Author: Mark Nabors

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.” 

A sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany
January 15, 2023

Today Jesus shows up, and John the Baptist points to him, saying, “Here is the Lamb of God.” Jesus shows up by the riverside, and John the Baptist sees him for who he is. I wonder how often Jesus has shown up on the riverside of our lives, and we have missed him? 

Thomas knew something about that. Thomas was a medical resident, constantly busy, helping people in their sickness. He was a young man, mid-20s. If you asked him, he would tell you his life was fulfilled. He was living his dream. Only a couple more years before he was out on his own. If you looked at his social media account, you would see that despite his busy schedule, he made time for fun, for friends and family. Picture after picture, you would see Thomas smiling back at you, happy. 

But if you dug deeper, you would find something else. If you were able to see Thomas after his shift, alone in his apartment, when the cameras weren’t trained on his grin, you would see what we have all felt: sadness, loneliness. He didn’t get it. He was helping people professionally; he had a good social life; he was healthy. Why did he feel like something was missing? 

Jesus showed up on his riverside. The truth is, Jesus was always there. Always. But Thomas hadn’t seen him before. His John the Baptist was an event shared on Facebook. It pointed him to a quiet, Sunday night service at the Episcopal Church around the corner. It was a small service at a small church, only a handful of people gathered for quiet prayer. Thomas realized that the deeper desire within him was taking him to the Holy One. 

Here is the Lamb of God, Thomas. Here is what your soul has been longing for. Quiet. Prayer. Word. Sacrament. Come and see what Jesus has in store for you. You can turn off here. You don’t have to care for others; you can care for your own soul. You don’t have to always have that smile, that happy-go-lucky attitude we expect from you on social media; you can be real here. Here is the Lamb of God.  

In the same church there was a woman in her 70s, Anne. She had retired a few years earlier, but she had given up on life in a lot of ways decades earlier. Family strife had soured her on life. And while she was faithful in church, Sunday after Sunday, and while she said her prayers, night after night, she was also bitter. She held others at a distance, God most of all. But then Jesus showed up in a new way. He had always been there. Always. But sometimes grace has to get at us in a way we don’t expect. 

On the riverside of Anne’s life, Christ walked by, and John the Baptist pointed him out: Here is the Lamb of God, Anne. For her, John the Baptist was a relative newcomer to the church, a young mom. She was really involved in outreach ministry, spending time every Thursday evening feeding the hungry. She didn’t know Anne, but they sat on the same pew. So one day, she asked for help. They needed someone else to pitch in, just for a couple of weeks, while some volunteers were on vacation. Could Anne help? 

Anne wanted to say no, she really did. But she had a problem saying no, like many of us. As bitter as she was, she hated disappointing people. So she said sure, but only for two weeks, insisting she really was too busy for that sort of commitment long-term. 

That week, Anne showed up. As she was spooning green beans on to the plates of people she had never really seen, even though they had always been there, she had an epiphany. Her religious life had always been in the church, and only there. But here, at this feeding program, she felt close to God in a different way. Person after person passed by for green beans, and in the face of every person, she saw something of the face of Christ, smiling back at her. Here is the Lamb of God, Anne. Follow him. Come and see what he has in store for you. 

Sometimes we need folks to show up in our lives like John the Baptist, folks who can point us to Jesus, to tell us where he is active in our lives, where he is calling us to go. Left up to us, we can miss it. But thank God that John the Baptist shows up. 

Can I be John the Baptist for you all, for a moment? Will you allow me to point you to where Christ has been active here? Because he is active here. 

Like Thomas discovered, I have seen Christ active in this building. I see him when the children run forward to the altar and then off to Sunday school. They know this is their church just as much as it’s yours, and they love Jesus. I saw Jesus last Advent during our mid-week service and Bible study. I heard so many of you talk about him, about where he had shown up in your life and how you had grown closer to him at St. Alban’s. I have seen Christ show up in the form of a newcomer, a stranger. And you welcome them. You love them. You want them here, even if they aren’t like you or think like you or vote like you–you want them here! And as long as I live, I won’t forget last Good Friday. We had received Communion from the Reserved Sacrament and we knelt in silent prayer. Then, without the organ, we sang that spiritual, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord.” The power of your singing almost knocked me over. The Crucified and Risen One showed up that day, walking down this center aisle, calling us all to deeper and truer life. 

And like Anne discovered, I have seen Christ active as we walk out those red doors to do the work God is calling us to do. I saw Christ as so many of you brought gifts and groceries for our Christmas families. You may not ever know these people personally, but you have seen them. Like the single mother who was so worried she wouldn’t get here in time. You see, she had worked a 14-hour shift at Walmart that day. Tears streamed down her face as we loaded groceries and gifts for her four children in the trunk of her car. I have seen Christ at the Food Bank, as so many of you show up to volunteer. Christ is there, in car after car. For when we serve those in need, we serve Christ himself. And you see him. I have seen Christ in how you act in this community, as you reach out to the hurting, to those who need a friend, to those going through a trial. 

My friends, here is the Lamb of God. He is active in this place. He is active in your life. I know, because I have seen him there. And I just wonder where he’s leading us next? 

A sermon for Epiphany 1: the Baptism of our Lord
January 8, 2023

I’ve only been snorkeling a couple of times. The first time, I went snorkeling in a muddy creek in Missouri. It wasn’t my idea. A friend of mine went all the time and loved it, so I went with him and his dad. We pulled the car off the state highway by a bridge and hopped into the very muddy water. You couldn’t see a thing. The water was brown and dirty, and full of who knows what. Before we got in, my friend’s dad warned us to watch out for cottonmouths. He then told us three or four stories of coming snout to snout with cottonmouths that were at least seven feet long. I learned later that he liked to exaggerate. But it didn’t matter: from the moment I stepped foot in the water, I was concerned about what I would meet. 

The Jordan River had a reputation for being kind of like that. You wouldn’t want to snorkel in it—it was way too dirty. And who knows what you would find in there. In antiquity the river would have been used for everything, from cooking, to laundry, to waste disposal, and yes, to baptism. 

But that’s where we find Jesus today, in the middle of those muddy, dirty waters. Like the crowds, Jesus went out to be baptized by John. But John protests, knowing who Jesus is. “I shouldn’t be baptizing you,” he says, “You should baptize me.” But Jesus says, no, it’s got to be this way. So Jesus is baptized in the muddy, dirty, filthy waters of the Jordan. 

The fact that Jesus was baptized by John was a point of embarrassment for the early Church. They puzzled over it quite a bit. Jesus’ baptism is recorded in all four gospels. It’s one of the few things that is. That means you can’t get away from it. You can’t squint really hard and try to make it disappear. Jesus was really baptized by John in the River Jordan. The early Church was embarrassed because they taught and believed, as we do, that Jesus was the Son of God. Why would the Son of God need to be baptized at all? There is no sin to wash away. Why does his ministry need to start at his baptism? 

The answer is this: Jesus came to earth to get into the muddy water with us. Jesus came to live and die as we do. Jesus came to share in everything. So Jesus goes and dips in the muddy Jordan. 

Sometimes our lives can feel like that muddy river. We can feel bogged down, bogged down with waste. Our lives can be a little like my snorkeling experience. We can’t see anything in front of us, and we’re terrified somethings going to pop out and get us. Life can be scary and dark and messy and filthy and muddy, just like that river. But Jesus gets in it with us. When God became man, he did not shield himself from the worst parts of our lives. No, he became fully human. 100% human. That means he shares in all of our humanity, even the parts that are difficult and gut-wrenching and muddy. If he didn’t share in all of it, he can’t redeem all of it.

Our lives are like that because of sin. Because of our own sin, because of the sins of others, and because we live in a sinful world. Sin separates us from God and our neighbor, it muddies up the waters. It’s been that way since the beginning for us.  

Jesus Christ gets in the muddy waters with us. Jesus wades out into the middle of it all, and tells us, I’m going to save you from all of this. Jesus wades out into the muddy waters, he looks around, and he says, I see what you’re going through. I see that you’re bogged down. But I’m here to change all of that. Jesus gets in the muddy waters to drag us out, to take us to clean, fresh, clear water. He gets into the muddy water to invite us to a life in those new waters, those restored waters, the waters of baptism, the clear waters of heaven. 

The next time I went snorkeling, it wasn’t in a muddy Missouri creek. It was in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Cancun. I jumped off a catamaran sailboat and into those waters. They were choppy, but they were crystal clear, all the way to the bottom. Clean. Beautiful. And let me tell you this: I’m never going snorkeling in muddy Missouri creeks again if I can help it. Because I’ve seen the light. I’ve seen what snorkeling is actually supposed to be about. 

Jesus is inviting us to real life. Jesus is inviting us to turn from our muddy waters, from our way of doing things, from death and sin, from the ways in which we have distorted real life, and to turn toward him, toward new life, toward real life in him, toward living waters, crystal clear with salvation and grace. As they say in O Brother Where Art Thou, so I’ll say to us: “Come on in; the water is fine.” 

A sermon preached for the Feast of the Holy Name
January 1, 2023

“On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…” How about a name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. That’s not as easy to sing as maids-a-milkin’, but it’s what we are given on this eighth day of Christmas, the feast of the Holy Name. 

Those words about knees bending and tongues confessing come to us from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. It’s called the Philippians hymn. Scholars think that this was a hymn that was sung at the time–a hymn very much like “All hail the power of Jesus’ name” or “Crown him with many crowns.” Paul puts it in his letter to remind his people, in the form of this hymn they probably would’ve known, of the startling truth of the Incarnation. That Jesus Christ, Lord of all, is God in the flesh, who has come to save us and redeem us from sin, death, and the grave.

But the hymn, like all good hymns, should do more than just articulate a theological truth. It should also challenge. And this one certainly does. For while the hymn describes the nature of Christ and his life, and while it points us to the consummation of his reign in the new heaven and the new earth, it also asks you and me a few simple questions: Are our knees bent now? Are our tongues confessing now? Do our lives match up with our words? And, are we willing to live like Jesus did? 

Perhaps the last question is the biggest one. For if we are not willing to live out this Philippians hymn for ourselves, to seek to live like Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God–if we are not willing to do that, then our knees certainly are not bent and our tongues are not confessing what we actually believe. 

The Philippians hymn says Christ emptied himself, taking the form of a slave for all. He gave himself up to obedience to God, completely. That’s our calling, too. To empty ourselves of anything that stands in the way of our relationship with God. And so many things seek to stand in our way, don’t they? From bitterness, to hatred, to scorn, to politics, to money, to our way of doing things–they all seek to make us bend the knee and confess. But that action is reserved for one alone: For God. 

Since Paul gave us the words to a hymn from the 1st century, let me close by giving us the words to another from the 19th century: 

At the Name of Jesus every knee shall bow, 
Every tongue confess him King of glory now; 
‘Tis the Father’s pleasure we should call him Lord, 
Who from the beginning was the mighty Word. 

Name him, Christians, name him, with love strong as death,
Name with awe and wonder and with bated breath;
He is God the Savior, he is the Christ the Lord, 
Ever to be worshiped, trusted, and adored. 

In your hearts enthrone him; there let him subdue
All that is not holy, all that is not true;
Crown him as your captain in temptation’s hour;
Let his will enfold you in its light and power. 

A sermon for Christmas Day
December 25, 2022

“But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” 

Something in me prefers today’s service to last night’s. Now, I love a raucous party for the birth of Christ. I love the organ–the louder, the better. I love noisy children, excited that the day is finally here. Some churches have live nativities, complete with donkeys and camels. I would even love that, too. But the quiet of Christmas morning, the simplicity of a quite normal liturgy to mark such a big feast: there is a beauty in that that I love. It gives us time, like Mary, to treasure words and ponder their meaning. 

The Christian life is impossible without such times in quiet pondering. Or, at least, it is quite impossible for me without that. I need time to look back, to wonder, to marvel, to see the threads of God’s grace weaving the disparate elements of my life together into a new pattern. I think that is what is going on with Mary. She has heard the message of the angel. She has heard the message of her cousin Elizabeth. She hears the message of the shepherds today. In time to come, she will hear the message of the magi from the east. She will hear her own son’s words as he teaches in the temple. And she will ponder. She will treasure. She will wonder. She will marvel. She will begin to see the threads of God’s grace weaving an Incarnation and Redemption together. And as she stands at the foot of the cross one day, and hears the words spoken by Jesus, “woman behold your son, son behold your mother,” she will know the new pattern God is making. 

Year after year, we hear the same words from Luke 2. We know the story. We know the arch from promise to birth to death to resurrection and back to promise again. But we have to take time to ponder, to treasure, to wonder, to marvel, to see how that grace of redemption is working itself out in our lives, to see the new pattern God is making from our filthy rags. It’s only something we can see in hindsight. We usually don’t see it all fully until we find ourselves at the foot of a cross, in an unimaginable moment. But from the scene of death, in the valley of despair, we will ponder anew the grace and love of God so active within us and we will see the new pattern God is making, and we will look up. We will look up in expectation and anticipation, because we will know that God is at work even through this, making us into a new creation, and resurrection is coming. 

A sermon for Christmas Eve
December 24, 2022

What is Christmas about? We start with that simple question. And I want us to answer it honestly, without pious pretension. And yes, we all know that Jesus is the reason for the season. But let’s trash the rhyming slogans for a moment, and really consider it. 

The truth is Christmas is about a lot of things. For many of you, Christmas is not complete without this Christmas service. It’s not complete without singing Silent Night by candlelight. It’s not complete without sharing in the Body and Blood of our Lord. I didn’t grow up with those things. Now, they are certainly important to me. (One would hope that would be the case!) But growing up, Christmas for me was about different things. 

Growing up, Christmas for me was about decorating sugar cookies. Every year at Christmas at my grandmother’s, we would decorate sugar cookies. They never looked good. They tasted even worse. But we did it anyway. We would eat little pizzas baked on rye bread the size of crackers, bundles of grease and fat and goodness strategically designed to make you forget how many you had stuffed into your mouth already. We would drink Christmas cheer. It’s not how I might define Christmas cheer today, but in my tea-totaling household it was a frozen strawberry slush. Year after year, my Uncle Damien would try–try so hard–to start a new tradition of reading “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and the nativity story from the Gospel of Luke. It never held. Ironically, that couldn’t compete with all the many other traditions. 

What about you? When you think of Christmas, what do you think of? What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What meaning does Christmas carry for you? 

Such memories harbor, for me, a tinge of sadness now–and honestly, sometimes a torrent of sadness. While the holidays still bring me much joy and gladness, the childhood magic has worn off, and those memories of joy are now accompanied by feelings of loss, of hurt, of grief. Some of those people aren’t there anymore, grandparents, friends, my Uncle Sam who always made me laugh. That comes with life; no getting around it.

There’s a word for this: charmolypi. It’s a Greek word that can be translated as bright sadness, bitter joy, joyful mourning, affliction that leads to joy, a profound mingling of joy and grief held together at the same time. If you live long enough, you will feel charmolypi, perhaps especially this time of year. 

This comingling of joy and grief not only permeates our true experience of the holidays, but it saturates what we read today in the Gospel of Luke. Luke, ever the historian, begins by telling us what’s going on in the world. Emperor Augustus is in charge. Quirinius is in Syria. We are during a historical period known as the pax romana, the Roman peace. Except it wasn’t really peace. It was order maintained with cruelty and inhumanity, the kind of cruelty and inhumanity that led to mass crucifixions and indiscriminate slaughter. Luke doesn’t yet tell us that Herod is around, but we will find out soon enough, as he orders the execution of the children of Bethlehem in an effort to stomp out the threat of Jesus. 

This is the world in which we find Mary and Joseph, a brutal and terrifying world. Mary and Joseph are at the bottom, mere subjects lorded over by people far away; they are insignificant and small. They, poor, cannot even find a place to lay their newborn child, except in an animal trough. They wrap him in the best they have: bands of cloth. They find themselves away from family, in a strange place, in an oppressive world with its fear and violence. This is our world today for so many people in so many places. 

But in the middle of this real sadness, joy–heavenly joy, real joy–rings out. The angels of God proclaim it. “Do not be afraid; for see–I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” As of old when God heard the cry of the children of Israel enslaved in Egypt, God has heard the cry of the world. And God has come down in the middle of the sadness, in the middle of the cruelty and inhumanity, in the middle of the oppression and violence and fear, all to redeem us. Rejoice, because God has come down into this mess of a world as a baby. 

So, what is Christmas about? When we get past the easy slogans and the cheap sentimentality, when we get past our illusions of perfection and visions of nostalgia, when we get past all of that and see the world as it really is–a world in which suffering and pain and mourning and grief and sin and evil and death are very real–when we get to that point, only then can we see what Christmas is really about. 

Christmas is about bringing brightness into the sadness. Christmas is about bringing joy into the grief. Christmas is about bringing peace into the violence. Christmas is about bringing hope into the chaos. Christmas is about bringing love into the fear. And this is not our doing, but it is the very work of God, who chooses (in love) to give us himself (for love) as a baby (to love). Christmas is about the heart of God breaking for us, breaking for our pain and suffering, breaking into a million pieces at our tears and grief. Breaking into so many pieces that God can be shared, in the person of Christ, in the bread on the altar. 

Yes, Jesus is the reason for the season. Sure, that’s true for us. But I don’t think it’s true for God. For God, you are the reason for the season. You are the reason he came to live, die, and rise again. You–the real you, and your pain, and your suffering, and your hardship, and your sadness, and your grief, your sin, and your death–you are the reason. Because God wants to bring joy and peace and grace hope and love to your life. God wants to do that by bringing you close to him, in real relationship, to make you an inheritor of eternal life. God wants to do that so much that he came to live like us, to die like us, so that we might rise like him. 

My friend, you are God’s reason for this season. That’s good news of great joy for each and every one of us, for each and every person who has ever walked the face of this earth, for each and every person who has walked, as Isaiah says, in darkness and in the land of deep darkness. We have seen a great light, shining just for us, alleluia, alleluia. 

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 18, 2022

“Until Christ comes again, he is hidden among us.” We heard those words from Fleming Rutledge two weeks ago. Advent is not only about waiting to see Christ come again on the Last Day, it is also about seeing where Christ shows up now: in the Holy Sacrament, in the face of our neighbor, and in our own lives. Christ shows up in our own hearts, in our own lives, in the middle of our night, in the middle of our difficult spots and trials. Christ, the King of Glory, is hidden among us, even in our own hearts. 

I think many of us know this. We know that Christ lives in us, that his Spirit abides in us, that he is present with us–Immanuel. But there is a temptation to think, if that’s true, then things should always go my way, things should always be sunny side up. There are some Christians who preach that. They preach, if you’re following Christ you’ll always have money in the bank, friends in your corner, and happiness in your heart. I’m sorry; they’re wrong. Dead wrong. Because the truth is, following Christ does not make us immune from difficulties. Following Christ does not mean everything will always be good and nice and easy. 

Sometimes we follow Christ and we don’t have anything figured out. Sometimes we follow but we don’t know which way to turn. Sometimes we follow but we feel hurt or abandoned or forgotten. Sometimes we follow and we find ourselves in the valley of the shadow of death, surrounded by enemies on every side, and we can’t bring ourselves to believe that God really will set a table for us in the middle of it all. Sometimes we walk into the darkness, and we can’t see a thing. 

Have you ever felt that way? I know I have. In those moments, we are trying to see with our eyes, not with our faith. We are trying to hold on to our control instead of letting go and letting God. We are trying to maintain our ego–ego, Alcoholics Anonymous will tell us means, edging God out–we hold on to our ego instead of on to God’s unchanging hand. We go forward and we feel alone, because we let fear overtake us. We forget that Christ, the King of Glory, is hidden among us, in our own hearts, even when we are in the darkness. 

Our Gospel passage today holds up to us the example of Joseph, Guardian of Our Lord. We read that Joseph is a righteous man. That doesn’t mean Joseph is a perfect man, but it means he is following God the best he can. He is doing what God asks of him. He is living a life of trust in God, and he says yes to God. That’s what God asks of us, too. 

You know, sometimes we think of Joseph as a tag along. Mary is chosen by the Holy Spirit to be the Theotokos, the Mother of God. But Joseph? Just luck of the draw. This passage makes it clear that’s not the case. Just as God prepared Mary, so God prepared Joseph. For Joseph, who was righteous, was in the habit already of saying yes to God. So when God comes to him now, with this impossible request to take Mary as his wife anyhow, Joseph has had some practice. He says yes. 

It would not have been easy. He would have been subject to shame, to dishonor, to ridicule, to being the talk of the town–and not only him, but also his whole family. But the right thing and the easy thing are rarely the same thing. Or, to use the words of Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, “There will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right.” That’s true for Joseph today, and I bet it’s true for us, too. 

But when those times come, rest assured that Christ is right there in the middle of it. Christ was right there in the middle of Joseph’s dilemma, in the womb of his mother. Joseph had to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit, and he had to follow the words of that angel: Do not be afraid. Even when things are hard, even when things are dark, even when times are trying and you feel all alone, even when it feels like you’re in that valley of the shadow of death–do not be afraid. Because Immanuel: God is with you. Christ is hidden in the middle of it all, and he has made your heart his throne. 

Where was God for Joseph? Where is God when we go through such times? In the middle of it all, hidden in the details of our lives, present in our very hearts. Or here’s how St. Patrick put it: 

“Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.”

When we walk through trials and our world spins out of control, Immanuel, Christ is with us. When we feel alone and afraid, Immanuel, Christ is with us. When the unimaginable happens and a good man is killed, and when we can’t understand and we need to cry, and when we want to shout in anger at the evil in the world—my friends, Immanuel, Christ is with us even now. And even when we lie down to draw our final breath, even then, Immanuel, Christ will be with us. Whenever we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Immanuel, Christ is with us. Not only is Christ with us, but he has prepared a table for us in the wilderness in the middle of all of this, with food, his very Body and Blood on offer for us, with grace and strength sufficient to carry us through. 

A sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent
December 11, 2022

“As long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbor, as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you, makes demands on you. That is the great seriousness and great blessedness of the Advent message. Christ is standing at the door; he lives in the form of a human being among us.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and Lutheran theologian, said those words. He believed those words. In a time when Germany was turning neighbors against one another, rounding up Jews, Communists, atheists, Catholics, and other dissenters, Bonhoeffer lived those words. He saw Christ coming to him in his neighbor to call him, to speak to him, to make demands of him. 

This Advent we are talking about Christ’s coming among us. He will come again in glory on the Last Day. That’s our great Advent hope. But until then, Christ is among us, hidden, in the Holy Eucharist, in our neighbor, and in our own hearts. Fleming Rutledge told us that last week: “Until Christ comes again, he is hidden among us,” even in this present darkness. 

When Christ comes among us in the face of our neighbor, will we recognize him? Or will we choose instead to refuse to believe that Christ could come to us in someone like that, someone so unlike us. John the Baptist today sends word to Jesus, asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Sometimes I am like that, too, sending word to Jesus: “Lord, where are you at? Surely you wouldn’t come to me in someone like that, in that neighbor! I’ll wait for someone else.” But there he is, standing at the door. 

Christ comes as one who begs. St. Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier. He was riding on his horse through present-day France when he came across a cold beggar. Martin cut off half his cloak to give the man something to cover up with. In a dream that night, Martin saw that beggar again, but the beggar was Christ. When we serve the least among us, we serve Christ himself. When Martin awoke, his cloak was whole again. 

Christ comes as one who comforts. Betty had sat with her mother in the ICU for weeks. They had finally put her mother into hospice care; there was nothing else they could do. Betty was lost. She and her mother were very close. And with her mother in and out of consciousness, Betty felt alone. But that hospice nurse came in every hour. She brought blankets and pillows. She would bring a hot cup of coffee. She brought a smile, a hug, words of comfort. She said a prayer as Betty’s mother died. Betty would recall later: “That nurse–I don’t even remember her name–but that nurse was Jesus Christ to me. She helped me face my worst nightmare, and she held my hand through it.” 

Christ comes as a stranger on a street corner. The monk and writer Thomas Merton once had a mystical experience in Louisville. Surrounded by strangers, he saw clearly that he was connected to all of them, and he loved them even though he didn’t know them. This is what he wrote in his journal: “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

Christ comes as someone we don’t like–maybe even someone who thinks and votes differently than we do. In 2016, a 79 year old Trump supporter and a 25 year old Clinton supporter got into it at a protest. The 79 year old man threw a punch. He was charged with assault, and I suppose that could have been the end of the story. But it wasn’t. When the man appeared before a judge, he saw that the other man was there. So he apologized for hitting him. The other man apologized for things he had said. The Trump supporter told the Clinton supporter: “You know, our country is a mess. We’ve got to help heal it. Maybe we can start healing as a nation if we start with ourselves.” Those two men walked out of the courthouse that day, walked across the street, and sat down for lunch. They got to know one another. They became friends. They began to love each other. They saw Christ in each other. 

When Christ comes among us, hidden, will we see him? Will we honor him? Or will we ignore him, pass him by, cast him out? Will we be those shepherds that flock to the manger, or will we be that innkeeper who can’t make room for the Son of God to come in? As Bonhoeffer said, “Christ is standing at the door.” It’s our choice to open up to him.   

Christ, even in our neighbor, is indeed the One we’ve been waiting for, and we don’t need to wait for another.