Author: Mark Nabors

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 19, 2023

Something is wrong and must be put right. We can’t do it. Only God can do it, and God does it through the cross. Throughout Lent, we have been focusing on this question of how God accomplishes this on the cross. On the first Sunday in Lent, we said we are justified, made righteous through the righteousness of Christ. The cross opens up an avenue of grace for our justification, which we are granted at our baptisms into Christ’s death. Then we saw the cross as recapitulation: God in Christ writing a new story from a new tree, the cross, becoming the new Adam, so that we can share in the new humanity. Last week, we said Christ substituted himself for us, taking the just penalty for our sins so we can be free. Today we see the cross as ransom and redemption: Christ goes behind enemy lines, pays the price for our souls, and redeems us into a new relationship. 

Ransom and redemption are popular themes in our culture. How many movies have we seen that center on hostage negotiation? This is rooted in real life. We have read the stories in the paper, seen them on the news. But it’s not just prisoner swaps and hostage negotiations, it’s also buyouts. The news from the banking sector this week shows us that we need someone to step in and pay the price when things collapse, to secure futures when the bottom falls out. 

And yet for as popular as these themes are, we like our redemption, our ransom, to be free. We don’t like to pay the price. We don’t like the cost involved. We want the SWAT team to storm the building before the gold is transferred. We want to get out of the negotiation without having lost anything of value. We have a different outlook, of course, if we step into the scenes ourselves. If we’re the ones being held, if we’re the ones in danger, if we’re the negotiating chips. We have a different view, indeed, because we see what is at stake: our lives. 

Beyond our culture, though, we need to understand what ransom and redemption mean in the Bible. “I know my redeemer lives,” says Job. “And he shall stand on the last day upon the earth.” In the Old Testament, redeemer had a particular meaning. The redeemer was the relative who stepped in when things got out of hand, the kinsman you would call to pay the ransom, the one whose number you had memorized in case you ever found yourself in a jail cell with one phone call. Your redeemer was the one who had your back, who would guarantee your safe return, who would even put their body and their own safety on the line in order to save you. 

We say those words from Job in the burial service. It’s one of the passages of Scripture I sing as we bring the body into the church. While the Old Testament presents us with this idea of a redeemer and ransom-payer, the New Testament gives us our definitive and final redeemer and ransom-payer: Jesus Christ who redeems us from the clutches of the enemy, who pays the ransom by his blood from the cross, all before we even know what’s going on. 

Our gospel reading was John chapter 9. A man born blind is healed by Jesus on the Sabbath. But he’s blind; the only thing he knows is that the man called Jesus spread mud on his eyes and told him to wash. He is berated by the religious authorities. They go into an extended interrogation, even bringing in the man’s parents. It almost feels like one of those hostage situations. There are conspiracy theories afoot, claiming this isn’t really the blind man. Finally, when everything reaches a fever-pitch, they throw him out of the synagogue. Abandoned, Jesus visits him again. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asks. The man replies, “who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him.” Jesus says, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” The man sees Jesus, his healer, for the fullness of who he is, and he worships Jesus. Worship is only appropriate for God, so this man, blind for so long, is the only one who sees that Jesus is divine. 

Our ransom and redemption work like that. Paul says that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us, the ungodly. When we were blind and didn’t know what was happening, before we could even believe in the Son of Man, before we knew who he was, before any of our works, before everything, Christ came to ransom us, to redeem us, to heal our blindness and pull us into his light. Christ came to liberate us from the enemy, but such redemption comes at a cost: the life of the Son of God, the blood of the Son of Man. There is a debt, a cost, a price to be paid, and only God can pay it. So God does pay it, in love, without a second thought, by dying on the cross. 

That says a lot about God. It says a lot about God’s nature, which is love all the way through. It says a lot about what it means to sing, “Jesus loves me.” The cross is what love looks like. But this also says a lot about us. It says a lot about you and me and every person who ever walked the earth. It says: We are worth it to God. Our lives are worth redeeming to God. The ransom is not too much to be paid for God, even though it costs everything. Your life, your soul, and your relationship with God are worth the cross. And if you were the only person to ever live, your life alone would be worth it just the same. One person’s soul, in need of redemption, in need of ransom, would take God in Christ to death on the cross. 

Sometimes we can feel like that formerly blind man, cast out, rejected, alone, afraid. We can feel abandoned. But then Jesus comes by. The cross comes into view. I hope it reminds us of our worth in the eyes of the Almighty. My friend: God so loved the world, God so loves you right now, that God gave, without a second thought, his only Son, so that when we believe in him, we can have everlasting life. The ransom paid, the redemption won: our life with God is the reward. Our relationship with God is what it’s all for. So that leaves us, like the man in the gospel, with just one question: Do you believe in the Son of Man?   

A sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent
March 12, 2023

What would be enough? What would be enough to correct, to rectify, to make up for, to forgive all of my past, present, and future wrongs? What would be enough to make the world right again? What on earth could be enough? 

Repentance is not enough. That is probably an odd thing to hear from a pulpit, but I stand by my words. Don’t believe me? Just ask the mother whose child is killed in a car wreck due to buzzed driving. The teenage driver apologizes. Repentance is important, but it is not enough. Their repentance doesn’t bring back that child; it is not enough to reverse sin and death. 

Accountability is not enough. Another odd thing to say from the pulpit, but again, I stand by it. Don’t believe me? Just travel to South Carolina and ask the Murdaugh family. Alex Murdaugh, unrepentant, will have to spend his life behind bars, but accountability is not enough. Accountability is important, but it won’t bring back Maggie and Paul; it is not enough to reverse sin and death.  

In the suffering of this world, in the wake of sin and death, we come to these two conclusions: Repentance is not enough, and accountability is not enough. We need stronger medicine if we want these things to change, if we want the curse of sin and death to be broken. We need help from outside ourselves to save us from ourselves. 

Throughout Lent we are talking about the cross and how it accomplishes our atonement. We can talk about the atonement as at-one-ment: How God makes us one with him again, bringing us back into relationship after the rupture at the Garden of Eden, defeating the power of sin and death, reversing the curse. God does this on the cross. As I’ve said, something is wrong and must be made right. We cannot do it. Only God can do it by the cross. 

How the cross brings about our redemption is a great mystery. It does it in a lot of ways we will never get to the bottom of. No single theory or image is enough to explain it all; we need to consider the cross from many angles. Last week we talked about recapitulation. God in Christ writes a new story, becomes the new Adam, so we can share in a new humanity. Another way is through substitution. The substitution is Christ stepping into the ungodly place of all humanity, and in his godly perfection, taking the judgment for our sin upon himself and dying in our place on the cross. 

There is a straightforward and powerful logic to the substitution: 

1. Because of the Fall, all of humanity is enslaved to sin and death. That includes you and me. There’s nothing we can do to save ourselves from it. 

2. Because of the Fall and our enslavement to sin and death, there is suffering and injustice in the world. Repentance and accountability, while important, are not enough to break the power of sin and death. 

3. In order to save us, God must step in. God does this through Christ who lives and dies in perfect obedience to the Father. 

4. On the cross, Christ dies in our place, taking the just punishment for our sin on himself, thereby freeing us to live for God in newness of life. 

Here’s how St. Paul puts it in our reading from Romans: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly [that’s you and me].” Paul continues, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Christ died for us. Christ died for our sin. Christ died to free us from sin and death by taking our place, because we could never do it. It’s as simple as that. 

St. Anselm of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093-1109, said it this way: “Christ freed us from our sins, and from his own wrath, and from hell, and from the power of the devil, whom he came to vanquish for us, because we were unable to do it, and he purchased for us the kingdom of heaven; and by doing all these things, he manifested the greatness of his love toward us.” 

More recently, Karl Barth, a Protestant theologian of the 20th century, put it like this: “The very heart of the atonement is the overcoming of sin. It was to fulfill [the] judgment on sin that the Son of God as man took our place as sinners. We can say indeed that Christ fulfills this judgment by suffering the punishment which we have all brought on ourselves.”

To effectively accomplish this for us, Christ’s death could not be any death. Fittingly, it had to be a shameful death on the cross, the death reserved for enslaved persons in the Roman world. Theologian Fleming Rutledge explains, “Jesus’ situation under the harsh judgment of Rome was analogous to our situation under Sin. He was condemned; he was rendered helpless and powerless; he was stripped of his humanity; he was reduced to the status of a beast, declared unfit to live and deserving of a death proper to slaves.” Rutledge’s point is that is what sin has done to humanity since the Fall. It has rendered us unhuman, out of relationship, separated from God and one another, full of shame and guilt, enslaved to the power of sin and death. Christ’s death, and the manner of it, must deal with that reality.

In taking our place on the cross, substituting himself for us, God in Christ takes the just penalty for our sin. God in Christ enters into our desperate and shame-filled situation. God in Christ dies in our stead, so that we can live forever in him. God in Christ does it, because we could not do it. The righteous One dies for the ungodly, for you and me, so that we might become righteous through him. 

Our feeble attempts at repentance and accountability are, in the end, incomplete. We can’t solve what is wrong on our own. God knows that. But in love and mercy and compassion, God says, “I’ll do it for you.” God in Christ, the Son, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, walks the way once marked for us and for all of humanity, from judgment to Calvary. Because Christ has walked that way for us, you and I, the ungodly, can walk a new way, from forgiveness to life. 

I began by asking what would be enough to forgive all of my past, present, and future wrongs, to make things right again? All of our efforts at repair are never enough; our striving is never enough to conquer the power of sin and death. What on earth would be enough? God–only God. God in Christ has come to earth to be enough. What Christ has done on the cross is enough. Enough to make things right again; enough to break the power of sin and death. It’s more than enough, for you, for me, for our sin, and for the sin of the whole world. 

A sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent
March 5, 2023

Molly and I are quirky in a lot of ways, I suppose, but here’s one example: At one point, we had named all of our plants. There’s a little fir tree in a planter outside our front door; its name is Douglass. We had Iggy the Azalea. Rick and Judy Hampton once gifted us an aloe vera plant; its name is John Wayne. But the strangest one of all is our apple tree. It’s in our front yard, at one corner of our house. It’s old for an apple tree; you can tell just by looking at it. It’s twisted and its bark has been formed by all kinds of weather conditions. Its name: Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. 

The name comes from an 18th century poem, which says: 

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green;
The trees of nature fruitless be,
Compared with Christ the Apple Tree.

For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought;
I missed of all but now I see
‘Tis found in Christ the Appletree.

This is typically considered a Christmas carol, but it has resonances that fit well with Lent if we consider what we are saying: Christ is the true tree with true fruit that leads to true life. Last week, we read from Genesis, from that story of another tree that led to sin and death. But Christ reverses that curse from his own tree: the cross. And it is from that cross that we find the fruit we have always sought: life everlasting and a restored relationship with God. 

Today, we are considering the cross as recapitulation, which has everything to do with these two ancient trees. As I said last week, so I will say again: Something is wrong and must be made right. We cannot do it, but Christ can and does on our behalf. Christ saves us from the power and tyranny of sin and death by his cross.

Recapitulation, in short, refers to Christ taking our place. We read last week that sin and death came into the world through Adam, through the fruit of that first tree in the Garden of Eden. Recapitulation is all about how Christ rewrites that story. Instead of the story ending in a curse, because of Christ, it ends in the blessing of life. Christ becomes the new Adam, and thereby gives us a new humanity, through his cross. 

This is what Jesus means in the gospel today when he says, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Christ is lifted up in our wilderness of sin to rewrite our story and to bring healing and wholeness. Christ is lifted up on the cross to destroy the power of sin and death and to give us a new ending, a new narrative, a new hope. 

We join this new story through our belief in him. Belief, however, must be more than just an intellectual belief. It has to do with where we put our ultimate trust, and then living that way. Jesus is inviting Nicodemus to this kind of trust. It only happens when we are reborn to new life, reborn into this new story, reborn into this new hope, reborn out of the curse of sin and death and into the blessing of redemption and life eternal. That happens for us at baptism, when the righteousness of Christ, which is the righteousness of God, is given to us as grace, as pure gift. That gift allows us to live a different way because we now belong to a different story. Christ has become the new Adam for us so that we might share in his new story, liberated from sin and death. 

There’s an ancient question: Where was the Garden of Eden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. An old tradition says the cross stood where that tree was once planted, thereby replacing it. Christ and his cross, the Appletree, are found in the exact place where Adam came under the Power of Sin and Death because of the first tree. That’s what recapitulation is all about. John Donne, a 16th century English poet, beautifully takes up this theme: 

We think that Paradise and Calvarie, 
Christ’s Crosse and Adam’s tree, stood in one place.
Looke, Lord, and finde both Adams met in me; 
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace. 

Not only do the cross and the tree of Eden meet at Calvary, but they also meet in every human heart, groaning for rebirth. They meet in our own souls, yearning for redemption as children of God. They meet in our very bodies, in our outstretched hands at a Communion rail, as we wait to receive the fruit of that new tree, the fruit of the cross, the life-giving Body and Blood of our Lord. 

The old story we have been given, the story from Adam and the tree, the story of sin and death–this old story need not hold sway in our lives. For that old tree has been uprooted and overturned. It has been replaced by Christ and his cross, that new Appletree. Here’s the end of that poem I began with: 

With great delight I’ll make my stay,
There’s none shall fright my soul away;
Among the sons of men I see
There’s none like Christ the Appletree.

I’ll sit and eat this fruit divine,
It cheers my heart like spirit’al wine;
And now this fruit is sweet to me,
That grows on Christ the Appletree.

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the Appletree.

A sermon preached for the First Sunday in Lent
February 26, 2023

Something is wrong and must be put right. That will be like a mantra for my sermons in Lent. But before we get there, I want to take us to the popular comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” from my first Christmas, December 23, 1990. 

Calvin: I’m getting nervous about Christmas.
Hobbes: You’re worried you haven’t been good?
Calvin: That’s just the question. It’s all relative. What’s Santa’s definition? How good do you have to be to qualify as good? I haven’t killed anybody. That’s good, right? I haven’t committed any felonies. I didn’t start any wars… Wouldn’t you say that’s pretty good? Wouldn’t you say I should get lots of presents? 
Hobbes: But maybe good is more than the absence of bad. 
Calvin: See, that’s what worries me. 

Lent is a time for self-examination. A time to see where we’ve missed the mark, where we have fallen short. But here, at the start of our journey into self-examination, we might stop to worry with Calvin. We’re good, upstanding citizens, good Christians, even. But maybe good is more than just the absence of bad. Maybe there’s something deeper at play that we need to pay attention to. 

Sin is a theological question, meaning it is impossible to talk about sin without reference to God. All sin is against God. Our sin takes us out of relationship with God, with one another, and with creation. And it is an offense to God’s dikaiosyne, a Greek word that means both God’s justice and God’s righteousness. 

We are used to seeing our sins as our individual misdeeds. But sin is far more than that. There is also communal sin, the sin of nations and peoples, for which we are certainly on the hook. Just ask the Old Testament prophets about that. But these individual and communal misdeeds, as heinous or commonplace as they can be, are actually not the root of sin. These are consequences of a deeper cause. The root of sin is found in our first reading today, in the fall in the Garden of Eden. It is there, in the Garden, that we see humankind first enslaved to sin, to an active and malevolent force that works against the creatures of God, that takes us out of the way of grace from the moment we draw our first breath. Calvin and Hobbes are right: Good is about a lot more than just the absence of bad. 

Sin, in short, is a power, a dominion, that enslaves the human race and makes us all rebels against the goodness and love of God. We cannot workshop our way through sin. We cannot win against sin alone. We cannot will sin away. We cannot champion over sin with wellness plans and spiritual exercises. No, the only way to defeat the Power of Sin is to bring in a Savior from outside its control, from outside its domain: God himself. 

That’s what we see in the wilderness today. Jesus, the God-Man, is tempted by Satan. You and I are no match alone. If we think giving up chocolate or booze for Lent is hard, wait until we are tempted with power, with fortune, with fame, with applause, with acceptance, and like Adam and Eve, with divinity itself. But for Jesus, himself already fully divine, it is no contest. 

This is what Paul is talking about in Romans. Sin and its ever present companion Death came into the world through our disobedience to God. We became enslaved to its power, unable to escape its clutches. But through the obedience of the Son, grace has been given out freely. Through the righteousness and death of the God-Man Jesus Christ, we have been granted dikaiosyne, justification, righteousness. We have been clothed with the righteousness of Christ, which is the righteousness of God himself. 

This is accomplished on the cross of Christ, the place where the dikaiosyne, righteousness and justice, of God, meets our fallen, sinful state. The place where sacrifice for our sin is made. The place from which God himself defeats the Powers of Sin and Death. The place where we are granted life, now and forever, through our participation in his cross by Holy Baptism. 

Throughout Lent, my sermons will be focusing on the cross of Christ and how this is all accomplished. The cross and our redemption there is a great mystery. By mystery I do not mean some sort of riddle to figure out. I mean mystery in the sense of an endless ocean: It is something we will never get to the bottom of. If we think we already understand the cross fully, we are making ourselves God–and Lent is a good time to stop that nonsense. At the same time, if we think we don’t need to understand the cross, we are neglecting our great salvation–and Lent is a good time to stop that nonsense, too. 

So over the next few weeks, I invite us all to journey together to Golgotha, to the foot of the cross. I invite us to dive into this mystery to see the great depths of God’s love for us. We will see the cross as recapitulation, substitution, ransom, apocalyptic war, and blood sacrifice. And we will see that it is all for love of us, springing from God’s heart of perfect and endless love, to pull us by grace into a reconciled relationship with God.  

My friends, something is indeed wrong and must be put right. We are powerless to do it. But on a hill far away stands an old rugged cross, making us righteous through the blood of Christ. Come and see how. 

A sermon for Ash Wednesday
February 22, 2023

In parish halls and church basements across the country, week after week, something amazing happens. A group of people gathers to confess shortcomings and failures; they ask for support from one another; they love each other through their triumphs and their slip-ups; they recommit themselves to following a new way of life. I wish I could say this happened in the Sunday liturgy. Sometimes it does. But far too often we are too proud, too self-obsessed, or maybe too fearful to admit just what we are. We are too often more concerned with convincing others (and ourselves) that we have it all together instead of confessing that we’re sinners. No, I’m talking about groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Food Addicts Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, Pills Anonymous. Folks come to these groups because they are ready for a change and they need help. They come to confess their sins. They come, not because they have everything figured out, but precisely because they don’t. 

These folks come because they have stopped living in denial. Denial, AA would tell us, stands for “Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying.” They’re tired of lying to themselves. They know, all too well, that something is wrong and must be put right. So they come, faithfully, humbly, to confess and own up to who they are. 

They have a lot to teach the Church. We live in denial–we don’t even notice we’re lying about who we are. We think we’re mostly good, that we mostly have things together, that we mostly have it all figured out. We convince ourselves that if we have enough time, enough money, enough years, enough friends, enough promotions, enough vacation days, enough energy, enough good deeds, enough political connections, enough Bible knowledge, enough religious piety, enough whatever, we can save ourselves. That’s denial–we don’t even we’re lying to ourselves! Something is wrong and must be put right, and we’re not able to do it. But we’re living in denial, trying our hardest to block out the dread of sin and inevitable death by our own power. 

Today calls us out of that denial: 

“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” 

“I have been wicked from my birth, a sinner from my mother’s womb.” 

“Most holy and merciful Father: We confess to you and to one another, and to the whole communion of saints in heaven and on earth, that we have sinned.” 

Today, the liturgy helps us break the denial and realize, if we listen, that something is wrong and must be put right. The liturgy entreats us, like St. Paul to the Corinthians: Be reconciled to God! Be reconnected to God. Make God a friend and not a stranger. It is possible now, today, for Christ himself has taken on our sin so that we might take on his righteousness; Christ has taken on our death so that we might take on his life. Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation. Don’t wait. Be reconciled to God today. 

That’s what repentance is: It’s becoming reconciled, reconnected, to God after we have separated ourselves from him by sin. We stop living in denial and we acknowledge our wrong. We acknowledge we are sinners. And we ask for grace, for mercy, for forgiveness, for help walking a new way. We don’t deserve it, but God grants it out of love and mercy, for the sake of his Son our Savior, Jesus Christ. God grants forgiveness because God in Christ has sacrificed himself, freely and completely, to defeat sin and death for the whole world. For you and for me. 

My friends, something is wrong and must be put right. You and I can’t do it. Try as we might, we just can’t. But God can. And God has through the cross of Christ. So tonight, as you wipe that ashen cross off your forehead, remember that in the same way and because of that cross, God wipes our sins away from us when we come with contrite and humble hearts; and God removes that sin from us, as far as the east is from the west. 

A sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany
February 19, 2023

Today we come to the edge of Lent. We get in our final alleluias before we enter the penitential season. We soak up the last of Epiphany before entering the forty-year wilderness with the children of Israel to hear and live the calling to covenant with God. And before we journey to Jerusalem, to the cross, with Jesus and the disciples, Jesus takes us, along with Peter, James, and John, up a mountain. Here, at the edge of Lent, we catch a glimpse of the far side: Easter morning. 

Each of the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, tells the story of the Transfiguration, our gospel lesson. But each one tells it slightly differently, emphasizing certain things, preaching the same message but with a unique focus. We read today from Matthew. Matthew wants us to see the connection between Jesus and Moses. Just as Moses ascended Mount Sinai to commune with God and his face shone with God’s own brightness, so Jesus ascends a mountain today with his disciples. Like Moses, Jesus shines, radiating light. But unlike Moses, Jesus shines with the uncreated light of who he is, of his very nature, his own divinity. Matthew shows us that it is Jesus, the light of the world, who lit up Moses’s face long ago. 

But in every account of the Transfiguration–in Matthew, Mark, and Luke–we are presented with the same sequence of events leading up to the mountain. Our gospel today begins, “six days later.” We should ask, later? After what? In each account, the Transfiguration happens after Jesus has sat down with his disciples and asked them, who do you say that I am? In each account, Peter speaks up for the bunch, saying, you are the Messiah. In each account, Jesus then tells them about his coming suffering and death, and Peter will have none of it. Jesus rebukes him: Get behind me, Satan. It is in the context of that confession of Jesus as the Messiah, and the subsequent revelation that he will be crucified and that he will rise again, that Jesus takes his select disciples up a mountain to see him transfigured in the glory of heaven, revealing not something new, but something that had always been there. He shows them that he is not only 100% human, but also 100% God. 

Jesus knows what will happen in the coming days as he sets his face toward Jerusalem. He knows of the cross, the torture, the pain. He knows of his desertion, of his disciples fleeing in fear. He knows the trial yet to come. And so, in mercy, he takes them up the mountain to give them something to hold on to in their darkest days. He shows them his inner nature, that he is God. He takes them up there to reassure them. And as they hear the voice of God the Father thunder and fall on their faces, Jesus will reach out and touch them. He touches them just as he touched the sick and diseased, and he says, do not be afraid. 

These disciples don’t know they need all of this now. But in the coming days, as their teacher is arrested and led to a cross, as the sky turns black and Jesus breathes his last, as they cower in fear in the backroom of a safehouse, Peter, James, and John will remember this moment. They will remember that Jesus once shone with the uncreated light of divinity. They will remember that he is not just a great human, but that he is God. They will remember that touch from Jesus, that touch of compassion that pierced their souls, and they will hear his words again, do not be afraid. 

The Transfiguration, then, is not only an encounter for revealing Christ’s eternal divinity, but it is also an encounter of grace and mercy, an encounter of strength to help the disciples through their darkest hour, their trial yet to come. I wonder if Jesus has come to you in that way? Like Peter, James, and John, it’s only something we can see in hindsight. Maybe it wasn’t a mountain top experience of radiating heavenly light like the disciples’ experience. Maybe it was more ordinary. Maybe it was in the words of a friend. But in your darkest hour, in your time of trial, something from that encounter, that experience, echoed and reverberated in your soul, strengthening you to bear your cross. 

Like a man in Fayetteville who fell into a coma after an accident. He was in a coma for a week at least. When he woke up, he told his family what the coma had been like. It was dark, he said, but it wasn’t silent. There was music, simple music. The music of the Eucharistic prayers of the Church being chanted by the priest. As he heard those notes flowing up and down in praise of God, he said he knew he would be alright. He didn’t know what would happen–life or death. But he would be alright, because he was in Jesus. 

Maybe you’ve heard of that happening with folks who suffer from dementia? They are locked away in the prison of their own mind. But then the notes of “Amazing Grace” are played, and they pierce the prison walls. A light they once saw pierces the gloom of their cross, and they know they are going to be okay, if but for a moment. 

Or maybe it’s a small conversation, something that somebody said in passing, quite innocently. But in the time of trial, their words echo in your mind. It’s the light of the Transfiguration shining on your Good Friday, pointing you to the coming Easter morning.

Here, at the edge of Lent, Christ gives us a vision of who he is as a grace, as a solace for the trial to come, as food for the wilderness ahead. He is telling us that when we go through the unimaginable, remember–remember who he is. When we are faced with darkness, remember–remember his light shining. And when the cross stands in our lives, with its shame and curse and death, remember–remember that Christ Crucified has already won at Calvary, and Easter morning will dawn. Alleluia.    

A sermon preached for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
February 12, 2023

Whenever you read a gospel passage like the one we have today, you can feel the room go tense and the words just hang in the air until they crash to the floor in a big heap. So let’s name that tension and sense of discomfort. Jesus is talking about divorce, and it makes some of us, if not all of us, uncomfortable. Some of us have been divorced. We all know people—people we love and cherish—who have been divorced. Jesus is not flexible on the idea of divorce, but we know that divorces happen in our world. Relationships end for all kinds of reasons, many of them good and even holy reasons. I’m the child of divorce, and I thank God that my mother finally found the courage to leave an abusive relationship behind. 

There are good reasons for divorce and bad reasons for divorce. We all know that. But here’s something else I know: Regardless of whether the reason is good or bad, I’ve seen God, time and time again, take that painful event in someone’s life and redeem it for good. New life can flourish where we once thought it impossible. God meets us where we are. 

Let’s try to get past that initial reaction and get to the heart of what Jesus is saying. Jesus is giving his Sermon on the Mount, teaching his disciples how to live as Christ-followers in this messy and fallen world. Today’s passage is in that vein. Jesus takes the Law of Moses and he expands it. He’s challenging his followers not to approach their lives in God as a legal checklist, but as a relationship. And in the process, he’s knocking them back on their heels. 

To those who say they are living according to the Law, those good religious folk, those who have it all figured out, those who are so sure that they are right and those other people are wrong, those in church Sunday after Sunday, Jesus asks, are you sure? You may not have murdered, but have you ever had hatred in your heart for your brother or sister? That gets you into trouble, too. You may not have ever committed adultery. But have you ever looked with lust on someone else, treating them as an object for sexual gratification? It’s the same thing as adultery. What Jesus is saying is we need to get over ourselves, come off our soapbox, understand we’re all on the hook—we are all sinners in need of the grace of God. 

If you’re thinking this is an impossible standard and there’s no way you can live up to it, you would be right. In a few verses Jesus will tell us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. It’s impossible, and that is precisely the point! We are going to fall—because we’re all fallen humans. We are going to sin, but with God’s help we repent and return to the Lord. And by the way, when we see a brother or sister fall down, we don’t push them over again, proclaiming “look how bad they are!” No, we help them up, and we go to Jesus together, as sinners.  

In returning to God, time and time again, we find that God is always there waiting for us. In repenting, over and over again, we find that God is always ready to forgive. In asking for grace, day after day, we find that God is always generous. And even in our failures, even when we fail to meet the ideal, we find redemption. We know that’s not only true for us, but true for all people. That’s what we as the Church are about.

So if no one has said it to you before: Welcome to the club. Welcome to the club of the broken, the club of the beaten down, the club of people who are trying their best but don’t get it right. Welcome to a communion, not of angels, not even of saints, but of sinners. The truth is, we don’t have it all figured out. You and I, we’re no better than anyone else. We’re all just trying to live this life as best as we can, and guess what, we all fail at it, day after day. We all need the grace of God today just as much as we did when we started out. For as Martin Luther would remind us, while we may be justified by grace and marked as Christ’s own forever, we are all still sinners this side of glory. 

This church is not a social club where we exchange pleasantries and pretend everything is perfect. No, this church is made up of imperfect people still trying to figure things out. This church is a place where real healing happens to hurting people–a club for the broken. We’re a place where imperfect people come together to try to live as Jesus calls us to live, knowing we won’t live up to that impossible standard, but also knowing that there’s enough grace to catch us whenever we fall. We’re a group of people who fall down, but who know that Jesus will always be there to pick us up, and that we will always have a home with our God of endless love.  

So if you’re a sinner, welcome. I am, too. If you’ve been a Christian five minutes or fifty years, or even if you’re not so sure about this faith thing, welcome. If you’re tired and can’t go on, welcome. If you have some hatred in your heart you need to let go of, welcome. If you’ve been divorced 10 times or married 50 years or never been married, welcome. If you have hatred in your heart and you need to offer forgiveness, but you can’t yet–my friend, I’ve been there. Welcome. Whoever you are and wherever you are on your pilgrimage of faith, welcome. Welcome to the club of the broken. You’ll find healing here. 

A sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
February 5, 2023

Poor St. Paul. It’s not quite Lent, but our readings from Corinthians have been giving us a taste of what is to come. The church in Corinth was a troubled church. They had all kinds of divisions, all kinds of rough places, and I imagine all kinds of difficult personalities. They have divided into cliques, political parties almost–team Paul, team Peter, team Apollos, team Christ. They don’t share Holy Communion together, but only with their particular clique. They are polarized, refusing to come to fellowship if those people are going to be there. 

St. Paul is writing them to sort things out. In the New Testament we have first and second Corinthians, but scholars believe these two letters could be several letters in actuality, pasted together, as many as seven. I get the sense that this congregation kept St. Paul busy, calling after him when they devolved into pettiness and chaos, expecting him to swoop in and solve every disagreement. This is why I say: Poor St. Paul. 

Now, please hear what I am about to say with charity and closely. This situation should probably sound familiar. It is not that this particular church is like that. In fact, I have found you to be the very opposite: kind, loving, charitable, willing to come to Communion with people who are very different from you, not prone to cliques and divisions. No, this should sound familiar because it is the condition of the human soul, and thus representative of something we should acknowledge within us. Conflict and disagreement are normal, and they are not necessarily bad things. But we humans have a way of devolving into nastiness, of forming cliques and parties, of separating ourselves from the communion of others because we are better, we are right, we are superior. I’m guilty, and so are you. 

Today, Paul is continuing his admonition of this congregation in turmoil, this very human congregation, like us. And he is reminding them of the core of his message, what he proclaimed when he first arrived in Corinth. He writes, “When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” Christ and him crucified, that is the heart of Paul’s message; it is the heart of the Christian message; it is the foundation on which everything stands, the literal focal point of our congregation as we pray facing east, facing the cross behind the altar. St. Paul, in addressing the conflict in Corinth, suspects, rightly, that they have lost their focus on the Crucified One. 

The truth is, the cross is a very strange thing to focus on. We wear it around our necks today, bejewel it with precious materials, use it in marketing campaigns for all sorts of things. But the cross for the early church was a tool of execution, of brutal oppression and tyranny, a reminder of the power of Rome to take everything dear without remedy or recourse. We believe the oldest artistic depiction of the crucifixion comes from the second century. It’s graffiti, sprawled on a Roman prison wall. A man with a donkey head hangs nailed to a cross. A person dressed as a slave kneels next to it. The artist has crudely and mockingly written, “Alexamenos worships his god.” It’s not a compliment. It reveals the cross was seen by non-Christians of the time as a ‘nonsense pointing nowhere’, foolishness, worthy of mockery and humiliation. The early church knew that; Paul himself knew that, so he writes to the Corinthians last week, “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

The cross is the power of God because it is the fullest revelation of who God is. The cross is the definitive proof that God loves us, as well as of what kind of God we’re talking about. On the cross, we see God in the flesh, love in the flesh, peace in the flesh. On the cross, Christ–God, love, peace himself–freely gives himself in obedience to the Father for us, so that we might be restored to fullness of relationship with God, accomplishing what we could never do. And in doing so, he fully reveals the very nature and character of God–of a God who is love all the way through, whose power is seen in vulnerability, whose grace is freely given without regard for cost because that’s just who God is at his nature and God cannot deny himself. Because of God’s action on the cross, you and I are brought into that love, that peace, that life. 

Christ and Christ crucified, Paul says. It’s the foundation. It’s the core. It’s why we can sit here and hear God’s word with grace. It’s why we can be nourished by his Body and Blood. What the world sees now, what that Roman graffiti artist saw long ago, as ‘a nonsense pointing nowhere’–well, it’s actually the power and wisdom of God pointing to the deepest recesses of the human soul and rescuing us from the power of sin and death. It’s the truest revelation of the Divine Nature, of who our God is: love all the way through. 

But knowing Christ and Christ crucified is about more than that even. It is also about seeing ourselves, the particulars of our lives, in Christ’s sufferings; understanding our trials, and even our Corinthian-like community tufts and fractures, to be a participation in his suffering and death. Our despair, our anguish, our questioning, our frustration: it’s all there at the cross. Just as Christ’s passion is a full participation in our human condition, so, too, is our pain a participation in the very passion of Christ. 

This is what we mean when we say we walk the way of the cross. By the cross and our walking of that way, we are united, even in pain and death, to our Lord. Further, we know that the way of the cross is the real way of life, and we know that it always comes with the promise of resurrection. But the cross, the inescapable cross that stands even in the middle of our own lives, must come first, crucifying our stubborn way and our Corinthian temptation to fellowship on our own terms, so that the way of life, the way of God’s life and love, the true way to true communion and fellowship, might be born within us, within our hearts and within our family of faith. 

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
January 29, 2023

Do you ever overthink? Overthinking is a hallmark of anxiety, and sometimes I have anxiety. Maybe you do, too. We want to hold on to control, and when that control starts to slip, we get anxious and begin to overthink. This can impact any part of our lives, but it can certainly impact our spiritual life. We start comparing ourselves to others. We fret about doing everything just right. At the end of the day, we wonder if we really are enough, if we are worthy of God’s attention, God’s goodness, God’s love. 

If you’ve ever been there with me, perhaps we need to take ourselves into Matthew’s Gospel to the Sermon on the Mount. We need to sit down with that crowd full of all different kinds of people just trying to learn from Jesus. We need to hear Jesus tell us those beatitudes, tell us what a blessed life looks like, what it looks like to follow him, albeit imperfectly, in the world. 

In the end, it all comes down to something pretty simple. Not necessarily easy to do, but simple enough. Jesus says we live a blessed life when we are poor in spirit, when we mourn, when we are meek, when we are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, when we are merciful, when we are pure in heart, when we are peacemakers, and even when we are persecuted. We don’t have to overthink it–it’s right there, the blessed life, the goal of our living in Christ. 

Our Old Testament reading put it a little differently, but to the same effect. The prophet Micah is talking to the Jerusalem elite, the good religious people. He tells them that the Lord requires us to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. The entire law, he is saying, is summed up in those three simple things. Justice, kindness, walking humbly. We don’t have to overthink it. Simple, but not easy. 

Jesus himself will develop a similar shorthand in another place when he, like Micah, gives us a summary of the law. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. We don’t have to overthink it. Simple, but not easy. 

But if you’re like me, the anxiety is still there. What if I don’t get it right, even if it is simple? What if I mess it up? What if I am not enough? St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians come in like medicine. St. Paul writes, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” That’s me! Not always wise; not always strong; born to an ancestry of dirt farmers from Oklahoma and Texas, far from noble. I mess up. Like the Corinthians, I can be rough around the edges, unwise, weak, ordinary. 

St. Paul is reminding us, however, that we need not be anxious about doing this by our own strength. It is okay that we are unwise, weak, and ordinary, for Christ, by his cross and resurrection, has done the work for us. Christ, the power and wisdom of God, has come to do what we could not do. He came to become our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption. He came to be our strength, to be our helper, so that we can follow this simple but difficult way of love, with his grace and power helping us along.

Christianity is about how we live in the world. It’s about our actions. It’s about our lives matching up with what we say we believe. It is about justice, kindness, and love; it is about poverty of spirit, pureness of heart, meekness. But the reality is we fail at this enterprise. We’re humans; we’re sinners; we’re not going to be able to do it by ourselves. We can’t make ourselves poor in spirit, meek, merciful, pure in heart. We can’t always love how we are called to love. That’s just the hard truth. If we think otherwise, we are deceiving ourselves and setting ourselves up for a whole lot of anxiety. 

But the good news is that Christianity is not some moral code that we have to accomplish by our own power. No, this Christian journey is about God’s gift, God’s grace, God’s very Self being given to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God’s power is poured into our hearts so that we can live a certain way, so that we can become who God desires us to be. It’s all grace–God helps us love, helps us do justice, helps us love kindness, helps us walk humbly, helps us live the Beatitudes way. 

So my friends, don’t overthink it. As our Presiding Bishop says, “if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” It’s all rather simple, even if it isn’t always easy to do. Even so, don’t be anxious about it. Because Christ himself is there, giving you grace and power, working in you and through you, shaping you and molding you, sanctifying your very soul. Through grace and grace alone, we can make it, we can walk humbly, we can live blessedly, we can love like Christ.  

A sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 22, 2023

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness–on them light has shined.” We hear those words from the prophet Isaiah spoken to a people in deep darkness–in exile, suffering, hopelessness, despair. Isaiah is telling them it won’t always be this way. Light is coming. 

Isaiah is speaking to his own people at a time of war and chaos and exile, but he is also speaking down through the ages by the Holy Spirit. For one is coming who will banish the deepest darkness, the darkness of sin and death. Christ comes, and Matthew tells us he is the ultimate fulfillment of Isaiah’s words. Jesus brings light and life with his message: repent, turn to God, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near to you; it’s within your very grasp. 

Christ banishes the darkness by his life and teaching. He comes to dwell in the darkness with us, to get into our mess. And what a mess we make. But in the middle of that mess, in the middle of that darkness, his life shines. And he teaches us to follow in his way of light and life. He comes to bring peace and joy. In our darkness, he comes to remind us that we are made in the image of God, made for goodness. He comes to show us what the love of God really is–the love in which we are all called to live by virtue of our baptisms into his life. 

Ultimately, Christ will banish the darkness by his cross and resurrection. In the cross he descends to the depths of darkness, to the depths of hell itself. He descends to destroy it, to pull us from our graves of sin and despair. And by his glorious resurrection, he destroys the power of sin and death over us. Sin and death continue still, but they have lost their power, for we have been brought into newness of life eternal by our baptisms into Christ’s death and resurrection. 

And now, with Christ within us, we are called to walk in this world, just as he did, and let that light shine. In a world of chaos, we live in peace. In a world of despair, we live in joy. In a world that says this is all there is, we point to a heavenly city, a deeper reality that is already alive within us. In a world of fear, we live in love. The light shines through us into the darkness, and the darkness will not, cannot, overcome it. 

But the truth is, sometimes we can walk around and forget, quite casually, that we have a light within us. We walk around as if we are in darkness still. We can forget that our hearts are already on fire with the glory of God. Like a camper at the choir camp I help at. Anytime we were off to choir or handbells, he would limp. “I can’t walk,” he would say. But then pool time would come, or lunch time would come, or break time would come, and he would forget to limp. He would take off running. 

We can be like that, making ourselves limp along because we have forgotten the love and light of God that has been poured already into our hearts. We have forgotten that the Holy Spirit dwells within us. We have forgotten that we belong to God forever. Darkness swirls about us, and we have forgotten that we need not be overcome by it because Christ’s light shines within us. 

Today is the annual meeting, and we will elect members of the vestry and see the budget for the year to come. And it all seems very banal, very boring. But I wonder if we could also see today as an opportunity to take some spiritual inventory. Perhaps to recommit to a new way of living. 

In 2023, in the darkness of this world, I hope we shine. I hope this church shines as a light in the community. I hope we shine with a faith in the God of goodness who made us for goodness, who is with us even when the darkness seems overwhelming. I hope we shine with the peace of God that passes all understanding and holds us fast to God’s promises. I hope we shine with the love of God that knows no bounds–a love that welcomes all, and I mean all, through our front doors. That flame from God kindled in our hearts, I pray that in 2023 this church family will live those words from St. Catherine of Siena: “Be who God meant you to be, and set the world on fire.”