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A sermon for Maundy Thursday
April 6, 2023

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

We pray these words on Fridays in Morning Prayer. They also appear on Palm Sunday, as we enter the church to begin our observance of Holy Week. But I wonder if we’ve considered what it means to walk the way of the cross? We usually don’t really consider that until its meaning is made plain in our lives, until the changes and chances of this life visit us with a cross to bear, with suffering, with pain and hardship. We don’t consider what we’re saying until we are already on the road, walking the way of the cross. 

Brian could tell you something about that. A good Christian, he was always in church. He raised his kids in church. It was a priority for him. He had heard those words before; he had heard preachers talk about walking the way of the cross; he had done the awkward palm procession around the building. But he never considered what that meant until he found himself walking that very way, on the via dolorosa, the road of sorrow, the way of the cross. 

At 44 years old, with kids in the middle of high school, in the prime of his life, Brian was in a serious car wreck that left him paralyzed from the neck down. He was in the hospital for weeks. For the first couple of weeks, he was holding on to life. For the next few weeks, they were putting him back together. Then rehab. Rehab that lasted forever. Before he knew it, a year had passed. A journey that began with hope that he would walk again was chastened by reality: He wouldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. Rehab wouldn’t be his miracle. 

That first year was torturous. Brian was an independent guy. He prided himself on hard work, on providing for others. Suddenly he found himself provided for. He had no choice in the matter. If you asked, he would tell you that getting bathed in the hospital by nurses and orderlies was bad enough. But then he went home. His relationship with his wife and children changed overnight; it had to. He couldn’t do anything without their help. His wife bathed him, changed him, helped him eat. He had been home for two weeks when his oldest son had to clean him after he used the restroom. Brian was humiliated. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. 

If you asked Brian, his wife, his children about love before the wreck, I don’t know what they would say. But they loved each other. Maybe they would say, love is like going to games and cheering each other on. Love is like going the extra mile to make someone feel better. Love is cleaning out the gutters. Love is a feeling you get when you’re hugged. Love is wiping the silent and secret tears of your son after he loses the championship game. 

If you asked Brian, his wife, his children about love after the wreck, I know what they would say. Love is being there to help when someone can’t help themselves. Love is being faithful even when life is turned upside down. Love looks like heaving someone into a chair, helping someone on a toilet, making sure someone’s pillow is just right because they can’t adjust it. Love is lived in real ways–it’s not just a feeling, it’s an action, sometimes an uncomfortable or inconvenient one. 

I think Jesus is showing his disciples, and us, something of this at the Last Supper tonight. While the other gospels focus on the meal itself, John takes us to another scene. He shows us footwashing, the master stooping to care for the servants. Jesus equates love with footwashing: Just as I have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet, he says. Jesus is saying that love, real love, is shown in decisions, in actions, in servitude, like in washing someone else’s feet. Love is not some amorphous feeling, a warm fuzzy. Love is a gritty thing, a real thing, an enacted thing. Love gets you dirty; it puts you at the service of another; it takes you to uncomfortable and inconvenient places you hadn’t imagined before–master washing servants’ feet, wife and children caring completely for a helpless father. 

I think most of us are comfortable with being the ones who show up, who do what needs to be done, who show love in concrete ways, who do the foot washing. But what about the other side, Peter’s side, Brian’s side? Peter and Brian are a lot alike, I think. Stubborn, strong, determined. Peter tells Jesus, you will never wash my feet. Why? Because that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Peter will wash Jesus’s feet all day, without blinking, without thinking. He loves Jesus. But to let Jesus wash his feet? If someone else in his family had been in that wreck, Brian would have shown up. He would have cared, he would have cleaned, he would have waited hand-and-foot without a thought, without a hesitation. Because he loves his family. But like Peter, he wanted to tell his wife, his children, you will never wash my feet. You will never clean me up. You will never dress me. You will never… 

Sometimes love doesn’t look like washing feet; it looks like getting your feet washed. Love looks like deep vulnerability, allowing someone to do something for you that you could never do for yourself. It looks like Brian putting his pride to the side, forever, and letting his family care for him. It looks like Peter sitting in the chair and letting Christ wash his feet. It looks like all of us, under the power of things we cannot control, allowing a Savior to feed us–this is my Body, this is my Blood–because we can’t feed ourselves, we cannot sustain ourselves spiritually. It looks like allowing our Savior to wash us, because we cannot clean our own souls. It looks like allowing that Lord to die for us, because we can’t pay the price. 

The Christian journey is about learning to love–learning to really love in concrete ways, like Jesus tells us, washing one another’s feet. But the Christian journey also looks like getting our feet washed, learning to accept the love and grace of a God who came to save us, because we are helpless in ourselves. And sometimes, learning that side of things, learning that powerlessness, that need for grace, that need for love; sometimes that’s the hardest thing of all to learn. But here’s the deal: We will never learn love until we learn vulnerability. In truth, it’s something we must learn on the road, on the way of the cross, as our feet are washed by another, as we’re fed with food we cannot provide. 

A sermon for the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
April 2, 2023

Something is wrong and must be put right. Today we come to the end of our Lent sermon series, in which we have focused on the cross of Christ and how, through the cross, God in Christ does what we cannot and makes everything right again. We come to a final, but far from the final, image: on the cross, Christ, as both priest and victim, makes the atoning sacrifice for all sin. The early Christians would have primarily understood the cross through this lens of sacrifice. Sacrifice and blood make us squeamish today. We are far removed from the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. For our ancient forebears, however, sacrifice was a fact of life.

There are many kinds of sacrifice in the Old Testament. We won’t go through them now, but there is a general principle at play, especially when it comes to sacrifices for sin. Through the sacrifice of an animal without spot or blemish, a person with spot and blemish (that is to say, with sin) was able to be brought into the presence of God. The greater the sin, the greater the cost of the sacrifice. And here’s the important thing: while this seems foreign to you and me, the sacrificial system was all about grace. It was all about God, in patience and kindness and love, giving his beloved people a means to come into his presence. It was about God, in grace and compassion, giving the people a way to be restored into relationship with him. 

That, of course, is what the crucifixion is all about. God in Christ goes, willingly, to Jerusalem. Christ takes the initiative in the role of the priest. And once there, he becomes the atoning sacrifice. He is able to take, unlike any animal, the full weight of our sin upon himself, so that, through his sacrifice, we can be reconciled to God and brought into relationship with God. Christ does all of this as grace, in compassion, because of love, to bring us into a relationship. There is no cost God is not willing to pay to cover the gravity of our sin, to bring us to his heart. 

If we want to really understand what is happening at Golgotha, the Crucifixion must not only be a question of history. It cannot be confined to art and church trappings. No, we must see ourselves there. We must see our sin dealt with there. We must see it as a sacrifice for us. We must, as John Donne said, see Christ write our names in the blood of the Lamb slain for us, so that we can come into full relationship with God. We must see love at the cross–love, not in the abstract, but a specific love for our specific lives. 

We must see ourselves in Judas, as he lurks away to make his deal, and in Peter, denying Christ in the courtyard. How often we sell Jesus out, sneaking from the grace that God has on offer in order to take things into our own hands. How often we hide our light in the darkness, hide our love in the crowd, hide our Lord behind the facade of something more expedient and convenient, safer.

We must see ourselves in the crowd that day, crying, “crucify him.” We cry “crucify him” as we allow hatred to fester, and make peace with oppression, and justify inaction against injustice, and make excuses for violence and tyranny in the name of order and safety. 

We must see ourselves at the Pavement, in the seat of Pilate. We are in that seat when we give in to fear and cower because of pressure, because of popularity, because of prestige. We know what’s right, but fear takes over, and we lose heart. 

We must see ourselves in the fickle and fleeing disciples, once so committed, now overcome with terror and hiding out. We decide to go our own way, to lose heart when the going gets tough. God has abandoned us, we think, as the sky turns black and the earth shakes. And so we hide, unaware that God is active in the middle of the hardship, accomplishing what we cannot, carrying us to grace, calling us to life. 

We must see ourselves in the Roman soldier swinging the hammer. He has done it so many times he probably isn’t affected anymore. Desensitized to the violence. “It’s just a job,” he says, “Just the way things are.” And he goes home that night to a good dinner and a good family like he has done so many times. And we, desensitized to the sway of evil, ignore it and say it’s just the way things have to be. 

For all of this and much more, Christ, the high priest and victim, becomes the sacrifice for every sin. He becomes the sufficient and perfect sacrifice, whose blood is shed for Judas, for Peter, for Pilate, for the weeping women at the cross, for fleeing disciples, for the Roman executioner, and for us. The sacrifice that need not be repeated because it is enough for eternity, for all sin. 

“His blood be upon us and upon our children,” the people cry. Christians have used this verse to justify violence against the Jews for centuries. Anti-semites and hate groups today know this verse. They miss the point. But we cannot afford to miss it: Christ’s blood is upon us–it’s upon every person in this story, from the weeping woman to that Roman soldier with the hammer.  It’s upon every person on the face of the earth; it’s upon every person in this room; it’s upon us all to cover us and to cover our sin, as grace and with love. That’s the whole point of sacrifice. Once covered, we are given the means of grace, the hope of glory, the promise of forgiveness, the love of God’s heart. Our names are, indeed, written in the blood of the Lamb that is slain; and because of that, our names can be written in the Book of Life, marked as Christ’s own forever. 

A sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 26, 2023

“A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.” All the former Lutherans will know those words well. A text and tune composed by Martin Luther, this hymn evoques the image of Christus Victor, Christ the Victorious, even in the face of sin, death, and the evil one. Christ Jesus is the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing, in whose victory we share. 

Throughout Lent we have been talking about the cross and how the cross accomplishes our redemption and atonement, or our at-one-ment with God. Today we are talking about the cross through the lens of Christus Victor, Christ the Victorious, the Christ of Luther’s hymn. The cross is the place where Christ defeats the powers of sin, death, hell, and the grave, and opens up avenues of grace, mercy, forgiveness, and life. This action of God in Christ does not depend on us; it is accomplished by God and God alone as pure grace, pure gift, pure love. 

We certainly see that in today’s readings. Ezekiel is set down by God in the middle of a mass grave. Dry bones are scattered about, a defeated army, the signature of death. “Can these bones live?” God asks the prophet. The prophet wisely responds, “O Lord God, you know.” God says he will make those bones live again; God will bring forth a new creation from this field of nothingness; God will cause life where death was thought to reign supreme. The bones come together; the muscles and sinews and connective tissue are laid over; skin and flesh cover the new beings; the breath of life is breathed into them. 

In John we see the final sign of Jesus’s ministry before his passion and death. Lazarus, Jesus’s friend, is sick and dies. We know the story; Jesus raises him from death. Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” This very question is posed to us today; it is posed to us when we come to the tomb and there is already a stench; it is posed to us when we step foot in those valleys of dry bones in our lives. 

In both readings, God brings forth life because God desires to bring forth new life. God inaugurates something new because God desires to do so. God shakes the tombs and raises the dead because God says death and sin will not have the final word over creation. God gets the final word. However, both the valley of dry bones and the raising of Lazarus are signs pointing to something greater. They are not the thing in and of themselves. They both point to the ultimate victory of Christ over the powers of sin, death, hell, and the grave, a victory wrought through the cross and resurrection. On the cross, Jesus goes to the front line against sin and death, and accomplishes what we cannot. As I’ve said, something is wrong and must be put right. We cannot do it. Only God can do it, and God in Christ does do it from the cross.

Through the cross, God has made something new. When God in Christ descends to that valley of dry bones, when God in Christ descends into a sealed tomb like Lazarus, he does so to break it open. God in Christ does so to break it all apart from the inside out. As one theologian said, “The victory of Christ [on the cross] creates a new situation, bringing the rule [of sin and death] to an end, and setting [us] free from their dominion.” 

And yet, if this is true, how come there is sin and death still? How come evil still seems to reign supreme? How come the status quo continues on, seemingly unabated? How come tornadoes sweep through small, rural towns, a violent instrument of death and destruction? How come children suffer, and wars rage, and hunger is everywhere, and disease breaks down, and lives fall apart, and brokenness abounds? Is Christ really the victor? And if he is, then why does the psalmist today–why do we so often–cry to God out of the depths of anguish and despair, grief and death, shame and sin, brokenness and pain? 

While Christ’s victory on the cross has won an objective victory over sin, death, hell, and the grave, these powers are still allowed to rule in the present age. It will not be until the coming again of Christ at the end of the age that the fullness of God’s kingdom will come. So we must take Christ’s victory on faith–not an intellectual faith alone, but a faith that makes us live differently in this present age, a faith that sustains us even in suffering, a faith that compels us to live in the victory of our God even as we are called to carry a cross, a faith unafraid to look evil in the face because we know it will not win.  

Martin Luther’s hymn would go on to say: “And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us; we will not fear for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us; the prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure, one little Word shall fell him.” The little Word Luther is talking about there is the Word of God, the Word made flesh, Christ Jesus the Victorious. When Luther wrote that hymn, he wrote the tune to sound like a dance. Through that little Word, through Christ and his cross, we can dance, Luther was saying. We can dare to dance a jig, even in the face of evil, sin, and death–even on the head of the devil himself. 

It reminds me of a story about the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu during the height of Apartheid South Africa. As he got up to preach his sermon one day, the doors at the back of the cathedral burst open, and troops, armed, filed down each side of the church. They had been sent to intimidate, to threaten, to remind Tutu and the congregation of the power of fear and death. 

The late archbishop was not a big man. He was rather small, with a funny voice and an even funnier sounding laugh. But what he lacked in physical appearance, he certainly had in spiritual fortitude. He could stand there unafraid, because he knew that because of what Christ had done on the cross, God, in the end, will conquer over sin, over death, over fear, over every power that seeks to destroy the creatures of God–and even over oppressive Apartheid. Armed with that conviction and that conviction alone, he looked those soldiers in the eyes and he said, “Why don’t you join the winning side!” Then, with a laugh, he started dancing down the center aisle of the church. He danced and danced, and the congregation got up and danced and danced, and they all poured out into the streets dancing and laughing and singing and stomping on the ole devil. 

We have seen the power of sin and death and evil in our world and in our lives. There is brokenness in us and around us, and sometimes it looks like a valley of dry bones, like a tomb with a corpse covered in bands of cloth. But hear me now: sin, and death, and evil, and fear, and every power that corrupts the creatures of God–they have all been put on notice by the death and resurrection of Christ. Their end is coming; the strife is over; the battle is won; new life has already begun. We are not seeing these powers in force–no, we are seeing the last gasps of their dying empire. So with faith, with the cross in view, firm in our conviction, even when those powers do their worst, we join the winning side. We cast our lot in with Christ the Victorious. And like Luther, like Tutu, with all the saints and angels, we even dare to do a jig on the head of that old serpent. 

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.