Storied Grace

A sermon for Christmas Day
December 25, 2022

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

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

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

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

A sermon for Christmas Eve
December 24, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sermon for Proper 29
November 20, 2022

Our gospel takes us to that most familiar and disorienting scene: the death of Christ on a Roman cross. Scourged, tortured, and beaten, we see him in the moments before he breathes his last and commends his spirit to God the Father. 

Today is the last Sunday of the Church year. Another name for today is the feast of Christ the King. Our gospel gives us Christ’s portrait at this final moment of his coronation: his throne is a rude cross that lifts him high for the world to see; his crown is a cruel twist of thorns pushed into the brow; his crimson is not a fine robe, but blood from his very body; his scepter is a nail, pierced through his human flesh. Unexpectedly, in this image, we see the majesty of God–not high and lofty above our cares and concerns, but fleshy, among us, sharing our very death. 

From the beginning of his ministry, we have known it would come to this. John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan cries to his disciples: behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And that is what he does on the cross. Our sin laid upon him, the perfect lamb. 

By sin, I do not only mean the errors we make in thought, word, and deed. Those are sins. We hurt one another; we stray from what is noble and honest and true; we turn to our own way. But sin is deeper than that, as well. Fundamentally, sin is not what we do or don’t do. It is who we are. It is the orientation, inherent in our souls since the fall, that points us away from God and the love and goodness of God. It is the separation of humanity from God, a separation we all feel, a separation that brings evil and pain and death into the world. 

It is this that is laid upon Christ: this separation, this fundamental orientation away from God. With it, every error of omission and commission, every stray thought or word or deed, is also laid upon the perfect lamb of God. Not only that, but every pain we feel; every agony that grieves our spirits; every burden that is too heavy to carry; every unimaginable situation made reality; every hurt, every tear, every sorrow–it is all laid upon the cross of Christ. It is felt and borne by the Lamb, God in the flesh.

It is all of this that Christ has come to heal through his saving life, death, and resurrection. It is this that the Son of God, our King, has come to conquer with his victorious and reconciling cross–a cross that now bridges earth to heaven, our souls to God, and gives us strength to go forward even when we do not know the way. 

In Christ, there is nothing on earth that is not felt in heaven: no pain, no sorrow, no grief, no burden, no confusion, no evil, no sickness, no disease, no death. There is no longer a separation between us, the agony of our human condition, and the Divine. Through Christ and his obedience to the Father, we have been brought close to the heart of God, and we bring all of our burdens with us. There at the foot of the cross, we are given strength to face those pains and agonies and griefs, those burdens too heavy to carry alone. And we don’t have to carry them alone, for Christ bears them with us. 

A sermon for Proper 28
November 13, 2022

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.

Those were the words of the prophet Isaiah today, prophesying a new world in the midst of destruction, hope in the midst of despair, life in the midst of death. The nation is destroyed, the captors have won, but none of that gets the last word, Isaiah says today. God gets the final word. Darkness and despair and violence and sin and evil do not win. God wins in the end–light and goodness and love and faith and virtue win in the end. 

It can feel a little like whiplash to put this reading from Isaiah next to our reading from Luke. Isaiah is giving a word of hope; Jesus is telling of coming destruction. Isaiah says newness is coming; Jesus says the world is about to shake. Isaiah says tears will be wiped away; Jesus says tears are going to come. 

As opposite as they sound, the two readings go together. Isaiah is speaking in a time of destruction, promising the people that God will win out in the end. Jesus is preparing his followers for what is to come–a time of persecution and apocalypse. But he is also giving them the same hope that Isaiah is preaching. “Do not be terrified,” he says. Although the world shakes and things spin out of control and everything goes wrong, “do not be terrified.” Trust in God. Follow Christ. Hold on. 

Isaiah and Jesus were speaking to their specific times, to specific moments in history. Isaiah is speaking to those who are witnessing with their very eyes instability and political violence, the threat of captivity and enslavement, the destruction of their world in war and disaster. Jesus is speaking to his earthly followers, telling them of the persecutions of the early church just around the corner and the destruction of the holy city in 70 AD. But their words echo with timelessness. Their words go beyond the specifics of those historical moments, and speak to every place and every time when violence overwhelms, when fear overtakes, when the dreadful portents of evil seem to win out. 

Their words speak to our own time, do they not? We see instability, the threat of nuclear exchange, the terror of hunger and drought, the unquestioned domineering of prideful despots and greed-filled servants to self alone. Nation rises against nation. Famines and plagues crowd the headlines. All seems to be in the process of being thrown down, stone by stone–even the most unquestioned and unquestionable temples of our civilization. And such turmoil is so often reflected in our own lives–the presence of disease and death, the uncertainty of our futures and the futures of those who come after us, the sorrow of loss, the struggles for peace in a stormy world, for happiness in a despairing world. 

In the middle of all of this, can we hear the words of Jesus? “Do not be terrified.” “By your endurance you will gain your souls.” Persevere. Do not be afraid. Trust in God. Follow Christ. Hold on. 

In the middle of all of this, can we hear the words of God through the prophet Isaiah? “I am about to create a new heaven and a new earth.” “No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.” “They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.” Do not be afraid. Trust in God. All of this is passing away and God will make it all new. Hold on.  

It is a bold act of faith to hold on during times such as ours. It is a bolder act of faith to proclaim that God will win out in the end–that this old world will wear out like a garment, and from the ashes God will usher in an unending Day of Peace. It is even bolder yet to live now, in the midst of so many messages to the contrary, as if that day had already come–to allow our lives, already transformed and marked by God’s grace, to be a prophetic sign of the newness that is to come. 

Are we bold enough to allow the promises of God to be written on our lives, like a scroll with the words of the prophet Isaiah? Are we bold enough to proclaim to the world, rocking and reeling: “Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in him and not be afraid”? Are we bold enough to proclaim that in the end, despite all claims to the contrary, God wins and will reign over all? 

A sermon for All Saints’ Day
November 6, 2022

“Blessed are you who are poor.” Blessed are you, Mary mother of Jesus, from a backwater, forgotten town in an unimportant province of the Empire, yet called to bear the Son of God who will take away the sins of the world. Blessed are you, Mother Teresa, simple nun who devoted her life to helping those forgotten in the slums of Calcutta, showing them the love of God, even during your own dark night of the soul. “Yours is the kingdom of heaven.” 

“Blessed are you who are hungry now.” Blessed are you, John the Baptist, voice crying out in the wilderness, with nothing to eat but locusts and honey. Blessed are you, Francis and Clare of Assisi, monastics, who forsook the pleasures of the world to draw closer to God. “You will be filled.” 

“Blessed are you who weep now.” Blessed are you, Jeremiah the weeping prophet, who sees the destruction of his people and the most sacred of places, and yet speaks a word of hope in the middle of destruction. Blessed are you, Julian of Norwich, who suffered long in this life, and yet shared a vision of the suffering Christ for the world. “You will laugh.”

“Blessed are you when people hate you on account of the Son of Man.” Blessed are you, Paul of Tarsus, preacher of the gospel of Christ and the grace of God, stoned, beaten shipwrecked, imprisoned, beheaded; but fighting the good fight and keeping the faith until the end. Blessed are you, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hanged by the Nazis, yet refusing to make peace with oppression and tyranny, and showing us that the truest life is found just on the other side of death. “Surely your reward is great in heaven.” 

All Saints’ Day is a day when we remember the victorious and heroic saints of faith, the blessed ones who show us what it means to live a blessed life. It’s not an unattainable life. Sainthood is attainable, by the grace of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit. But it is only attainable when we surrender completely to God; when we allow the grace of God to take us over completely; when we pick up our cross and follow Jesus, and leave all else behind. The question is not, is sainthood attainable? The question is, do we want it?

The choice is ours. Will we long for the kingdom of God, or for the riches of this world? Will we long to be fed by the graces of God’s goodness, or will we fill our bellies with what we can provide? Will we long for the joy of heaven, or be content with the mocking laughter of earth? Will we long for heaven’s reward, even if it means being hated and excluded; or will we seek approval from the powers of this world? The choice is ours. 

Sainthood is attainable, and we can choose it. And sainthood is the path to life, to true life in God. But it will cost us now. It costs us our pride, our plans, our will, our ways. We lay all of that down, we pick up the cross, and we follow our Lord. 

But we do so with hope in our hearts, looking for that eternal inheritance Ephesians talks about today. We do so with courage in our souls, knowing that Christ is leading the way, and as long as we follow him, we cannot be lost. We do so with praises on our tongues, because we know that he who has promised redemption and eternal life is faithful, and his promises are always sure. 

Come what may–come poverty or hunger or weeping or exclusion–we go forward in faith, following our Lord and all the blessed company of saints. We walk the path to sainthood, which is the path to Calvary, knowing that resurrection and eternal life are on the other side. 

A sermon for Proper 26
October 30, 2022

Once upon a time there was a man who lived in an old Victorian house. The house was once called The Painted Lady of the town. Now she was drab from decades of disrepair. The man had given up trying to keep up that big house by himself, with the exception of one spot. The porch. He took care of the porch. He would sit on his rocking chair and rock the days and much of the nights away. Alone. When he wasn’t rocking he was sweeping the porch, making sure the rails were sturdy. And above all, he made sure the porch ceiling was always freshly painted. He painted it the color it has always been, the distinctive haint blue. The color that was said to keep the ghosts and evil spirits away. 

The house, they say, was haunted. I don’t know about that, but it would be easy to believe. The man, they say, was haunted, too. That was obvious. His eyes were empty. 

One day, an old friend of the man’s came into town after decades away. He stopped by the house to see his friend, there, rocking on the front porch. The friend said hi, enthusiastically! The man sat there, rocking, back and forth. The friend tried to make conversation. He asked about everything. He told stories. The man, if he responded at all, only gave one word answers, a nod, a grunt. 

Finally the friend had enough. He stomped his feet and yelled he was leaving if he didn’t talk to him. That got the man’s attention, and he turned around. The friend expected him to be angry. But the man was not angry. He was crying. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m out of practice. No one has talked to me in so long.” 

“What happened to you?” the friend asked. The man began to explain. He had left the town after high school graduation. He went to college, and met a girl whom he would marry. Eventually he moved home. He hit it big with one of those once-in-a-million-years business ideas; it even got him a feature in Arkansas Money & Politics. Friends and neighbors poured money into his idea. It was only later that everyone discovered it was too good to be true. No one called it fraud, but that’s what it was. The man, driven by greed, had intentionally cheated money out of his fellow townspeople. They turned on him. His wife left in shame with his kids. In a matter of days, his life was turned upside-down as his past caught up with him. 

People said the man didn’t have a heart, but that wasn’t true. He wished he could go back and make things right. He had even tried to, paying back small sums of money as he was able. He was still despised. Since being found out, he had been followed by a kind of shadow of sorrow and regret–sorrow and regret so strong it had almost taken on physical properties. A haint, he called it. He couldn’t shake it. It would keep him awake at night, pacing the floor of his bedroom. He would catch glimpses of it as he rounded corners in his house, just a fleeing shadow. The only place he got peace was on that porch, under the haint blue ceiling, rocking, back and forth. 

Haints, or ghosts, aren’t real, the kids in Sunday school would be quick to tell me. But they would be wrong in a sense. Of course, I’m not talking about ghosts like Casper or the stories we tell around campfires. I’m talking about something we carry around within us, something that burdens us, something we cannot shake. Something like that man’s haint. 

We carry around deep regrets we cannot share. We carry around pain that may only be known to us. We carry around shame and guilt of past decisions that feel so heavy that sometimes we feel we will suffocate under the pressure. The what-ifs, the whys, the how-comes that keep us awake at night, pacing the floor of our bedrooms. The shadows of the past, of things done and left undone, that flee around the corner, just out of sight, but always felt, always taunting us with reminders of how we’ve messed up. Haints. 

I hope the kids in the Sunday school building never know the reality of that type of ghost story. I hope they never become acquainted with that haint. But many carry them around. 

I bet Zacchaeus carried one around. Zacchaeus is a familiar story. We learn about him and how short he was in Sunday school. But that’s not what sticks out to me in this story now. What sticks out to me now is the lengths Zacchaeus goes to to see Jesus; and once he meets Jesus, the extraordinary lengths he goes to to show his repentance. 

Luke tells us that Jesus is visiting Zacchaeus’s town, and that Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector and was rich. Tax collectors generally got rich by cheating their neighbors, charging high interest and fees on top of already high taxes. For that and for their collaboration with the occupying Roman Empire, they were hated. Zacchaeus hears that Jesus is coming to town, so he runs to see him. He can’t see him, though. Luke tells us it’s because he is short in stature; maybe so, but his relationships in town didn’t help him at all. It’s easy to imagine him being pushed to the back of the crowd. So Zacchaeus has to run ahead, away from all of those people, and he climbs a tree. Why? Well, surely so he can see Jesus. But I also wonder if he wanted to hide behind the branches and leaves. 

As we read the story, it’s clear Zacchaeus is desperate to lay eyes on Jesus. He had no doubt heard about him. He knew what Jesus was famous for, and he just had to see him pass by. I can’t help but imagine that Zacchaeus may have been like that man with the haint. Zacchaeus was carrying some things. Some guilt, some shame. He was being followed by the ghosts of his past, the ghosts of what he had done and left undone, all in the name of greed. But he hears Jesus is coming, and maybe he thinks if he can just see Jesus, he can finally shake those haints. 

Jesus sees him. We know the story. Jesus has lunch at his house. And Zacchaeus shows he is truly repentant; he is ready for a change, and he not only says as much, but he backs it up with his actions. He tells Jesus, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” He’s shaking off that haint. He’s confronting his past head on. He’s making right those things that are wrong, bringing into the light those things that rest in the dark. 

Jesus responds: “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.” Jesus is telling him he’s a child of God. He’s done some things in the past, but the guilt and the shame can no longer take him as a prisoner. His past can no longer define him. Zacchaeus is a child of God. He belongs to God, and God belongs to him. The shadow is dispelled; the haint is gone. 

Like the man, like Zacchaeus, we carry around shadows. We carry around haints. The past, guilt, shame. Jesus dispels them all. The light that lit the world shines into our hearts, even into the darkest recesses, and speaks peace. The Word that spoke the world into being speaks into our hearts, even into those secrets never heard, never spoken, and speaks forgiveness. The Son that gave up everything speaks into our hearts, into the most haunted corners of our consciences, and calls us a child of the Most High God. 

Jesus is calling. He has called us out of our sycamore tree, off of our porch with its haint blue ceiling, away from all of our striving to handle things ourselves, to keep the haints at bay. Salvation has, indeed, come to our house since Jesus stepped under our roof. We have not been left alone, wandering about, lost. Jesus has come with healing, with victory, with the peace of God, with salvation. There is no more room for those things that haunt us, for we belong to Jesus, and he belongs to us. The haints of the past have no claim on our lives, for Jesus claims us as his own, now and forever. 

A sermon for Proper 25
October 23, 2022

Well, no surprise. Today I’m talking about stewardship because October is stewardship month! This past week, pledge cards were sent to you in the mail. If you haven’t received one in the next few days, let me know. When you’re ready to pledge, you can drop your pledge card in the offering plate, or you can send it in the mail to Candace. If you’ve never pledged before, here’s how it works. On your card, you will tell us how much you plan to contribute in 2023. It’s an act of faith and thanksgiving. Once all of our pledges are in, the Vestry will make a responsible budget for the coming year. So you know, the Vestry has set the goal of collecting $140,000 in pledges for this next year.

Because I know you are all generous givers, let me say in advance: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Because of your sacrificial giving of time, talent, and treasure, this church will continue to stand, proclaiming the love of God in Christ Jesus for all, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, giving hope to a hopeless world, healing to a broken world, faith to a despairing world, love to a hateful world. That’s why the church is here. 

Our gospel passage from Luke today is kind of a strange one to pair with stewardship. Jesus encounters a group of people who, our gospel tells us, trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. Two men are going up to the temple: a pharisee, someone who has this religion thing figured out, and a tax collector, a sinner. The pharisee prays, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people. I fast twice a week. I tithe my income to the church.” But then we have this tax collector, who gets it right. He prays, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” 

The Pharisee, in appearance at least, is doing everything right. What he does is even admirable. He fasts and he tithes–just as we are encouraged to fast when appropriate and tithe our income. These are righteous actions, actions that please God, commendable actions for you and me. And yet he gets something wrong. His motivation. He is doing these things to exalt himself, to lift himself up, to make himself look good. And he does that at the expense of others. He mounts ridicule on them—thank God I’m not like all those scoundrels, bless their hearts.

What the Pharisee does—fasting and tithing—is good, and it matters. But his motivations matter, too, and they’re not good. He’s trying to puff himself up instead of glorify God. He’s tearing down his neighbors instead of helping them. His motivation doesn’t match his actions. 

As for this tax collector, all he can do is ask God for mercy. He knows he’s a sinner. He is humbled before God. Of course, if this tax collector wants to grow in God, if he wants to come to know God more, he’s going to have to change. Tax collectors cheated people, so he’s going to have to make amends. He cannot just continue to do what he’s doing Monday-Friday and then pray for mercy come the weekend. He might actually learn from the Pharisee here: he should learn to fast and he should give a tithe to the work of God. 

His attitude is right; his motivations are good; and all of that matters. But his actions matter, too. And if he wants to grow in God, his actions need to match his motivation. 

Our actions matter. Our motivation matters. And they need to match up. Our actions should serve God and reflect God. The motivation for our actions must also point to God, and not to ourselves. Stewardship month is about this very thing. We pray about how we should use our gifts of time, talent, and treasure for the Kingdom of God. Notice there is an action and a motivation there: we are using our time, talent, and treasure. Why? For the Kingdom of God and for the glory of God. We pledge to give to the church. Why? So that the love of God in Christ Jesus will be proclaimed to further the Kingdom of God. None of this is about us or making ourselves look good. It’s about giving to God, in humble thanksgiving for all of our many blessings. 

Everything we do, and the reasons we do it, should point to God. Where we put our time, our energy, our money, should all point to Christ and the Kingdom of God. If we work on that, by God’s grace, we will be able to stand before God and say, like Paul in today’s reading from II Timothy, we have fought the good fight; we have finished the race; we have kept the faith. We have been good stewards, good caretakers, of our many blessings from God. And through us, in our actions and our motivations, people can see Christ reflected. They can see God’s goodness and love for all. 

Stewardship is about seeing all of ourselves, all of our lives, everything about us, all that we are and all that we have, as an offering to God. Just as we offer bread and wine week after week, so too we offer all that we are to God day after day. 

Are we the Pharisee or the tax collector? Maybe there’s a bit of both within us. That’s true for me, anyway. I wonder how God is calling us to grow in action and motivation, getting our lives to match up with what we say and what we believe? Stewardship for 2023 is a good place to start. 

A sermon for Proper 24
October 16, 2022

There once was a widow woman. She lived down at the end of one of these farm roads, way off by herself. Her husband died 20 years ago, leaving her a little Toyota truck. She drove into town once a week for groceries, to see the doctor, to attend to what she had to. Then back to the farm. Her road was bad; she needed that truck. You’ve seen roads like hers. Deep drainage ditches on either side. After each heavy rain, the road gave way a little more. The road eventually eroded to the point that it was nearly impossible for her to get down that road and into town. 

She called the county judge. “Judge, my road needs fixed.” She knew the Judge. She voted for him. They had grown up together. He didn’t live far from her, as the crow flies. “Well, we don’t have much money for roads, ma’am. They’re all in bad shape. I’ll get a crew out to look at it.” Funny thing was, his road was brand new. She waited. No crew. She called again. And then again. Finally she was calling everyday. She couldn’t use the road anymore. Eventually the Judge stopped answering her call. 

She wasn’t going to give up. She was a hardened woman. Life had thrown plenty her way. She was a fighter. She called a farmer neighbor. He picked her up in his tractor. He shook his head when she told him the story. “That’s not right,” he said. The farmer’s wife drove her to the Judge’s office. The Judge saw her coming and turned out his lights. She waited in the waiting room. All morning. All afternoon. The farmer’s wife was with her. She and her husband got mad. The farmer called the farm bureau president first. The Judge would not be welcome at that year’s dinner. Then he called their senator in Little Rock. The senator called the Judge, who, by the way, would be up for re-election that year. When the Judge finally worked up the courage to peek his head out of his office, he could only come up with a few words. “Road crew will be there tomorrow.” 

Jesus tells a story about a woman like this today. A persistent widow woman who prevails against the unjust judge, the corrupt systems of our rotten politics. We know people like her. We know they are often ignored because they can’t make a big splash. They are often taken advantage of because they don’t have the right friends in the right places. Jesus’s time was not so different from our own. 

Jesus tells us this story to commend the widow’s example, to tell us to be like her in prayer and persistence, and not to lose heart no matter what. We are to pray persistently in all things. Jesus does not only mean praying with our words. We are also to pray with our actions, with everything in our lives. Our entire lives, every word and every action, is a prayer. When we live like that, things happen. It might be slow. It might be frustrating. There may be many unjust judges standing in our way. But eventually something breaks through. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, the arch of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. It bends that way because of these persistent widows, because of those constant prayers that blend words and actions. The Kingdom of God will not be stopped, not even by an unjust judge. 

That widow’s prayer can be summed up in some simple words we say everyday: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s Kingdom is one in which no widow is ignored, no child is forgotten, no hurting person is forsaken, and everyone has what they need for life. God’s Kingdom is one in which the lowly are lifted up and the high and mighty are brought down to size; the humble are exalted and the proud are reminded they are no better than anyone else; the pure is normalized and the corrupt is cleaned. God’s kingdom breaks out in this broken and sinful world whenever the will of God is done. God’s kingdom breaks out despite the odds because that prayer is prayed persistently with words and actions: thy kingdom come. 

What does it look like when we pray “thy kingdom come,” not only with our words, but also with our actions? Well, it might look like that widow, not giving up for a moment, being persistent, taking everything to God in prayer and then putting on our work boots. That prayer might look like that farmer and his wife, seeing something wrong and knowing that God had put them in a position to do something about it. That prayer might look a lot less pious, like a senator who wants a donor off his back or a judge who wants to be re-elected. But without knowing it, they are participating in God’s designs. 

Who are we in this story, this ordinary story? Where do we find ourselves? It’s a question of stewardship: How are we using, or not using, the gifts God has given us? Are we praying that God’s kingdom would break out among us, even right now, with our words and our actions? Or are we being that stumbling block that has to be twisted and turned, manipulated to fit God’s designs? 

God has given us a life and a small amount of time. God hears us when we pray, and sometimes, God is going to put us to work to answer that prayer. One day God’s kingdom will break out in a big way, rupturing our very reality, ending this age, stopping time itself. But until then, God’s kingdom breaks out in small but significant ways, bit by bit, all around us. Are we going to stand in its way? Or are we going to pray for its coming, with our words and our actions?