Storied Grace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sermon for Ash Wednesday
February 22, 2023

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

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

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

Today calls us out of that denial: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.