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.

 

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.