Help for Getting out of a Ditch

The Good Samaritan by Van Gogh, after Delacroix, 1890.

A sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 11, 2010. The lectionary readings are Deuteronomy 30:9-14, Psalm 25:1-9, Colossians 1:1-14, and Luke 10:25-37.


In today’s Gospel the lawyer asks about the commandments. He wants to know what he needs to do in order to have things be right for when he dies, when his heart stops beating, and the only thing he sees in front of him is the face of God. “What must I do to inherit eternal life,” he asks. Jesus asks him what he knows about God’s law, what has he been taught? And the man replies with the well-known verse: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus applauds the answer. “You’ve got it,” he says. “Do that and you’ll inherit eternal life.” But the lawyer asks that other question, “Yes,” teacher, but “who is my neighbor?”

It’s a big question. It’s a question asked by countries, as foreign aid, disaster relief, and immigration are debated. It’s a question asked in our communities as we all face needs that more-than-surpass resources. And, then, it’s also a question that people of faith ask, especially since Jesus so often mentions the neighbor. If we’re going to follow Jesus, if we’re going to be Christians of any sort, we need to know something about our neighbor.

But this question alone, “Who is my neighbor” can be misleading. Too often, it can become a kind of puzzle of piety, a fill-in-the-blank for faith. The assumption sometimes (the assumption of the lawyer, and perhaps our own assumption on occasion) is that once we can just identify our neighbor, then we can begin to do ministry to her or him, and we will be saved. We just launch a mission study or report, and then areas of need can be carefully categorized and charted. Needs are assessed. The “needy” are identified. Then a committee or task force ranks these, a new venture is named with a snappy acronym or slogan, a program is begun, and ministry happens.
It is very much a ministry of doing unto others, but doesn’t necessarily take into consideration being neighborly.

I’m not knocking long-range plans and I’m in no way criticizing an organized approach to mission or parish life. But if we only ask, “Who is my neighbor?” and then go and “do unto them,” we may be missing something of the Gospel. We can miss the reception of God’s grace and we can miss how grace is meant to be the motivating factor in being neighborly.

Back in our Gospel, when the lawyer wonders, “Who is my neighbor?,” Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus turns the lawyer’s question around. Rather than asking who IS the neighbor, Jesus suggests the real question is, “who has acted as a good neighbor to another?” The real question that gets us closer to the kingdom of God is the question we can ask ourselves, “When have I been neighbored?” When has someone been neighbor to me? When have I been down on my luck, shoved aside and overlooked? When have I felt beaten and bruised, neglected and forgotten?

The point of the Good Samaritan story, I think, is to see ourselves in the ditch.

People often come by the church, trying to get out of a ditch. Sometimes they call, because in many listings, All Souls is right near the top, alphabetically. Sometimes they walk by and ring the doorbell. And then, sometimes when they see me on the street, dressed as a priest, they ask for money. I’m sure they ask you, as well. When this happens, I’m usually pretty careful. I ask good questions and I think I try to discern whether a person is scamming me or not. [Whether I should try to discern, or simply give when asked, is a topic for another sermon.] But I do have a weak spot.
If someone is ever stranded and is trying to get home, or get to their friends, or get “wherever,” I’m usually good for a few dollars. Even if it turns out the person is lying, I gamble on someone who says they are stranded because I remember once being stranded. I remember that particular “ditch.”

I was stuck in a train station. This happened I was in seminary (the first time around). I carried no credit cards and was between checks. I had just completed an internship in New York, had taken the train back to Princeton and had several pieces of heavy luggage. When I got to Princeton Junction, I found that I had missed the last shuttle into Princeton. There were no cabs. My friends were all away for the summer, and no one was around. And so I slept at the train station that night, waiting for the train the next morning. The neighbor didn’t come for me that night. Oh, I was in a safe, clean place—a far cry from really being lost or being stranded altogether, but that brief experience of dependence, of being out of control, of being vulnerable—has stayed with me. And it is that kind of experience that compels me to show compassion to (to “suffer with) others. Remembering the times when I’ve been in a ditch helps me to be neighborly to others. I’ve been in other ditches—when I was sick and someone called, when I was broke and someone loaned me a few dollars, when I was heartbroken and someone simply cared. I bet you have known a few ditches, as well.

One of the most famous “ditches” in religious imagery comes from the 14th century, from Julian of Norwich (1342-1416). When she was 30 years old, Julian almost died from a fever or some other ailment, and while she was sick, she received a vision from God. She wrote down her vision, but continued to pray to God for more insight. Twenty years later, she wrote down an extended version of the vision.

A part of her vision imagines a Lord and Servant. Julian sees a great Lord who has a devoted servant. The Lord sends the servant off on some errand, and the servant is excited to do it. But then the servant falls into a ditch. The servant “is greatly injured” as Julian writes. [The servant] groans and moans and tosses about and writhes, but cannot rise to help himself in any way . . . And all this time his loving lord looks on him most tenderly . . .with great compassion and joy.”

She goes on to explain that the great tragedy in this accident is that the Lord sees all of this and understands that the servant has simply fallen into a ditch. The Lord commends and approves the servant “but he himself was blinded and hindered from knowing this will. And this is a great sorrow and a cruel suffering to him, for he neither sees clearly his loving lord, . . . nor does he truly see what he himself is in the sight of his loving lord.” That can be the real tragedy of being in a ditch—we come to think we’re all alone, we’re forgotten, and that even God doesn’t see or care.

When Julian begins to understand her vision fully, she begins to see that Adam is the servant, who falls and is then raised up. But Christ is the Second Adam, and is the servant who willingness goes into any ditch or deep place, to redeem us, to be with us, and to love us. Christ is with us here and until that day when, (as Julian says) “every passing woe and sorrow will have an end, and everlasting joy and bliss will be fulfilled, which day and time all the company of heaven longs and desires to see” (Showings, p.276).

The collect for today asks God to grant that we might “perceive and know what things we ought to do, and that we might have the grace and power faithfully to fulfill them.”

In addition, may the Holy Spirit remind us of the times when we have been in ditch, so that we might call upon the memory of such times as we continue to love our neighbor.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Heroes, Heroines, and Us

Electronic Superhighway:Continental US, Alaska, Hawaii (1995) by Nam June Paik, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

A sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, July 4, 2010. The lectionary readings are Isaiah 66:10-14, Psalm 66:1-8, Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16, and Luke 10:1-11, 16-20.

As we celebrate Independence Day, it’s appropriate that we’re often led by historians. They remind us that amid the picnics and concerts, the appliance sales and all of the red, white, and blue, there are real people who made our independence possible. There were real people who stood up, who wrote and sang and stitched and fought so that we might live in the country we do. We remember those names, of Betsy Ross, George Washington, Dolly Madison, and Paul Revere. More recent historians have helped us remember a larger picture, including the stories of people like Crispus Attucks, Prince Hall, and Sally Hemings, and those whose stories are still being told and shared. It’s right that we learn about our heroines and heroes, but it we keep them and their ideas only in the past, then Independence Day is a waste. They were real people, who lived lives like we do, and yet, because of their decisions, their sacrifices, their choices, their ingenuity and resourcefulness, they changed the course of history. If WE fail to be changed, to be enlarged or to learn from them, then their contributions mean very little.

A similar thing has to do with our reading of scripture. We can sometimes hear the old words and stories as hopelessly abstract and distant. People were different then, we say. They believed different things about God. They had different power structures. Often, in the name of faith, they oppressed and enslaved and conquered. We congratulate ourselves on having done well to move beyond some of that and we’re glad to be the people God has brought us to be. But like those in our more recent history, the people whose lives are reflected in scripture were real people who, at their best, were somehow captivated by the Spirit of God and they were changed. They became more than before. They made decisions and took off in new directions that changed the world. And in the Communion of Saints, their faith flows through us. We can learn from them. We can be changed because of them.

The Gospel from Luke tells us about such people—people long ago, but people, nonetheless. We heard how Jesus gets his followers organized. He picks 70 people. This number of 70 might be significant for a number of reasons— 7 and 70 are important in the Hebrew scriptures. Moses picks 70 elders to help him, and there’s even the tradition (Jesus would have known) that the primary version of the Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek in the 3rd century BC(E), called the Septuagint, was translated by 70 scholars picked by King Ptolemy, who worked for 70 days to translate the text.

For whatever reason, Jesus picks the 70 and he sends them out in pairs. If you notice the verses we heard from Luke, you’ll notice that there was a break. The first section, verses 1-11 of the scripture, has Jesus give his instructions to the 70, like a coach in the locker room before a game, Jesus is giving them a sort of spiritual pep talk. Offer peace. Travel lightly. Get to know people. Be gracious. Be careful.

The middle verses, the ones we did not hear consist of a series of statements about some of the places who did not receive the good news brought to them. “Woe to them,” Jesus says. It’s as though word has come back that some of the 70 who have gone out are being given a hard time, and so someone—whether Jesus or someone else Luke hears of—is commenting on these places that seem obstinate, unwelcoming, and unfriendly.

Then we have the last section, verses 16-20. Here, it seems the 70, or some of them, have returned. They’re reporting success. They even seem a little carried away with how successful they’ve been, “Lord,” they say, “in your name even the demons submit to us.” Jesus then reflects on this, and his long experience with the devil, as though to say, yes, demons are out there. They always have been and they always will be, but in the end, God wins. Rejoice in the victories you have over the snakes and the scorpions and the serpents of the world, but don’t let it go to your head. Just be grateful to God, Jesus says, and keep close to me and to each other.

This reading can seem like it’s about spiritual heroes, the greats of the faith who left family and homes and jobs and went out as missionaries extradinaire. But I don’t think so. I think they were probably pretty ordinary people who responded to Jesus and tried to do their best.

We, who are baptized in Jesus’s name are also called to “go out,” even if we never move very far. We encounter others in our homes, in our families, at work, at play, in the neighborhood, in the supermarket. And wherever we go, we are called to take our faith with us and to deal with others with faithful heats. And that’s where some of Jesus’s advice to the 70 comes in handy. It becomes good advice for us, as we live our lives.

Be as lambs among wolves. Go into the world with gentleness and respect—love, even. But don’t be naïve. There are those who would be our enemies. There are those who do us in. There are those who would do us harm.

Know that the kingdom of God has come near you. Jesus promises that the kingdom of God begins in this life, as we grow in his love and his ways, this kingdom unfolds all around us and even within us. The kingdom is not a physical place to be visited. It is not a set of rules to be followed, or set of doctrines to be held. The kingdom can look like some of those qualities mentioned by the Apostle Paul to the Galatians: a place where people share in carrying each other’s burdens, where people are forgiven and olds wrongs forgotten, where a spirit of gentleness prevails, and hope never gives up.

“The kingdom of God has come near.” Elsewhere in the Gospel stories, Jesus gives us other images for what the kingdom of God looks like, for how it arises or how it’s uncovered. The kingdom comes in surprising ways—it’s like water turned into wine. It’s like yeast that grows in bread. It’s like a pearl uncovered in the depths of dark water. The kingdom of God is very near, and it’s this sense that we’re to embody, to embrace, and to share in the world.

And then, Jesus warns that there will be those who won’t understand his message of love. There will be those who, for whatever reason, don’t recognize or hear or want a God of love. The images offered by the Prophet Isaiah are strong images, but they can be overwhelming. God is like a mother who consoles her children on the breast. She gathers them close and loves them. She nurses and carries us, she lets us play on her knees. For some—broken down by circumstance or relationship, by addiction or disease, such an image of God seems invasive and dangerous. Jesus says, “Shake the dust off your feet.” Move on. Offer the love of God as best you can, but if people cannot or will not hear, move on. The kingdom of God is near and those who receive it, will receive it.

Those who have gone before us in the recent past of our country’s founding, as well as those who have gone before us in the distant past of our faith, would have us become like them, at their best.

In 1630, as people crossed the ocean to come to this country, John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, preached a sermon to that early group of Puritans looking for a place to worship and live in freedom. Well into his famous sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” he says, “Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of [the Prophet] Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God . . . We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.”

May we learn from those who’ve gone before us and may we be guided by them. As we continue to struggle with how to be faithful AND free, may we do so with the knowledge that the kingdom of God is very near.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Forgiven and Forgiving

A sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 13, 2010. The lectionary readings are 2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15, Psalm 32, Galatians 2:15-21, and Luke 7:36-8:3.


Every Sunday, at every Mass, perhaps even more frequently, we say the words of the Lord’s Prayer. And within that prayer is a petition that has some difficulty built into it. “Forgive us our trespasses,” we pray, “As we forgive those who trespass against us.” The Presbyterians say “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” and the newer ecumenical version says simply, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”

I hope that the phrase means that like I try to forgive other people, God would also forgive me. But what if the prayer really implies that God will forgive us insofar as we are able to forgive others? What if God’s forgiveness of me hinges upon, depends upon even, my ability to forgive others? If that’s the case, I might be in some trouble.

In both our first reading and our Gospel, we see that forgiveness often involves relationship. And for forgiveness to flow steadily, to be given or received, the relationships need to be in order, or at least the relationships need to be honest.

In our first reading we see King David, who has done just about everything he can do in order to move Uriah toward the front of the battle, so that David can have Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, for himself. Sure enough, Uriah is killed in battle, and David moves in for the woman he wants. But God sends Nathan the prophet to King David, and Nathan tells David this story about a man who had a perfect little lamb. But a stranger came into town and demanded the lamb. David hears the story and responds that this is unfair, unjust. The one who demands the lamb should be punished. And Nathan shows David that David, himself, is that man—the one whose greed and lust blinds him his own guilt. He needs to come clean before he can receive God’s forgiveness. He needs to come to a new place of honesty and clarity before God’s grace can flow.

In the Gospel, a woman approaches Jesus. She begins to bathe and anoint his feet with her tears and with an expensive ointment. The religious leaders, the Pharisees, are appalled at this. They ask Jesus, “Don’t you know who she is? Don’t you know what she’s done?

But Jesus DOES know her, and he knows all about her. He knows that God made her. He knows that God loves her, and he also knows (somehow) that she is sorry for her past and wants to move into the future – free, clean, and new. And so Jesus forgives her.

Forgiveness doesn’t happen in the abstract, it happens between two people, usually between two very human people. God helps the forgiveness, and there are times when I need God’s help to move me a little further one way, and sometimes I need God’s help to move the other person a little further. God desires forgiveness, a clearing of the air, so it’s not a difficult prayer to pray. But forgiveness is often very difficult to do.

And yet, a couple of weeks ago, the baseball world saw an amazing interchange of not only sportsmanship, but also of forgiveness, forgiveness of biblical proportion. I’m certainly not the first person to point to the unusual nature of the Detroit – Cleveland game.
Some of you know the story much better than I. It was a game that could have made history, with Armando Galarraga pitching a perfect game, 27 batters up, 27 batters down. Since 1880, there have only been 20 perfect games.

But there was a play that had Galarraga throwing the ball to first base. The ball got there before the runner, but the umpire, Jim Joyce, called the runner safe. The mistake in the call was almost immediately seen by the crowd, and instant reply showed it to be without question, the wrong call.

But then the most amazing thing happened. Galarraga simply smiled. As others have pointed out, Galarraga didn’t call his lawyer or the players union. He just went back to work.

When the umpire, Jim Joyce saw the video, he had tears in his eyes as he told reporters, “I just missed the [damn] call. I took a perfect game away from that kid over there who worked his [ ] off all night.” After talking briefly with the reporters, Joyce went to the Tigers’ locker room to apologize to Galarraga. Galarraga said later, ‘Nobody’s perfect. I understand. I feel for the guy.”

Forgiveness, when it happens, involves that sense of one’s being fully centered in oneself, knowing who one is, and knowing what’s most important. Jesus seems to have been like this in his dealings with people—he was so deeply connected to God, that he could understand the depth of God’s love for all people, and could extend that love. I don’t know if either Galarraga or Joyce is a person of faith (though something tells me that somewhere there is a Venezuelan mother and an Irish mother who can take some credit for their boys’ good manners). But both men certainly exemplified what it means to forgive.

"Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us."

I still don’t really know whether my sins are forgiven based upon my own capacity to forgive, or whether the Lord’s Prayer suggests that forgiveness is similar in both directions, but I pray that we, all of us, might be so filled with the spirit of forgiving and being forgiven that we would lose track of who makes the first step, we would forget who made the first wound, and we would forget the time when we were not at peace.

May God forgive us, bless us, and continue to show us how to love one another.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Corpus Christi 2010

The The Wedding Dance in a Barn by Peter Brueghel the Younger, c. 1616

A sermon for Corpus Christi Sunday, June 6, 2010. The readings are from the Book of Common Prayer "Of the Holy Eucharist," Deuteronomy 8:2-2, Psalm 116:10-17, Revelation 19:1-2a, 4-9, and John 6:47-58.

In her wonderful book about feasting, M.F.K. Fisher offers insight into what we celebrate today. She writes

“Food for the soul is a part of all religion.” “Food for the soul is a part of all religion, as . . . savages know when they roast a tiger’s heart for their god, as Christians know when they partake of the Body and Blood at the mystical feast of Holy Communion. That is why there can be an equal significance in a sumptuous banquet for five thousand heroes, with the king sitting on his iron throne and minstrels singing above the sound of gnawed bones and clinking cups, or in a piece of dry bread eaten alone by a man lifting his eyes unto the hills.” [Here Let us Feast: A Book of Banquets (San Franciso: North Point Press, 1986) xiv, reprinted from 1946 Viking Press.]

Fisher is pointing out that every meal, no matter what, when or how—has some trace, some slight flavor, some hint of the Holy within it. She suggests that there can be “equal significance” in all meals and from a food writer’s point of view that may be so. But from a Christian perspective, (at least from my perspective) I would want to qualify that. Though the food we share in many places can be special, can be memorable, can bring about sensations long forgotten, can make peace, heal difference, and encourage love…. most of the food we eat is earthly food. Foyer Dinners offer sacred fellowship and holy fun, the food we will share later today at the parish picnic offers some of the same; meals with family, with loved ones, and friends—in homes, or in restaurants-- all of these can stay with us as memories that warm and enrich and remind us of who we are--- but the Holy Eucharist, the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ shared in Communion is of a different order. Made of ordinary elements, by the Holy Spirit, it is “super-sized” beyond all imagination.

In the back of our Prayer Book is the Catechism, often helpful for reminding us of some of the basics of Christian faith through an Anglican lens. In the section on the Holy Eucharist, there’s a wonderful part that talks about the benefits of what we do, the benefits of partaking of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It says simply, “The benefits we receive are the forgiveness of our sins, the strengthening of our unions with Christ and one another, and the foretaste of the heavenly banquet which is our nourishment in eternal life.”

When we partake of the Body and Blood of Christ, we are forgiven. We are forgiven again. Our sins are washed away at Baptism, but the ongoing accumulation of sin in our life meets its match in Holy Communion. Ignatius of Antioch called it the “medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, … that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ.” Medicine can taste bitter, sometimes, especially if our tastes are accustomed to other things. But the Holy Eucharist helps us. Like good medicine, it increases our resistance level. Like vitamins, it strengthens us.

The second benefit according to the Catechism has to do with strengthening our union with Christ and with one another. In a world that often suggests we live only for ourselves, that we protect at all costs what we think is ours; the unifying work of the Blessed Sacrament is counter-cultural. But it is live-giving. In Communion we are reminded that we need each other. The common cup and common bread underscore that we are not so different from one another, after all. Barriers of race and class and education, differences of national origin, or sexual orientation or marital status or income are all dissolved in the common chalice.
They are diluted by the cleansing water of the Holy Spirit. And the blood of Christ, which is to say the blood of God our Creator, restores us into once again being fully human even as it fills us with what is fully divine.

Finally, the Body and Blood of Christ, this holy Sacrament, gives us a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. Mindful of the present, grateful for the reality of here-and-now, we are made aware in the Eucharist that we are also living toward a great feast that has no ending. Today’s reading from the Revelation to John is filled with images of this feast of praise and joy and love. We live into the salvation and power and glory of God. The voices of the faithful from all times and all places blend together in a holy noise that sounds like water rapids, like the clapping for joy of great waves, like a thunderstorm of laughter. This vision of heaven reminds us of our destination.

And so we celebrate this mystery, we step into it, we are drawn into it by God.

Near the end of his great work on the Eucharist, Dom Gregory Dix points out that, of all the things Jesus said and taught, most have been ignored. Or, if remembered, his followers (his disciples and us) have usually failed at doing them. But there was that one command on that one night, the night before his betrayal and arrest and crucifixion, in the meal he celebrated with his friends, when Jesus took, blessed, broke, and shared in eating and drinking, he commands his disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Keep on doing this, he commands. Dix wonders about this and ask, “Was ever another command so obeyed?”

He goes on to reflect, “For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it until extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth.”

Dix doesn’t suggest “why” we continue to fulfill this command, but I think in part, one reason is because it’s something we can do. As Dix says,

[People] . . . have found no better thing than this to do
for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold;
for armies in triumph
or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church;
for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat;
. . . .
or for a sick old woman afraid to die;
for a [student] sitting for an examination
. . . .
for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover;
in thankfulness because a father did not die of pneumonia;
for a village headman much tempted to return to his fetishes
because the yams had failed; [The Shape of the Liturgy, (London: Dacre Press, 1945) pp. 743, 744.]

… and on and on the list continues.

But we have our own lists, too, don’t we. When we can’t control the economy, when we can’t seem to help our fellow creatures in the Gulf, when we can’t heal the ones we love, when we can’t do so many things—we can, nonetheless turn our anger, our frustration, our hopes, our deepest desires into prayer. We can enact that prayer, embody it, and turn it into thanksgiving, into Eucharist, as Jesus did with his friends.

In the mystery of this meal, we are forgiven. We are brought together again into community, and we are pointed again toward God’s kingdom, God’s kingdom here and beyond.

And so, let us feast with Him who said, “They who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day ….They who eat this bread will live for ever.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Trinity Sunday

Hildegard of Bingen's "Holy Trinity"

A sermon for Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2010. The lectionary readings are Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31, Psalm 8, Romans 5:1-5, and John 16:12-15.

This Sunday is a problem for most preachers. It’s a problem because we get into trouble very quickly whenever we try to say something coherent about the Holy Trinity. It gets even trickier if we try to avoid heresy of some kind—usually by trying to say something profound in a simple or straightforward way. Maybe the Orthodox have it right (no pun intended). One might do better to contemplate and celebrate and praise God, rather than try too hard to figure God out. The Orthodox tend to focus more on the Divine Liturgy—the experience of God in the community at worship—than on doctrine. On Trinity Sunday, it would, in some ways, make much more sense for us to let the musical texts of the day—the anthems and hymns-- do the real preaching.

Our first hymn dedicates a verse to the Creator, to the Lord of Glory, and to the Holy Spirit who sanctifies. “In the song of thy salvation every tongue and race combine. Come Jehovah, great Jehovah, form our hearts and make them thine.” (Regent Square, 368) There’s the Tchaikovsky “Hymn to the Trinity. ” Before we leave we’ll sing out the familiar “Holy, holy, holy … God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity.” And really, what more could (or should) be said about the Holy Trinity than to echo the simple words of the communion anthem that pray, “Free us, save us, defend us, O blessed Trinity.”

The music communicates the heart of the Holy Trinity, that the doctrine of the Trinity is a way not only of understanding God, but a way of getting into God and God’s getting into us. But the scriptures for today also provide images that suggest some of the ways this happens.

In Proverbs we meet a character hinted at last week on the Day of Pentecost. Wisdom is personified as a woman who goes through the city, who journeys throughout the earth, looking for anyone who will hear. And we learn Wisdom is not just a holy woman, but Wisdom is very closely related to God—before the creation itself, she already was. She was God’s “daily delight.” One version describes her as the architect by God’s side, playing happily in the presence of God.

In Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we’re reminded that God has given us the Holy Spirit as a kind of second wind, a wind to lift us up when we’re down, to urge us forward when we’ve stumbled, and a wind to invigorate our faith whenever it’s grown tired or confused.

Jesus promises that the Spirit will continue to guide us even after Jesus has left this world. Jesus says that what is of God, is also of Jesus, and what is of Jesus, is also of the Spirit. The three are one and God’s intention is that we be absorbed into the life of God, the life of God in the Trinity.

One theologian (George Handry) has put it this way: in Christ we have God with us. In the Spirit we God in us. But while we have both of these, we also and always have God over us.

God the parent is over us, Mother, Father, the author of all life, the one who holds us, cares for us and sets out the plan in which we find our way.

God the Son, Jesus, is God with us, walking before us and beside us as an elder brother, a friend, a companion, a shepherd, a guide, and a support.

God the Spirit is God in us, giving us strength, probing our conscience, showing us where the world most needs God, which is to say, where the world most needs us to show God and be the love of God.

But even all of that can seem abstract.

Frederick Buechner is a writer, preacher, and theologian who wrote a little book some years ago he calls as a “theological ABC.” In it he picks a number of words often used in church, and then he gives them a definition that is usually part poetry/part practicality. In his explanation of the Trinity, he suggests that really, the “doctrine of the Trinity is an assertion that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, there is only one God.”

“Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery.

This idea of God being one and three at the same time can be confusing, unless, Buechner suggests, we look in the mirror.

We look in the mirror and there is You. But there is a part of you, as aspect of you, a hidden you that you either choose to reveal or not to reveal. There is this interior life known only to yourself and those you choose to communicate it to. This is a little like God the Father.

When we look in the mirror we see ourselves, but we see several selves, if we look. There that part that can be revealed or not revealed, but there is also the very visible face. To some extent it is our face that even reflects the inner life. If we’re upset, it usually shows on our face. If we’re rested or at peace, it shows. If we’re in love or wanting to show love, it is sometimes transparent. This is a little like God the Son. The face of God, showing a little of what God is like, but not absolutely every aspect.

Finally, we look in the mirror, we see our complicated selves and we notice that with who we are with what we have, there is a kind of invisible power we have that allows us to communicate our interior life to others. But this invisible power allows us to share our interior life in such a way that others do not merely know about it, but know it in the sense of its becoming part of who they are. You know what this is like, when you meet someone or you’re with someone and you realize that you’re changed because of that person. The person has somehow communicated a part of his or her very self which has not become a part of your very self. Buechner suggests that this is like the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit communicated the face and reality of God in such a way that we know God, we receive God, and we even begin to become a little (usually only a very little, in this life) like God.

And there we have it: as clear, or as distorted as looking into a mirror. I look into the mirror and there are three of me, and yet, what I’m looking at in the mirror is clearly and indivisibly the one and only me. [From Buechner, Wishing Thinking: A Theological ABC,” p. 93. Republished as Wishing Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC.]

May God the Holy Trinity bless us this day and forever; and may God help us to recognize the divine in one another and in ourselves.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Gift of a Second Wind

Andy Warhol's Last Supper, "Dove"

A sermon for the Day of Pentecost, May 23, 2010. The lectionary readings are Acts 2:1-21, Psalm 104:25-35, 37, Romans 8:14-17 and John 14:8-27 .


Some of you know that I’m a big fan of the religious art of Andy Warhol. If it sounds like I just mis-spoke, you may have a little of the surprise I had when I first learned that Warhol had actually DONE some religious art. His own religious experience—of attending Orthodox worship with his immigrant parents in Pittsburgh, or attending Mass very frequently at a Catholic church in New York City— Warhol’s own religious experience can be surprising, until you see it in some of his art.

The first religious art of Warhol I saw was in 1999 (the Soho branch of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City). There, they had 26 paintings of Warhol’s version of the Last Supper. Jesus and his disciples in camouflage colors, or in the bright colors of Warhol’s imagination. Sometimes contemporary advertising icons are interspersed with the Warhol’s take on the famous Last Supper by da Vinci. My favorite of these illustrates the Holy Spirit using the dove from the Dove soap icon. So, as Jesus sits in his customary spot, in the middle of the disciples at the Last Supper, there, hovering just over his head is the Dove from the soap ads. Just to underscore the point, Warhol includes that familiar, whooshy, word in its soapy script: Dove.

There are many ways to interpret Warhol’s juxtaposition of the contemporary images along with the sacred, but one suggests that he is pointing to the cheapening of religious images. He is point to how easy is it to confuse a deep, symbolic, religious idea with a shorthand symbol of that idea. But if we confuse the Holy Spirit with a Dove bar of soap, we have the Bible to blame, in part.

In the description of the baptism of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus in the form of a dove. In Matthew’s Gospel the Spirit descends “like a dove,” so it may not have really looked like one, but in a quick reading picked up by much of art history, we have inherited this idea that the Holy Spirit can be represented by a dove. Some suggest this reminded the early believers of the dove that Noah sent out to search for dry land, or that (like in the Prophet Hosea) the dove represents Israel. Andy Warhol’s use of the Dove bar reminds us that at baptism, when we are washed clean, the Holy Spirit is present, and so we might not be so far off, after all, if we gave bars of Dove’s soap at a child’s baptism. But don’t worry. We’re not going that far.

On this Day of Pentecost, we (again) try to open ourselves more fully to the gift of God’s Spirit, and we, like most of the Church, struggle with the images. The Spirit of God at the beginning of creation is like a wind, or like a breath. This Spirit hovers over the creation of all things. In the Wisdom Literature of the Bible, the Spirit is personified as a woman running through the streets, Lady Wisdom, seeking for any who will stop and listen to what she has to say. In the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit descends like tongues of fire and does quick work at helping all of the disciples who have gathered—disciples from all directions and languages and cultures and backgrounds and differences—understand each other. Of all the work of God’s Spirit, helping people who are very different from one another be able to understand each other while retaining their individuality and difference—that is surely the work of God, and work we should pray for and welcome.

The Holy Spirit sometimes comes in overpowering ways, like a wind that clears away all that is old and needs to go, making way for God’s new life among us. And sometimes the Spirit is like that still, small voice heard so long ago by the Prophet Elijah. Elijah has run out of options. He’s tired of doing all the talking, the authorities are after him, he feels alone and afraid. But when he finally slows down, when he finally gives up, there in a cave God’s Spirit comes like a whisper, like a breeze that only slightly stirs, and Elijah, himself, finds a second wind.

Though there are many images for the Spirit, this idea of God’s Holy Spirit being like a “second wind” is one that resonates for me.

A second wind comes sometimes in surprising ways. I remember when I was a teenager and I used to mow the grass and take care of several yards in our neighborhood. Sometimes, because of thunderstorms or my own doing other things, the grass would get really tall and I would have just a few hours to get a whole lot of work done. On several occasions, I remember being furious with the world, mad at everybody, hating the lawnmower, and wishing I were a rich kid and could be sitting by a swimming pool somewhere. As I was struggling with tall, wet grass, my brother would show up. He would have a story or two and would talk my ear off. He might infuriate me by suggesting a quicker way to get the work done (which I would resist, but then see was, in fact, a better way). Eventually he would leave, but I would finish up my work really quickly. His visit gave me a second wind. Whether he was motivated by his own need to have an audience for his stories, or whether my parents suggested he stop by, or whether it was the Spirit of God—it worked like the Holy Spirit for me.

A “second wind” can come in the form of a friend, or a colleague, a stranger, or even a family member. And (of course) sometimes WE are urged by God to be the second wind for someone else.

I think this idea of a “second wind” is what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel. Philip wants to see God and Jesus tries to explain to him that by being in the presence of Jesus, Philip has seen God. But Phillip worries about what will happen when the vision fades. What happens when it doesn’t feel like God is around? What happens with faith fails? And Jesus promises that the Advocate will come—the Holy Spirit of God advocating for us, advocating for the way of love, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit will teach you, remind you, be with you. God will bring you a second wind that will bring peace.

In just a few minutes we will offer a strange prayer. It is a prayer for the blessing of a machine, in particular, a prayer giving thanks and asking God’s blessing upon the church’s Automated External Defibrillator. It’ is appropriate that we do this on the Day of Pentecost (though it was tempting to wait until Sacred Heart Day – (get it?) We hope we will never need to use this machine here, but if we do, and wherever such machines are used, we give thanks for God’s gift of a second wind—whether that comes through a person or a machine.

However we picture or imagine the Holy Spirit, may we be open to the Spirit’s power in our lives. May we be alert to the second winds that give us strength, and may we be alert to God’s spirit when we are called to offer that support and strength for one another.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Praying

A sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Easter, May 16, 2010. The lectionary readings are Acts 16:16-34, Psalm 97, Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21, and John 17:20-26.


Some of you who walk or drive down Connecticut Avenue early in the morning know that on most days, after Morning Prayer in the church, I tend to walk up the street and get coffee. I like the walk. I get to admire the garden and see what’s changed since the previous day. I pass some of the same cars in the jammed traffic and say “good morning” to some of the same people many days. And at least once every couple of weeks, I pass a man gentleman who works at one of the nearby apartment buildings. Whenever he sees me, he yells the same thing—whether he’s a block away, or whether there are other people around, or whether there are cars lined up, waiting for the light to change. “Pastor,” he says, “pray for me. Pray for me, ok? Pray for me.” I wave hello and say, “of course, I do and I will pray for him. I’ll keep on praying for him.” And then before I walk away, he usually says a few more times, “pray for me, all right? Remember, pray for me.”

Thomas asks me to pray for him because I’m a priest. He knows nothing about me, really. But he knows that I work at All Souls, he expects that I pray and that my prayer includes other people. And there’s something about him, I bet, that assumes that my prayer might somehow be more effective than his own. I could argue with him theologically, spiritually, and pastorally about that. After all, the heartfelt urgency of his prayer IS prayer, I think, and the God I love and worship hears and honors and accepts Thomas’ prayer as soon as he asks me to pray for him.

God’s hears Thomas’s request for prayer, and I believe that God is working on an answer. But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? If I do pray for him, and when I pray for him, something else happens, doesn’t it? When I pray, I enter a new place, a spiritual place, and I take the person I’m praying for with me. We are there, in some way, in the presence of God and I believe that the effects of that presence linger into our lives.

The power of prayer runs throughout today’s scriptures. The first reading from the Acts of the Apostles shows us that our intentions in prayer don’t always account for very much. In other words, it sometimes doesn’t much matter if we “feel” like praying, or if we even have good feelings towards the person we may include in our prayers. Paul and Silas and some others were in Macedonia, one of the Roman colonies. And there, they met a slave-girl who was telling fortunes and making good money for the people who owned her. And she started following Paul and Silas and yelling things out behind them. Paul got so annoyed (the word used in the scriptures is that he was exasperated, he was “made miserable” by her) and so he snapped. But rather than yell at her. Rather than hurt her in some way, he prayed over her. Then things went from bad to worse. She lost her soothsaying powers and her masters lost their good money, so they had Paul and Silas arrested and beaten up. But then they prayed again, they sang hymns, they praised God and called on God, and God responded with an earthquake that shook the jail. The doors were opened, people were freed, and even the jailor and his family were converted to God.

Notice that the prayer of Paul begins with a prayer of annoyance (do something about her, God!), then moves to a prayer of emergency (save us), and finally a prayer that ends with rejoicing, rejoicing among strangers-turned-into friends.

Prayer finds its way into our second reading in a roundabout way. Though the Revelation to John (the same John of Patmos shown in our stained glass window) has been used in a multitude of ways—to encourage people, to scare people, to sell books… the Revelation is essentially a vision. It’s the other side of prayer. It’s what happens on God’s part in response to faithful prayer: God shares his thoughts and plans and visions and dreams for us and for all of humanity. And what a vision John’s prayer finds: Christ is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. He welcomes home his blessed ones—all those who have believed, who have been baptized, and who seek the love of God. “Come,” says the Spirit of God, “come and drink, and wash, and frolic in the Holy Water of God.” Christ’s coming will be soon. But before, during, and after; throughout the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, we have his grace. And that grace sustains us and enfolds us in his safekeeping.

In the Gospel Jesus prays for his disciples and he prays for us. He draws us closer to himself and to God through prayer, by prayer, because of prayer, in prayer. And we can do the same. We don’t have to be holy to pray. We don’t have to know anything in particular in order to pray. We don’t even have to have the right motivation (whatever that might be). It doesn’t matter what technique we use, or which words (if we use words)—if our intention is prayer, the God will hear that prayer.

And answers come. They sometimes come disguised. They usually come slowly. They often come in ways or forms or by people who surprise us because in asking God for something, our own ideas sometimes cloud the process. But God answers. God shows up. God comes through.

One of my favorite stories about prayer involves a new bishop who wanted to make a comprehensive visit of his diocese. When he heard that there was a small island with a tiny monastic community worshipping on it, he told his staff that he’d like to visit. A boat was gotten and the bishop set off to visit the little island. When he got there, three aging nuns came out to greet him and the bishop began, right away, to ask them about their prayer. As he quizzed the three, they were increasingly confused. He asked them if they prayed Morning and Evening Prayer. No, they did not, they said. Did they pray the great prayers of the Church? Well, they weren’t sure, they said. The bishop asked them if they at least prayed the Lord’s Prayer. No, they said, they didn’t think they knew that one. Finally, the bishop became frustrated and asked them, well, then, how do you pray? They look at each other, and then at the bishop, and one said, “We simply say to God, ‘We are here. You are here. Thank you.’”

The bishop was not pleased. Who were these nuns to think that they could ignore thousands of years of Christian Tradition? So the bishop spent the rest of the day teaching the nuns various prayers. He taught them the Magnificat, the Nunc dimittis, the Lord’s Prayer, and a few others. Content that the nuns had learned these essential prayers, the bishop and his staff got back in to their boat and made their way across the water.

As the boat reached the very deepest point of the water, the bishop was shocked to see a very strange sight. There, walking on the water, coming towards the boat, were the elderly nuns. “Bishop,” they said, “We’re so sorry, but we forgot one of the prayers you were trying to teach us.” Looking at these three old holy women walking on the water, the bishop finally saw their faith, their love for God and their love for one another. He told them, “You know what, why don’t you just go back to your old prayers? They seem to be working just fine.”

Let us continue our prayers—prayers with Christ, prayers with one another, that God’s love may be multiplied and enjoyed throughout the world.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

What love looks like

Mendoza Madonna, All Souls Church

A sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 2, 2010. The lectionary readings are Acts 11:1-18, Psalm 148, Revelation 21:1-6, and John 13:31-35.

What does love look like?

At yesterday’s wedding, I met a young woman who was getting ready for the ceremony—she had bags and curlers and clothes and stopped for a break in our library room, just next to the church, where the acolytes put on their vestments. In that room, just over the fireplace, there is a large painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary, holding the baby Jesus. The young woman wanted to ask me about the picture. “Why does Jesus look like so old? He almost looks like a little man,” she asked. I tried to remember something I had learned in art history years ago and bluffed my way forward talking about how I thought that in some pictures of the Madonna and Child, Jesus looks like an adult to remind us of his wisdom and of his timelessness as the Christ. It also reminds us that just as Mary holds and cares for Jesus no matter what, God also holds and protects and watches over us, no matter what age or condition or circumstance we find ourselves in. Love may look like a mother and child, or it may look like a loving parent holding a child of old age. “Cool,” she said, and went on looking for her curling iron.

That painting of the Blessed Virgin Mother and Jesus reminds me that love can look and feel different as we move from infancy through life. Sometimes there are experiences that jolt us into recognizing God’s love in places we might not have expected.

In our first scripture from the Acts of the Apostles, love turns out to look different from what Peter had expected. Peter gets into trouble because he’s come to understand that the love of God not only looks like Jesus coming to save the Jews, but it looks even bigger and broader than most people imagined: love encompasses all of God’s children.

The old thinking was that the messiah was to come only for Jews, but Peter begins to explain how God brought him to a new understanding. He tells them about his dream or vision. He saw what looked like a big sheet, coming down from heaven. And in the sheet were all sorts of animals-- four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, birds of the air. A voice said to Peter, “Get up, Peter, go and kill these things and eat them,” but Peter kept the dietary laws of a good Jew. There’s no way he could eat all those different things. It would be against his upbringing. It would be against his tradition. It would violate the sanctity of his religion. But the voice came again and told Peter, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” In other words, if God says it’s good, it’s good. The very next thing that happens is that this new insight of Peter is put to the test as he encounters Cornelius, who was a soldier. Cornelius has also been prepared for Peter by a vision, and after they talk, Cornelius is converted. Cornelius and his entire household receive the Holy Spirit and are baptized.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Earlier in this same chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus has joined his friends to celebrate the Passover meal. But before they eat together, Jesus does this radical display of hospitality and he washes their feet. The Gospel describes what Jesus is about to do by saying, “It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the last.” That last phrase can also be translated that Jesus “showed them the full extent of his love.” That “full extent” point to his dying on the cross, but it also includes the ways in which Jesus gave of himself, the ways in which he showed us what love looks like, during his life.
We had a week’s worth, if not a life’s worth of looking at what love looks like just about a month ago in the liturgies of Holy Week. We saw it on Maundy Thursday as we set up a chair and a bowl, and we washed feet. During the foot washing, the choir sang anthems and the antiphon repeated throughout comes from the thirteenth chapter of John: “I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.”

This past Holy Week, we continued our tradition of inviting twelve volunteers from the congregation. The priest washes the people’s feet. And while this has some symbolism, (of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet), it misses the main point of the Gospel. The point is that we should show this love to each other, not simply remember how Jesus did it. And so next year (here’s a warning), we will invite people to come forward sit at one of the chairs and wash the feet of the person who comes next.

Like me, some of you may have participated in this kind of foot washing in other churches. One comes forward and kneels before the other person. It might be a stranger, a visitor, a homeless person, or a bishop. But we look for Christ in that person and there is something of Christ that indeed seems present. For me, that’s the easy part, the washing of the other person’s feet.

Jesus asks us to love one another, and he does so in the context of the washing of feet and the Last Supper. Those are things we use as spiritual practices—the washing of the feet only once a year, but the celebration of Holy Communion, weekly or more often.

But these remind us of what it means to love like Jesus loves.
In some places, the first Sunday in May is used as a special day for honoring the love of God as reflected in the Blessed Virgin Mary. Special hymns are sung. Children sometimes place a crown of flowers on the head of the Blessed Virgin. May is the month of Mary, traditionally. One way that many people have come to know the love of Christ is by thinking about that simple, yet profound love, of a mother for a child—a special mother and a very special child. We honor Mary who helped teach Jesus the meaning of love, the cost of love, the danger of love. It was she who stood by him in love when he was crucified, and who helped spread his love to the other disciples and to all she encountered.

Mary’s love for Jesus began when she said Yes to God. Like her, we can say “yes” as we allow God to teach us what love looks like. We can follow Jesus even when we’re not sure of what lies ahead. And we can continue to lead others to him, pointing to where he has gone, saying, “watch him, do what he says, follow him, and love like him.”

What does love look like? It looks like Mary gazing on her son. It looks like Jesus washing feet. It looks like the sharing of the bread and wine, the Body and Blood of Christ. And it looks like all the countless ways that God leads us to serve one another. Love looks like us being faithful.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Different kinds of faith

A sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter, April 11, 2010. The lectionary readings are Acts 5:27-32, Psalm 118:14-29 , Revelation 1:4-8, and John 20:19-31.


One of the great joys of being at All Souls is that I get to see the garden almost every day of the week. I get to watch the changes as the seasons unfold.

Especially at this time of the year, some flowers seem to grow stronger and more vibrant. Some weaken and bend. Some become more fragrant and change in a really beautiful way. Some look tough, because they’re supported by others. Some look weak, but really they’re among the more resilient. Some die altogether, and they’re been removed. But others grow older and expand and become somehow much more mysteriously beautiful.

The flowers are a little bit like faith. Faith is not of one kind. Faith responds differently over time. The Gospels make that very clear, that there are different kinds of faith, different types of faith and different levels of faith.

We could pick up Saint Paul’s meditation on spiritual gifts when he says, “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;” and we could add, “And there are varieties of faith, but the same God behind them.”

Some people’s faith depends upon signs. Others believe in Jesus without a sign. Some need miracles. Others don’t. Some have faith that is weak, some strong. Some have shallow faith, some have deep faith. These different kinds of faith can be seen especially when we look at the various reactions to the resurrection. On this second Sunday of Easter, as we continue to reflect on the resurrection and its meaning, we can learn something from the different ways those early disciples came to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Mary Magdalene had faith that took her to the tomb and she saw the risen Lord through her tears.

The two disciples were walking to Emmaus. Their faith led them to extend hospitality to a stranger, and they saw the risen Lord in the breaking of bread.

Some of the disciples were fishing on the Sea of Galilee. Their faith led them back to work, and they saw the risen Lord in the midst of their work, and when they reached land, he made them breakfast.

Later the disciples seemed to lose faith, and fear took over. They were in a room with locked doors, but even through their fear, the saw the risen Lord.

In the Reading from the Acts of the Apostles we hear the fiery faith of Peter before the religious leaders of the day. His faith is so strong enough to break him out of prison and send him right back into the Temple to preach the news of Jesus resurrection.

In the Second reading, from Revelation, there’s the confident and clever faith of John the Divine, whose faith gave strength to the churches who were struggling, and whose faith still gives us hope in the one who is Alpha and Omega, the one who is and who was and who is to come.

And then there is Thomas.

Thomas was a twin. That’s what his name means really. Some have supposed that he may have been the twin brother of Matthew. Earlier in John’s Gospel, when they hear the news their friend Lazarus is dead, it’s Thomas who wants to go with Jesus. Sensing danger and not knowing what’s ahead, Thomas nonetheless has the faith to say, “Let us go with the Lord, so that we may die with him.”

When Jesus is giving his farewell discourse to the disciples, he talks about going down a road and to a place where the disciples will not be able to follow. But it is a place they know. Thomas speaks up and says, “But Lord we don’t know where you’re going.” But Jesus affirms that by knowing him, they know his destination since as Jesus says to them, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

Thomas sometimes seems more theologically alert than the other disciples, asking the penetrating question, urging Jesus to explain himself. The early church understood Thomas as the author of another Gospel. There is a collection of sayings called the Acts of Thomas, and there is an apocalypse of Thomas. Tradition has it that Thomas sailed to India and spread the Gospel there. After a long life of preaching and working with the poor, he was martyred in India, but Thomas’s body was taken to Edessa, where his relics were an important source of inspiration to the Syrian Church in the 4th Century. A father of Indian and Syrian Christianity, Thomas continues to inspire.

It was not enough for Thomas to hear of the resurrection from Mary Magdalene. It was not enough for him to hear of it from the two who were on the road to Emmaus.

What appears to others like doubt, indecision, even a lack of faith—for Thomas, it was simply HIS faith. It was his way of faith. A way that was willing to struggle, to look for truth deeply, to weight the evidence, and only then, move forward.

Jesus had already appeared to the other disciples. He had breathed on them the very Spirit of God and they were spirit-filled. The shared in the resurrection as it brought them new life and filled them with the very life of God, and began to move them out of the locked room into the world. But Thomas had not been with them. “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

And so, on the eighth day—the day of new creation, the day beyond the seven days of creation, the day of new possibilities and unimagined miracles—Jesus appears again to the disciples.

Peace be with you, Jesus says. And Jesus offers himself—the resurrected body that still bears the wounds, though they are transformed. The Gospel does not tell us whether Thomas actually touched the wounds. There is room for our imagination. In Rembrandt’s great painting of Thomas and Jesus, The Incredulity of St. Thomas, Jesus stands showing the wound in his side. The disciples are amazed and look on with wonder, and Thomas stands back in surprise, in shock. It is Caravaggio’s painting that is much more explicit—darker, more intimate, more shocking really, because in it, Thomas actually places his finger in the wound. As in the Gospel of John itself, some believe without signs, some need signs.

St. Thomas not only stands as the father of Indian and Syrian Christianity, he also stands as a patron for those whose faith does not come easily, with those whose faith includes a measure of doubt, a bit of suspicion, maybe even a little cynicism.

Some may have faith like Mary Magdalene, or the two on the road to Emmaus, or the other disciples, but some may struggle. May we all know that there is a place for us in the garden, but especially may those who doubt, remember Thomas. Thomas eventually was brought into the presence of the Risen Christ who took his hand, brought it to his side, and said, “Look, believe and live.”

Christ is risen for the tearful. Christ is risen for the bold. Christ is risen for those who fear. He is risen for those who doubt. He is risen for us all. Alleluia.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Easter Day

Noli me tangere, Fra Angelico, c. 1425-1430.

A sermon for Easter Day, April 4, 2010. The lectionary readings are Acts 10:34-43 , Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24, 1 Corinthians 15:19-26 , and John 20:1-18 .

Last Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons (the animated television program on Fox) had Homer visiting the Holy Land. Once there, he fell into what is called “Jerusalem Syndrome,” and in his case, began to believe that he was the Messiah. I first heard the Jerusalem Syndrome some years ago, just before I visited Israel. A colleague of mine sent me an article about the strange condition with a note on it saying, “I hope this doesn’t happen to you.” The syndrome is one in which a otherwise normally acting and thinking individual leaves his or her home, travels to Jerusalem, and once there, has a kind of break or shift, in which one actually believes that one is someone else—almost always a famous Biblical character. One believes that one is Mary Magadalene, and so roams the streets of modern day Jerusalem, in character. Or one believes that one is Saint Paul, or the Virgin Mary, or… which ever Biblical character your brain suddenly adopts. I’m happy to report that in 1997, I did not fall into Jerusalem Syndrome (though I did hear a voice in the Church of the Nativity … but that’s another story for another sermon).

As odd as Jerusalem Syndrome sounds, there’s one aspect that seems especially true to human nature. Notice that whenever someone undergoes this brief psychotic shift, whether the person is Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, the person always identifies with some famous person from biblical or religious history. It reminds me a little of Shirley MacLaine’s experience with past lives. Ms. McLaine, in past lives, has been “a Japanese geisha, a Moorish girl summoned to cure a fellow countryman of impotence, a suicide in Atlantis, a Toulouse-Lautrec model, an orphan raised by elephants and the seducer of Charlemagne who was subsequently reborn as Swedish prime minister Olof Palme.”

As she explained in a interview a few years ago,“We’re all playing parts,” she insists. “You're acting as a journalist, doing your best, and I'm trying to impress you. That’s what we do throughout our lives, and you’re empowered when you come to terms with it. What’s imagination, what’s real? I don’t know. If you're playing a role, you can rewrite it any way you want.” [Full interview with Andrew Duncan, can be found at Radio Times, Created 8/8/2000 Updated 25/8/2003 Page Address: http://members.fortunecity.com/templarser/duncan2.html ]

Though she may be right that it does feel like we’re simply “playing parts” from time to time—some better actors than others--- it seems to me that the very essence of Christian faith, the freedom we celebrate especially on this day, is the freedom NOT to play a part, but rather, the freedom to be ourselves. It is the peculiar, individual, sometimes not-too-interesting, sometimes more-fascinating-than-any-role-ever-written SELF that Christ touches, baptizes, sanctifies, and raises to new life. He raises us up on the final day, from death to life, but he also raises us up continually in this life, to life lived more abundantly.

Humanity is made holy on the cross. Rather than transform himself into some Greek or Roman god who might summon all the natural forces of the universe and wow the people with special effects, Jesus dies on the cross. But along with the body of Jesus, the power of sin dies on the cross. The power of evil over us, dies on the cross. The power of death, dies on the cross. As St. Paul puts it, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” And that enemy meets its end on the cross of Christ.

In life, Jesus touched people as themselves, calling each one to the “better self.” The tax collector was accepted and told to deal honestly with people. The Roman soldier had his place and was told to be honorable. The woman at the well continued her work, but with new integrity and purpose after encountering Jesus. The Syrophoenecian woman would still be seen by some as a foreigner, but she found new identity and strength in being touched by Jesus. Each of the disciples—the famous ones whose names we know, and the ones whose names we don’t know--- each disciples is accepted for who she or he is, and through a relationship with Jesus Christ (through rebirth in God) each one is touched, changed, and raised up.

Today’s first scripture reading is from the Acts of the Apostles. In it, Peter has learned from a vision God gave him. That vision (which you can read about earlier in Acts 10) opens Peter and the followers of Jesus to a fuller vision of God’s Kingdom, accepting accepting non-Jews into the way of Jesus, and putting into place a pattern of acceptance and openness Church (when it is being faithful to Christ) continues in our own context. As Eugene Peterson’s translation of the scriptures puts it in contemporary language, “It's God's own truth, nothing could be plainer: God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you're from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open. The Message he sent to the children of Israel—that through Jesus Christ everything is being put together again—well, he's doing it everywhere, among everyone.” [The Message, Acts 34-38]

As one Anglican Benedictine has put explains, the great freedom of religious life is the freedom not always to have to stand out and be different. The vow of stability helps one remember that one need not spend so much energy always trying to differentiate oneself, to strive to be better than, or more than, but to remember that God has created each person as “enough.”
Even when he was resurrected from the dead, Jesus is seen in common, human ways. In today’s Gospel he is first encountered not in glowing white, not as a superhero, not as something or someone from another space and time, but rather, he is mistaken for the gardener. In another appearance, he fits in with the fisherman. Along the road to Emmaus he appears as a companion, and as a friend. Near the very end of the Gospel of John, some of the disciples are fishing, and Jesus is appears on the beach. There, he seems almost like a short-order cook, asking everyone how they’d like their fish cooked. (That’s a Jesus I really love, and I bet you anything he knows his way around all the “diners, drive-ins and dives” of the world better than Food Network’s own Guy Fieri!)

This earthiness is echoed in our other readings for this Easter morning.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ reminds us that the “glory of God is a human fully alive” (Irenaeus of Lyons). Christ rises again in each of us, as our bodies move with the love of God in our world. A tenth century mystic, who began as a politician, eventually moved from being a senator to being a monk, and has been known as Symeon the New Theologian (to distinguish him from an earlier Symeon). Symeon’s poetry underscores the personal aspect of encountering God, the personal ways in which God activates and animates us. He writes

We awaken in Christ's body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in His Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? -- Then
open your heart to Him

and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ's body

where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real,

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

With apologies to Homer Simpson, we really have no need for the Jerusalem Syndrome to take us over and turn us into other people. We’re fine just who we are. It’s we-as-we-are that Christ comes to meet, to make holy, and raise to new life.

Alleluia, Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.

Easter Vigil

The Garden Tomb, Jerusalem

A sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter, April 3, 2010. The Gospel reading is Luke 24:1-12.


Between the draught of last spring and summer, and the blizzards of this winter, several of us thought we would lose one of the little dogwood trees just outside the tower door of the church. Last summer, we nursed them along, pulling hoses and pouring pitchers of water whenever Mother Nature seemed to be otherwise occupied. It seems like they’re going to make it.

Maybe you are like me in watching the trees especially closely this spring—watching them to see if they are really going to pull through. Is a particular misshapen and storm-damaged tree just taking a while to recover from winter shock, or is it dead? For a tree that lost much of itself through storms or pruning, is there some chance of late recovery? With a few straggly trees along the Woodley Place side of the church, the city helped make that decision. They cut down one dying tree and removed another one that seemed beyond repair. And then, a small miracle—the city planted three new trees, staked them up, fertilized them, mulched them, and gave them some municipal equivalent of a blessing.

It’s a tricky business trying to decide whether a tree is dead, and then needs to be removed or replaced, or room cleared for something new to grow. It can be a painful thing. It can change the way things look, the way things feel, even the way we feel, if the tree has become something we’re used to seeing and having near and enjoying. As difficult as it can be to let a tree die and move on, it’s (of course) even more difficult to acknowledge death in such a way that makes room for new life.

But that’s just what happens in this Easter Gospel. Some of the women, Mary Magdalene, another Mary, Joanna, and some of the others, come to the tomb where Jesus has been buried. They find the stone rolled away. They had imagined finding things differently. They had thought they would find the dead body of Jesus.

They had pictured it all differently, and so what they saw was like trying to recover from a storm. Are their eyes playing tricks on them? Is this death, or is it not? Or is this a strange kind of death, different from what they had supposed. The angels who stand there break the silence asking, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”

But we can understand why the women are there. They are at that odd place between naming death, and being aware of some new kind of life. Sometimes we call this shock. Sometimes it’s denial. Sometimes this awkward time is simply covered up with business or compulsion or fantasy. But the women on that Easter morning, and the other disciples too, for the new few days, (perhaps the next 50 days of Eastertide, perhaps the next two thousand years) will continue to try to understand what it means in God’s creation for some things to die so that others may find new life.

Sometimes ideas need to die. They need to fall away, or be revised, or be drastically changed. Sometimes projects—though they may be loved, even a little bit worshipped—projects need to be dropped. Sometimes attitudes need serious adjustment. They need to die. Sometimes particular jobs, or skill sets, or tasks need to wind down to their logical resting place. Sometimes (though less often than our society supposes) relationships come to an end. Or, perhaps relationships need to be re-negotiated, in order to gain new life and growth.

I have a friend named Al Johnson, who is the rector of St. Michael’s Church in Barrington, Illinois. Al has a somewhat corny, but wonderfully perceptive and faithful way of talking about the most significant relationship in his life. He explains that he’s been married to the same women three times. Three times, but with no divorce. They have an amazing relationship, and now, as Al looks at retiring, I bet he’s soon going to be saying that he’s been married FOUR times to the same women, because as he changes his patterns and habits and values, it’s only natural that some aspects of their (third) marriage will die, so that aspects of their fourth marriage can begin.

We’ve seen death in New Orleans, and we’ve seen death in Haiti. But we’re also seeing signs of new life. In parts of Washington, DC, there has been too much death, but in some places, there are also signs of new life.

What about YOUR life? If you were to be totally honest, if you were to see God face-to-face this holy night, what is it in your own life that really needs to be understood as staying in the cave, that place where history is frozen, where life is stagnant, that place of non-growth?

And at the same time, where might you hear the holy angels of God suggesting you look for new life?

Why do we look the living among the dead? Why indeed?

Faith in Jesus Christ is not so much about accepting historical precepts, or affirming traditional beliefs. Instead, Christian faith that is dynamic and alive and growing is about risking day-to-day contact with the living Christ, who might just lead us into anything!

The risen Christ changed the lives of his family, his friends, and his disciples, and he changes lives still.

May we be filled with the Resurrected Life of Christ and charged with the energy to choose light over darkness, faith over despair, and life over death.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Good Friday

The Crucifixion, workshop of Bonaventura Berlinghieri (ca. 1228-1274)

A brief homily for Good Friday, April 2, 2010. The lectionary readings are Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Psalm 22, Hebrews 10:16-25 , and John 18:1-19:42 .



Some of you are familiar with Evelyn Underhill who was an English writer on mysticism and the spiritual life, who died in 1941. More than being just a writer, she was also a practitioner, a person of deep prayer, and you feel the depth of her prayer through her writing.

In one place (The Light of Christ), she talks about how first appearances can be deceiving. She talks about how a friend might suggest you check out a particular church—it has beautiful stained glass windows, for instance. And so, you approach this church, but from the outside, all you can see are windows that look pretty much alike—they’re all sort of dull and dark, thick, and grubby. But then, as she describes it, “Then we open the door and go inside—leave the outer world, enter the inner world—and the universal light floods through the windows and bathes us in their colour and beauty and significance, shows us things of which we had never dreamed, a loveliness that lies beyond the fringe of speech.” She goes on to say that this is a little like our understanding of God. We cannot understand God from the outside, but understanding comes when we enter in.

All Souls is a perfect place to begin to understand some of the mysteries of Good Friday. We are that kind of church from the outside—our windows look sort of ugly and uninteresting, until we come in, and then there’s a whole other world going on.

This day is like that. From the outside, it appears to be named incorrectly. After all, what is “good” about an innocent man, a prophet, and healer and teacher, being killed for no reason other than the fear and anxiety of the religious rulers of his day? But from the inside, from the standpoint of faith, we begin to understand that Jesus has given himself on the cross. What may appear on the outside as failure, will be turned into triumph.

The Good Friday perspective is one that can help us through the dark times. Especially when we only see darkness, when we don’t feel God’s presence, when our soul cries out “Why have you forsaken me?” a Good Friday perspective can remind us that if we go through, if we go deeply into, if we allow God to go with us, then we will move from outside, in and things will look different.

With eyes to see clearly, with faith to perceive the true nature of things, a Ninth century writer was able to sing praise on this day. Theodore of Studios wrote:

How splendid the cross of Christ! It bring life, not death; light, not darkness; Paradise, not its loss. It is the wood on which the Lord, like a great warrior, was wounded in hands and feet and side, but healed thereby our wounds. A tree had destroyed us [in the Garden of Eden], a tree now brought us life.

May God give us the faith of Good Friday, faith to see beyond appearances, faith even to enter into death, so that we may be brought to life again.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Maundy Thursday

Dawn at the Tidal Basin, April 1, 2010

A sermon for Maundy Thursday. The lectionary readings are Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-17, 31b-35, and Psalm 116:1, 10-17.


I remember well a particular baptism. We had made our procession. The family of the child to be baptized were all gathered around the font. The children of the church watched closely. We raised a pitcher of water up high and began to let it flow into the font. Whooooooshhhh. And in the split second of silence after the pouring of the water, the brother of the child being baptized looked up and said loudly, “Wow.”

Wow, indeed. Wow, at the miracle and mystery of water. Wow, that ordinary water can be made holy.

Perhaps we have had our fill of water over the last few months—both the frozen kind of water and the raining kind. This morning I watched the sun come up at the Tidal Basin, and I noticed in many places evidence of where the water had overflowed. Water overflows in nature. But water also overflows in church.

At baptism, the water overflows. The baby, child, adult gets wet, but in some ways the moisture never leaves. We reaffirm our baptismal vows, we make the sign of the cross with Holy Water, we receive the sprinkling on certain occasions—all of which remind us that we never really dry off. The water stays on us and in us.

But also in tonight’s ritual, in the washing of feet, water overflows. And this overflowing of water represents love overflowing. The love of God overflows into the life of Christ. The love of Christ overflows into the lives of his followers and friends. And through the mystery of the Holy Spirit, that same love can flow through us into a dry and parched world.

Our tradition at All Souls on Maundy Thursday is that the priest washes the feet of twelve parishioners. This is meant to symbolize Jesus washing his disciples feet. But it should also be understood as a kind of enacted sermon illustration, one for you to imagine yourself in the story. And Christ lives in each one of us, and the call to show love to others in simple, tangible ways does not belong to priests, but to all of us. Though you may not be washing the feet of another, I hope you will be open to how God might be calling you to extend the love of Christ through the world.

Jesus calls it a new commandment and certainly it makes “love of neighbor” more explicit than the first commandments, but what is really new about the commandment to love one another is how we “incarnate” that commandment. What can be new has to do with the multitude of ways that Christ’s love can be shown in our world.

After the washing of feet, we continue with prayers and Holy Communion. After Communion, we process with the Blessed Sacrament to the Mary Chapel, where the Sacrament remains overnight. By allowing the Body of Christ to remain in the Mary Chapel overnight, we recall how, soon after washing his disciples’ feet and sharing the Passover Meal, Jesus and his disciples went into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray.

May the overflowing water of Christ’s love wash us, renew us, and keep us faithful. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.