that was going on, I prayed fervently for a scar.  I didn’t care what it looked like, I just wanted that wound closed.  I have to admit, it’s one ugly scar…I mean truly ugly.  Yet even though I kind of hate it….it’s so much better than an open wound.

            When I was praying for my scar, I thought a lot about Jesus’ wounds.  I was confined to a bed for 2 months, so I had a lot of time to think of such things.  I have always loved that Jesus came back with scars, that there was evidence of his pain and his vulnerability.  But as I contemplated my wound, I wondered why Jesus didn’t come back with wounds instead of scars, like open wounds, maybe bleeding a little.  Because the wound that he experienced being nailed to the cross and pierced by a sword, would never have scarred over in just a few days.  Then again, coming back from the dead wasn’t an expected  outcome, so I suppose a wound healing a little more quickly isn’t exactly the headline of this story.  Still, it’s something I think about a lot.

The Gospel of John was originally written in Greek.  If you look at our Gospel reading, you will see it doesn’t say scar.  It says mark. The Greek is unclear, probably purposefully so.  When Jesus came back and offered his body to Thomas, he didn’t refer to his wounds as scars or marks.  He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it in my side.”  Notice, that the word scar isn’t used.  Maybe Jesus did  have open wounds. There is one famous painting that pops up a lot when reading commentaries about this text.  It’s by Caravaggio.  I can’t look at it without grimacing a little because Thomas is actually putting his finger into the open wound. I thought it was just Caravaggio being a little dramatic, but it’s certainly possible that Jesus still had an open wound and he was offering it to Thomas. 

Now some of you might be thinking, who cares if it’s a wound or a scar.  That’s not what this text is about.  It’s about Thomas doubting and needing physical evidence.  That is one perspective.   But I think Jesus’ wounds or scars matter.  He could have returned from the dead completely whole, without blemish or flaw.  He didn’t.  He returned to his disciples, the very same disciples who had denied him and abandoned him and were now hiding in a locked room.  He returned wounded. He didn’t return that way to shame them or make them feel guilty.  He returned with those wounds because they were part of the story, not just his story, but the story of what would become the Christian Church.  They were also evidence of not just his horrible death, but his humanity, his willingness to be vulnerable, even to the point of death.

Sometimes I make the mistake of reading the comments section in an article or social media. Ok, I do it a lot.  You will remember that not too long ago the panels which told the story of those enslaved by George Washington were removed from the president’s house just a few blocks from here.  This was as a result of an executive order from the president called, "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History".  Many of the comments were against the removal.  They wanted the story of those enslaved people to be told.  But many comments were along the lines of, that’s in the past. Why are we still talking about slavery? What does that accomplish?

 I am sure those same people would wonder why we read the names of those children of God who were auctioned and sold in the one of the largest slave auctions in the history of our country.  What is that accomplishing? Are we trying to tarnish the history of our nation? No, that history was tarnished long ago.  What we are trying to do is honor the names that we know.  We don’t know their whole stories.  We just know their names, not even all their names.  We know this one portion of their story because they were sold like cattle to the highest bidder.    We know the very worst days of their life.  So that is the part of the story we tell.

Slavery isn’t just a scar on our nation. It’s an open wound.  True, we stopped most forms of slavery.  We stopped the wound from gushing blood. But we, as a nation, we did very little to aid in the healing of that wound.  Some people think in talking about slavery, we are reopening the wounds, but I think we are finally pouring in some necessary antibiotic.  We are letting the light in, the possibility of healing.  We still have a lot more to do when it comes to the healing of our nation.  We will one day have to repair the wounds that are currently being inflicted.  It’s a never ending process.
            Jesus taught us all an important lesson when he returned to his disciples wounded and open.  He wasn’t there to assign blame. He was there to provide peace and forgiveness.  He could have shared the peace and forgiveness without the wounds. However, in showing the wounds, he showed us how we get to peace and forgiveness.  First we have to acknowledge the hurt, the shame and the sin.  We have to allow ourselves the same vulnerability that Jesus showed.  Because even when wounds heal, there is still a story to tell, a story to understand. That is the only way to get to true peace.   It’s the only way we heal.

Easter Drama: April 5

Year A, Easter                                                               Matthew 28:1-10                                                                                 

            I will always remember the first Maundy Thursday service I participated in as a priest. I was working for a rector who was very particular and attune to presentation. There was a big wooden cross on the wall…about 15 feet tall.  At the end of the service, after we removed everything from the chancel (which is referred to as stripping the altar), there was a large black cloth that was pulled (with some sort of pully system) over the cross. It didn’t cover the cross, just kind crossed over it like a sash.  As we were pulling the cross over the cross, there was a big clap of thunder and then lightning.  We all kind of jumped a little and then the rector whispered, “Just so you know, this doesn’t happen every Maundy Thursday.” Ever since then, I have longed for that kind of visceral feeling.  The closest I ever came to was last Good Friday when Parker played some of the pieces that went with the Stations of the Cross. It was like feeling the crucifixion in your bones, not the pain, but the meaning and resonance.

            The story of Jesus’ resurrection is in all four Gospels.  Each Gospel tells it a little differently and in my mind…way too quickly.  Every story has things in common---like the fact that women are always the first people to witness the resurrection, there is always an empty tomb and it’s always on the third day.  These are pieces that are consistent across all four Gospels.  Then there are the differences. There are two things that differentiate Matthew from the other Gospels…the earthquake and the presence of the guards. 

Matthew is the only Gospel that mentioned guards at the tomb. The previous chapter says that the religious leaders went to Pilate and asked him to post guards at the tomb as they were worried that one of Jesus’ followers would steal the body to convince others that Jesus had risen.  No one, not even Jesus’ most devout followers actually thought that Jesus would rise from the dead. The women came to grieve, not because they expected to meet the risen Lord.  That is the amazing thing about our God, God can never be confined to our narrow expectations.

            The other thing unique about Matthew is the earthquake. It’s certainly possible that everyone experienced it and Matthew was the only one who mentioned it.  It’s more likely that Matthew used the imagery of an earthquake to demonstrate how earth shaking the moment was.  The Greek word that is translated to earthquake is used three times in the Gospels and they are all in the Gospel of Matthew. 

The first is when he entered the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  The second is the moment Jesus died.  The third is when the stone rolled away and the angel descended from heaven.  According to Matthew, the earth shook on those three occasions. I get the sense that Matthew wants us to feel the earth quake (Organist plays here).  Can you feel that…reverberating through your body?  Now multiply that feeling times 10.  That is what Matthew wants us to feel when we consider Jesus’ death and resurrection.  If you have been through a serious earthquake or any major storm, you know that nothing is exactly the same afterwards. Even after everything is rebuilt and put together, the world is still changed.

            The timing of the earth quake in the resurrection story is interesting, because it’s not when the risen Jesus appeared, it’s when the angel descended and rolled the stone away.  That was the moment when hope was awakened.  It wasn’t the moment that hope was guaranteed, it was when it was awoken.  Notice how this angel is described.  His appearance was like lightening.  This was not the kind of angel we imagine or what we might see on TV.  This was not a Willow Tree angel.  I love those things, but they are not Biblically accurate.  This angel had one purpose: to deliver a message and God wanted everyone to know this message was earth shaking, lightening striking important. “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here: for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead…’”  The angel is shockingly brief—gets right to the point.

            I love that the angel encourages them to come see the place where his body was supposed to be. Even with the earthquake and the lightning bright angel, it was still hard to take in for these women.  The angel understood that. At the same time, the angel didn’t give them time to hang around and debate what actually happened.  The women were told to go tell others as soon as they witnessed the emptiness of the tomb.  Hope was awakened and it could no longer be contained.  It was bursting out.

            I understand that there are probably many in this church (or watching online) who aren’t quite sure about this resurrection thing. You came for the music and the flowers. You came for the traditions. You didn’t come to have your mind changed. I have been ordained for long enough to know that my job today is not to change your mind or your heart.

Instead, I want you to imagine what it would look like to be a little shaken, a little out of control. Imagine something—anything that you have experienced that was life changing.  After it happened, you realized your life was never going to be the same (like the birth of your first child).  That was what the resurrection was for the followers of Jesus.  It didn’t just change their lives. It changed their world.  A well known theologian and preacher, William Willimon once said, “On the cross, the world did all it could to Jesus.  At Easter, God did all God could do to the world.”[1]

            I understand how hopeless many people feel right now…for whatever reason, whether it’s the violence that we witness daily in the news, the division in our country or even the despair we feel in our lives.  I would love it if God could send us a big sign, perhaps a small earthquake right now, or a lightening bolt that came out of nowhere (Organist plays). But if I can’t have something that dramatic and obvious, I am going to be content with an awakening of hope. 

The evil powers of this world will continue to throw all they have against us as we try to hold on to hope and love. But as long as we have communities like Christ Church, then I will never despair.  I hope you won’t either. When Jesus came back to life, we were given this hope that could never be crushed.  When we say “Christ is Risen. He is risen indeed” it’s not just words of our liturgy, it’s our own little earthquake and lightening strike. It’s a rallying cry that just won’t die.

The other thing that is a rallying cry for our faith are baptisms and the promises the parents and godparents make and we as a community make.  Whether it’s a baby like Benjamin, or an adult, baptisms are our protests to the darkness---that hope is still alive, that we haven’t given up.

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[1] https://www.preaching.com/sermons/easter-easter-as-an-earthquake-matthew-281-10/

Bad Guys on Good Friday: April 3

 Year A, Good Friday                                                       John 18:1-19:42                                                         In my first church, my job as the assistant rector was organizing what had become a somewhat elaborate Palm Sunday production.  There were costumes, props and a lot of people involved.  Every year I had to recruit the people and it was never easy.  One year someone said, “Why do I always have to be the bad guy?” I replied, “No one comes out looking good in this story except Jesus and no one wants to be him either.” 

            When you read the passion story, which was that very lengthy reading from the Gospel of John, few people come out looking good.  Judas betrayed Jesus.  Peter denied him. The Jewish leadership condemned him on false pretenses and Pilate (who could have put a stop to the whole thing) went along with the crowd, not because he believed Jesus to be guilty, but because he was trying to prevent a riot.  That was his job, to keep some semblance of peace, even if he had to do that by killing an innocent man.

Then there was the crowd— that is the part where we all get to chime in on Palm Sunday.  We demand that Jesus be crucified even when given a choice between him and a real criminal.  The only people who were loyal to Jesus to the end was his mother, his aunt, Mary Magdeline and the beloved disciple.  By the way, John is the only Gospel that says one of the disciples was there at the cross, which makes it a slightly dubious claim. 

            It used to bother me, all the people who turned on him, the fact that so few were near him as he died.  It still bothers me, but I also find some degree of kinship with Judas, Peter, even Pilate.  Judas betrayed Jesus for reasons we can never understand, but it probably wasn’t a malicious act. One theory is that he was trying to protect Jesus, he hoped the arrest would just scare him—that he never expected that they would crucify him.  If that was the case, that means he didn’t trust Jesus enough to let him be the Messiah he was meant to be.  He assumed that he had to do God’s work himself.  It was pride.  I imagine we can all think of some times where we have assumed we know what’s best and taken God out of the process.  There are times when I have heard God’s faint pleas and I have just ignored them, making elaborate excuses for why I had to ignore them. 

            Peter was scared.  He had seen the guards.  He must have known what was coming.  He loved Jesus, but did he love him enough to die for him?  We know Peter had family as there is a story in the Gospels involving his mother in law.  There were people counting on him. And if Jesus died, someone had to take care of the remaining disciples.    Eventually Peter would die in defense of the Gospel, but he wasn’t ready yet. It takes an incredible amount of strength and love to die for someone else. 

            We know from other historical evidence that Pilate was a brutal leader.  The Gospels make him sound better than he was.  Yet his impulse was one that many can identify with.  Let one person die to keep the peace.  So much violence has been waged using this logic.  It’s ok if some innocent people die as long as we cripple our enemy.  That will save lives in the future.  It sounds logical and many of us love logical reasoning.

            There were the Roman guards, who were just doing their job. They probably didn’t want to do it, but they knew they would suffer if they didn’t.  Roman leadership wasn’t exactly known for their understanding and flexibility.  The Jewish leaders were scared and confused. They might have had a similar motivation as Pilate.  Caiaphas (one of the Jewish high priests) even said in our reading, it was better to have one person die for the people.  The irony in that statement is that was exactly what Jesus was doing.  He was dying for the people.  They just didn’t understand it at the time. 

            Who knows what was going on with the crowd.  They were probably not the people who had known Jesus, who had been healed by Jesus.  It’s possible they were people who only knew him by what they heard from others.  Afterall, if the Jewish leadership and the Roman leadership agreed that this man was a trouble causer, then it must be true. 

            There is a certain degree of shame I feel in identifying with these people, but there is also consolation.  Even though few stood with Jesus in the end, and some were cruel, Jesus still died for everyone.  The Bible is clear on that. Jesus died for everyone, including those who betrayed and denied him then, and those who continue to betray and deny him.  This doesn’t mean we don’t try to be better disciples.  Faith is a journey that we never complete, at least not in this life. We just keep trying, keep believing, especially those times when it is really hard to do so.  We will have our times of unbelief (some for years, maybe some for a briefer time) but those periods of struggle and pain don’t mean that we aren’t still loved by God. 

            One of my favorite parts of the story of Jesus and Peter, was that when Jesus returned to his disciples after his resurrection, he took Peter aside.  He asked Peter if he loved him— three times.  It kind of annoyed Peter near the end.  But Jesus did it so Peter could know he was forgiven, not once, not twice, but three times…the same number of times he denied him.   

            Back to my parishioner’s question about why he always had to be a bad guy. I guess the right answer is that none of us are bad.  We make bad decisions.  We do some bad things. We sin, and then we sin again.  Yet we were created to be good. We were created in God’s perfect image.  Jesus lived and died so that we could be redeemed, so that we would receive mercy.  That’s why we call this day Good Friday.  Horrible things happened that day, but Jesus’s love and grace made that day and this day….good.

Palm Sunday: March 29

Palm Sunday                                              Matthew 21:1-11                                                                         I remember when the Berlin wall came down.  I was young, but it made an impression, seeing the joy and exultation that the people experienced as they walked over and through the wall without being stopped.  The image of the wall coming down became a symbol, not just of a unified Germany, but the end of the Cold War.  In the United States, many associate the words of President Reagan demanding that Gorbachev “tear down that wall” with the fall of the Berlin wall.  Many would probably say that it was reforms that Gorbachev, the Soviet leader at the time, enacted during his long tenure.  No doubt it was a combination of many things.  What people don’t usually talk about is the role that prayer played in the reunification of Germany and the destruction of the wall that divided them for so long.

          After World War II, Germany was divided into 4 occupied zones.  England, France and the United States had three zones and the 4^th was controlled by the Soviet Union.  Eventually this evolved into East and West Germany, with communist controlling East Germany, officially named the German Democratic Republic.   St. Nikolai Lutheran Church is located in Leipzig and was in East Germany.  In 1982, individuals from the church and the community began meeting every Monday night to pray for peace.  While that probably sounds benign to most of us, the pastor at the time (Christian Fuhrer) knew that they were being spied on as the communist party was not friendly to Christian Churches, which made it a dangerous endeavor. 

For awhile, it was 10-15 people, but they continued to meet and pray every Monday.  Eventually, the prayer group grew, sometimes in the 100s or even 1000 of people attending.  Leadership from the Soviet Union became anxious and they demanded that the group stop meeting.  There were arrests, beatings…but they kept on praying. 

October 7^th 1989 marked the 40^th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic, which increased the tensions in an already very tense time. The prayers turned into protests and demonstrations, still meeting in front of or near the church.  The month before the 40^th anniversary tens of thousands were gathering.  Finally word came down that the government was giving the military permission to shoot to kill anyone who showed up on Oct 9^th for the prayer and protest. The pastor made an interesting recommendation.  He asked people to bring candles.  If you are carrying candles, it’s harder to be accused of violence.  Seventy thousand people showed up, many carrying candles.  The military and police stood back and watched.  Later the police said, “We were ready for anything except for candles and prayer.”  The wall fell one month later.[1]

          We call this day Palm Sunday and churches everywhere hand out these palms even though only one of the Gospels records people waving palms. Matthew’s Gospel says that people cut off the branches from the trees and laid them on the ground before Jesus.  I always feel a little disappointed when I see the palm.  There is really not much to it.  It seems counterintuitive that this is what we are given to welcome a king.  At the same time, it’s appropriate that it’s a little underwhelming. 

Matthew wrote that Jesus arrived on a donkey and a colt. No one is sure if he was riding two animals, but Matthew was obviously trying to make a connection to an Old Testament text that said, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the warhorse from Jerusalem; and the battle-bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations…”

          Matthew is obviously trying to connect Jesus, to the king and the Messiah that the Hebrew scriptures anticipated.   This king was different as he would not be on war horse.  He would not carry a weapon.  He would be on a donkey or even a young donkey…possibly both.  The point is, this was a different kind of king.  And yet, he would still defeat the great powers and command peace, but not in the expected way.  Instead of ascending a throne, he was arrested, beaten and then lifted onto a cross.  The cross (that labeled him as King of the Jews) was his throne. 

          I have often referred to Palm Sunday as liturgical whip lash as we start the service with joy and attempted enthusiasm, and then we all shout “crucify him” as we listen to the story of his trial and death. Yet as I read and the studied the Gospel that we began with (the one that is often referred to as the “triumphant entry”) I realized it really isn’t that triumphant.  The last verse is: “When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’” Who is this who arrives so humbly yet still commands worship from the crowds and fear from the Roman Empire? Who is this Jesus of Nazareth and why did such a humble and peaceful man bring such turmoil? The whole city was in turmoil.

          Not only that, but who are we to think that waving these palms means that we actually understand who Jesus is, understand what he did, what he sacrificed? Are we being foolish to think that our faith can bring change...that we can stand before the powers that be and demand change?  Were those Germans who carried candles and prayer almost 40 years ago thinking they could break down an actual wall—were they foolish? Maybe they were, but they were also victorious… not because of who they were, but because their prayers.  Remember, this gathering of people who were praying for peace, started in 1982.  The wall came down in 1989.  Change takes time, more time than we would like.

          That crowd that welcomed Jesus carried only branches and cloaks.  That is all they were equipped with.  Seems like feeble praise, feeble protest---especially when you compare that to what the Roman Empire had.  But that’s the thing about the God that we worship.  We come with our meager offering, our weakness and our fear.  We come a little jaded, maybe a little bitter.  Thankfully, it’s not about us.  It’s about this God who we worship---this God who rode a donkey into the city where he would be condemned to die.  He must have been scared. He had to be terrified, but he rode on, over the cloaks and the branches, through the hoards of people who were not quite sure who he was…except that he was worthy of their hosannas and their praises. 

          I know many of you are weary…so weary.  Many of you have been praying and protesting, and working for longer that I have been alive (and I was alive when the Berlin wall came down).  Then some of us have only been doing this for a little while and we are still tired.  I don’t know how they schedule the No Kings rallies, but I would be shocked if it has nothing to do with Palm Sunday, the day when Christians everywhere welcome a king…a different kind of king, but a king none the less.

          In our reading from Isaiah, the writer asks to be given the “tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.”  People give me a lot of reasons why they worship, or don’t worship at a church.  The reason I hear most often for why people come to church is that it gives them strength for the week. 

Consider all those who have worshipped here over the last 330 years…in this very place. They worshipped through revolutions and wars, through economic depressions…through so very much.  Imagine the prayers that these very walls have heard, that our God has heard.  No doubt, there were many times people wanted to give up. Perhaps a few people did.  But I think the reason we are still here worshipping after 330 years is because even in our weakness and our weariness, we still keep praying, we keep speaking out and reminding ourselves and others what our king—Jesus Christ-- looks like and sounds like.  Hold on my siblings in Christ.  Easter is coming.

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[1] This story was told as part of the following commentary. I  verified the story using several other sources as well: The church out in the world (Matthew 21:1-11) | The Christian Century

Lest We Judge....: March 15

Year A, Lent 4                                                         John 9:1-41                                                                  

“Who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” When we hear this question in our modern ears and with a basic understanding of science, it sounds like a ridiculous and offensive question.  Two thousand years ago, they had a limited understanding of illness and disability.  Those who were monotheistic (meaning they believed in one God) believed that God was in control of all things.  If you were blind, or had any illness that was because you or your parents sinned. This unfortunately made people who were already isolated for practical reasons, become even more isolated, because obviously, it was there fault.  At the time, this was an almost universal belief, especially among those who worshipped an all powerful and all knowing God. 

However, when Jesus answered the disciples, he said, “neither this man nor his parents sinned.” Obviously, they had sinned at some point, but Jesus was saying that this man’s inability to see had nothing to do with sin.  It’s unlikely that he convinced the disciples in that moment.  It’s hard to let go of deep-seated beliefs, especially beliefs that allow you to feel superior to another just because you are relatively healthy and have no disabilities.  That belief helped them feel safe and secure.  Any belief that allows you to feel safe and secure is really hard to release. 

          Jesus often subverted the assumptions that people made about sin and judgment.  People assumed that those who had been cast out, those who had a disability, those who were poor---they were in that situation because that is what God decided they deserved.   Yet just in these last 2 weeks, we have seen 2 examples of people in the Gospel of John who were cast out by society, but welcomed by Jesus.  Last week we heard the story of the woman who had been married 5 times and this week is the story of man who was born blind.  These two people were living on the margins and assumed to be sinners, yet they were not the people who Jesus condemned.  In fact, they were the people Jesus raised up. It was the people who were self righteous, the people who were convinced of their own favored status…the people who pushed others out and judged them---those were the ones who received Jesus’ harshest judgments.   

          Now there is nothing that unites a group of Episcopalians more than talking about how bad it is to judge other people.  Just this week I saw again…Robin William’s top 10 reasons to be an Episcopalian.  They are mildly amusing, and if I hadn’t already seen them many times, it’s possible that I would find them riotously funny.  The one reason that I have heard most often quoted is that “you don’t have to leave your brain at the door.” The reason that is on this top ten list is because the Episcopal Church has long prided itself on being the “thinking person’s church.”  The not so subtle implication is that other Christians aren’t thinking critically about their faith. 

Before we a judge those other non thinking Christians too much, let’s remember who were the deep thinkers and most educated people in Jesus’ day---the scribes and the Pharisees.  Do you remember who Jesus judged and condemned the most? The scribes and the Pharisees.  Now before you think I am judging my fellow Episcopalians too harshly, I should point out that Palmer and I are the two people in this room who are most like the Pharisees...at least in the respect that we are trained religious professionals.

          So how do we free ourselves from this quagmire of judgment? The last line of our Gospel reading provides a good clue. After Jesus heard that the formerly blind man was pushed out of his worshipping community, he found him and told him who he was.  When the formerly blind man saw and heard Jesus, he worshipped him and said that he believed that Jesus was the Son of Man.  Jesus then said, “I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind.” Some Pharisees overheard him and said, “Does that mean you’re calling us blind?” Jesus said, “If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”

At this point, we are no longer speaking of literal blindness.  The Pharisees showed some degree of self awareness, at least enough to ask the question.  But they were still unwilling to take the next step. They were unwilling to admit that they might be wrong, that there might be another perspective on faith and God.  I think that is an important thing for us to acknowledge, none of us knows that we are right all the time. The only way that Jesus can teach us and reach, is if we are willing to admit that we need Jesus.  We are all unfinished products.  We all have more that we can learn, and some things that we need to unlearn. 

          The violence that we see in our country and world right now has a lot of causes.  I would love to blame it all on our current administration, but it’s so much more than that.  It comes (at least partially) from our unwillingness to admit our need and dependence on God. It also comes from this desire to separate ourselves from those who are different.

This week had been a particularly horrifying week.  We have seen images and videos of bombs in Iran and Lebanon. We hear of those who have died from our military and then children who have died just because they happen to be in the wrong place, the wrong country. Just over the last few days we have also seen targeted violence toward the Jewish community when someone drove their car into a synagogue and violence against future service members.  On Thursday, a man walked into a college classroom in Norfolk Virginia, asked if this was a class for ROTC students and then opened fire.

We all know that violence begets violence.  We know that Jesus abhorred violence and condemned his disciples when they engaged in it.  We know this.  Yet what I find particularly disturbing in the recent years is our reaction to violence.  We immediately start blaming one another.  Because at some point we stopped trying to end the violence and instead focused on how to justify it.  We have put blinders over our own eyes so that we no longer see the humanity in one another. I don’t think we did that on purpose.  Our sight has just gotten more and more limited and we eventually forgot what it looked like to see the whole picture.  

That is what happened with the Pharisees.  It didn’t seem to occur to them to be grateful that someone was cured, someone’s life changed for the better.  Instead it was all about finding fault with the people who weren’t following their rules. If you need to see a modern example of that, just listen to people analyze how the war and the rising costs of oil price will affect the midterms.  It seems like we are always trying to find ways to leverage disaster into a future win for our side.  

Who sinned? That is how this reading began.  Jesus didn’t reprimand the disciples for their ignorance.  What did he do? He healed the person.  There are all kinds of good reasons for examining the cause of something and making sure we don’t make the same mistake.  But then we need to move on and find places of light, love, and healing.  Those places exist. 

Our reading from Ephesians tells us to live as children of light (not grown ups arguing about the light, children who are so quick to believe in goodness and love).  Children of the light.  Jesus brought light to the world and it’s still here.  It hasn’t been defeated.  There are examples of light, even in these dark times.  After the man drove into the synagogue in Michigan, the children from the day school took shelter in a Chaldean country club across the street.  If you are not familiar with the term Chaldean, they are Iraqi Christians. Not only did they care for the children.  The next night they hosted Shabbat for the synagogue.  That is light...communities that once would not have interacted, now providing support for one another.  Instead of making enemies of one another, let’s find more reasons to see the light in another.

And Yet: Ash Wednesday

 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10                                                                        February 18, 2026 

            The challenge in preaching Ash Wednesday is the same challenge that clergy face on Christmas.  It’s the same readings year after year.  This year I thought I had a great new take on Joel and then realized that was exactly what I preached last year. In previous years, I have preached about why we put ashes on our head even though the Gospel reading tells us not to disfigure our faces.  My theory is that it’s actually an admission of our own hypocrisy, which is a good and heathy thing to admit.  We are all hypocrites about something in our lives.  I have preached that amazing line from Joel, “rend your hearts and not your clothing.”  What I have never preached on is 2^nd Corinthians, partly because it doesn’t seem to really belong in Ash Wednesday…at least not as clearly as the others.

            Yet I found myself coming back to the last two verses of this text from 2^nd Corinthians over and over.  “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see-- we are alive; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”  One of the things that I love about Paul (who is the individual who wrote 2^nd Corinthians and much of the New Testament) is his humanity.  We see his insecurities and his defensiveness close up.  If the Bible was written today, this would have been so highly edited and polished, we would not hear any of the phrases that make the great heroes of the Bible accessible and relatable. While the Bible has been translated thousands of times, the word still retains the truth of the people who wrote it.

            Paul was clearly getting some push back from the people of Corinth. His mission was to spread the Gospel far and wide, so he moved from place to place, never staying terribly long.  He was in Corinth a little longer than he was in other places, about a year and half, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s not a very long time. After he left, other religious leaders stepped in and seemed to have contradicted Paul’s message, probably offering another path, an easier path.  Since Paul didn’t know Jesus personally, people used his lack of first hand knowledge to undermine his message. 

Thus we see him defending himself quite a bit in his letters.  Here he provides us a list of the hardships he has endured as well as his virtues.  It was a common rhetorical technique at the time---listing hardships and virtues. This list almost seems to be doing what the Gospel tells us not to do—practicing one’s piety before others.  Then again, maybe he didn’t have a choice.  For people to believe the message he was sharing, they had to believe the messenger.  Still I find it fascinating that this man who accomplished so much was just a little insecure.

            Let me return to those lines that first got my attention. I get excited when I see the phrase “and yet” in the Bible.  It usually speaks to a tension…often between what we are experiencing now and what will we experience in God’s kingdom.  It speaks to that primal hope---even though things are rough now, it’s going to get better.  In this reading, it speaks to another tension of how others perceive us (or how we think they perceive us) as compared to the way that God perceives us.

            “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known;” I have known a fair amount of people with imposter syndrome.  I assume some degree of it is normal.  Yet it concerns me when I see it in Christians—people of faith fearful of calling themselves a Christian.  It’s sometimes because they don’t believe everything, or because they have a past they are not proud of, or maybe a present they aren’t proud of. 

People have told me, “if you really knew me, you wouldn’t think I belong here.” I always tell them, I don’t need to know all of you to know that you belong here. Because God knows all of you. Church isn’t a finishing school for Christians who are 90% there and just trying to get to 100%.  It’s for anyone who is ready to admit that they have fallen short and they want to be better. It is for anyone who wants to deepen or explore their faith. It’s for people who want to know Jesus. Paul knew what it was to be treated as an imposter.  Jewish people thought he had failed as a rabbi. Many Christians knew he had persecuted Christians and were still not convinced he was a real Christian.  But he knew that in God’s eyes he was true.  It didn’t matter that no one knew him entirely because God knew all of him and still loved him.   

We are “dying, and see-- we are alive”   This is the line that belongs on Ash Wednesday. In just a few minutes, I will put ashes on your forehead and remind you of your mortality…that you are dust and to just you will return.  Yet while we are all dying (at different rates), we are still very much alive, no matter if you are 25 of 85.  You are still alive. That is a precious thing.  It also comes with a certain responsibility. What will you do with this beautiful life you have been given?  How can you serve God and God’s people?

We are “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”  Life is really hard and often depressing.  If you are aware of the things going on around you, it would be impossible not be a little sad. We could go around bemoaning the state of the world 100% of the time, or we could find times and ways to rejoice—not because we are ignoring the suffering, but because we still have a loving God and there is always some place where we can find joy. Even on Ash Wednesday, we rejoice because we have a God who loves us unconditionally.

We are “poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”  We have all seen the people who have everything they need and more, but are still desperate to acquire more stuff. They are never content with what they have. We see it in our culture way too much.  We have also seen people who have just what they need and somehow seem to have more than enough to give. Their life is one of abundance. God looks at us and see us as more than enough. You are more than enough.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent.  You could look at Lent and see the penitence and the focus on sin and say, “Oh God, not again. There is too much suffering, I don’t need any more. I don’t need more reasons to feel bad about myself.”  And yet….we could look at this as an opportunity to see the person that God sees…to chip away at the residue that has hardened around your heart and see yourself as a beloved child of God who has these 40 days to draw closer to God, to create a clean heart and be the person who God has created you to be. That is what Lent offers each one of us, a new beginning.

It's Time to be Brighter: February 8

Isaiah 58:1-12 & Matthew 5:13-20               Year A, Epiphany 5              

     In the Episcopal Church, we don’t refer to people as saints, unless we are talking about all Christians. However, we do recognize certain people who have inspired others as a result of their faith and actions.  We have a calendar of those people.  On Feb 13^th, we celebrate Absalom Jones.  Absalom was enslaved to a wealthy Anglican in Delaware.  He expressed an interest in reading and was soon moved to the house where we created opportunities to educate himself. 

A few years later, the man who enslaved him sold his mother and 5 siblings, and took Absalom with him to Philadelphia where he joined St. Peter’s, our sister church at the time.  Absalom worked days but received an education in Quaker schools in the evening.  He then got permission from his enslaver to marry and was married by Jacob Duche who was the rector of Christ Church at the beginning of the revolution.  He purchased her freedom and after a lot of hard work, was eventually allowed to buy his own freedom. It took him decades because his enslaver didn’t want to free him.

Absalom started attending St. Georges Methodist Church where he and Richard Allen were lay preachers and grew the church dramatically. Around that same time, (1787) they formed the Free African Society which held religious services as well as doing work for the community. They even helped raise the money to add a balcony at St. Georges.  But as soon as that balcony was built, the white congregants said that African American congregants had to sit up in that balcony that they had paid for.  So they walked out.  In 1792, they built the First African Church—which would become the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. Absalom Jones and his church decided to go with the brand new Episcopal denomination while Richard Allen went on to form Mother Bethel, the first African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1802, Bishop White (who is buried right there) ordained Absalom Jones as the first African American Episcopal priest. 

Absalom Jones believed God acted on behalf of the poor and oppressed and that Christians were meant to do so as well.  During the height of the yellow fever in 1793, while others fled the city, Absalom stayed and cared for people and even dug their graves.  He truly shined with the light of Christ for people in this city in the 18^th and 19^th century, and remains as a light in our church today. 

            It was disheartening to see those panels at George Washington’s House being torn down just a few weeks ago.  In addition to telling the story of those enslaved by George and Martha Washington, it also told a small part of the story of Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and the churches they created.  It’s one of the reasons I spent a little extra time telling the story of Absalom Jones, because when those stories are silenced by others, it’s up to us to tell those stories. It is up to us to shine the light.

            Three of our four readings use the image of light in the darkness.  It’s a familiar and powerful image in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian Scriptures and many other religions.  The reading from Isaiah is similar to our reading from Micah last week. The people are once again trying to please God with rituals and sacrifices of animals.  They were frustrated as they felt that they were ignored by God.  They were doing many of the same things that had pleased God in the past. They were depriving themselves of food and comfort.  They were rolling around in ash and wearing sack cloth.  These were not easy things to do.  In their own way, they were trying.

But the problem was, what they were doing was self serving.  While they were doing these sacrificial acts, they were also oppressing their workers and serving their own interests as opposed to those of others.  God said, “Is not this the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice…to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke?”  He went on to tell them to share their food with those who were hungry, care for the unhoused and those without clothing.  I talked about this last week---how justice for God means taking care for the vulnerable.

            Unlike Micah, Isaiah displays more hope, probably because it was a much longer book.  While Micah has 7 chapters, Isaiah has 66 chapters.  There is more space for growth in Isaiah. He said, if you can do all these things (help the oppressed go free, care for the vulnerable), “then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like noonday…you shall be called the repairers of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”  Your light shall shine in the darkness.             

            That goes well with the text from our Gospel reading.  Our Gospel reading is a continuation of what we had last week.  We see more of this theme of light.  But while Isaiah speaks of the future (your light shall shine), Jesus speaks in the present tense. “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.”  Jesus brought light to this world with his life, his death and his resurrection.  While that light has dimmed at times, it has never gone out.  When Jesus ascended to heaven, he left that light with his followers.  We are inheritors of that light. 

Maybe this is your first time in church in a long time, or have only been coming a few months.   Maybe you have been coming your whole life, but you just don’t think you have the light.  God has given all of you the light.  You are all the light of the world.  Say it to yourself, “I am the light of the world.” It sounds a bit arrogant. It’s not.  You are not the source of the light, but you are a vessel of the light.  And without people carrying the light and shining the light for others, then people forget about the light. They forget about the truth.  They start thinking that darkness is the norm.  It’s not.

            One of the reasons I became a priest was because I realized that I loved to talk to people about God. I love hearing the stories of the Bible and hearing people’s faith stories.  Stories matter.  That is why it breaks my heart that those panels were taken down.  I am not going to talk about the politics of the decision…instead I want to focus on what we can do now.  It’s so easy to resign ourselves to powerlessness.  We are not without power. 

The first line of our reading from Isaiah is, “Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet.” I saw on Instagram that residents of Old City are taking turns standing at the president’s house and reading the words from the panels.  People are hanging up construction paper and writing in chalk over those blank spaces where those panels once were. They aren’t vandalizing anything, but they are finding ways to bring the stories of those 9 enslaved people back to life. 

            I was at one of the vigils a few weeks back and there was a woman holding a sign that said something like, “Jesus said to love your neighbor.”  I heard her tell someone else she was from an Episcopal Church and while she had been to many protests, this was the first time she had felt comfortable holding an overtly Christian sign.   That made me both happy and a little sad. For several decades, it’s been a certain kind of Christian that has been loud while the rest of us have just stayed in the background and talked amongst ourselves about how Christians aren’t speaking up enough. 

Well it’s time for us shy and reserved Episcopalians to get a little louder.  Actually, I don’t want us to be louder. We don’t need any more loud people. I want us to be brighter---not just so people can see our light, but so we they can see God’s light, how it shines on everyone…not just certain people someone decided deserves it.  You are the light of the world.  Don’t cover it up. Don’t let anyone cover it up.  Because it’s not our light. It’s God’s and everyone needs to see it.