Storied Grace

A sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter
April 24, 2022

Old doubting Thomas. We get this familiar reading from John’s Gospel every Low Sunday, the Second Sunday after Easter. Christ, resurrected and alive, shows up to the ten disciples, minus Thomas and Judas, of course. They tell Thomas Christ is alive. He doesn’t believe it. Defiant, he says, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” We know the end of the story. Christ shows up the next week, on Low Sunday. This time, Thomas is there. And Christ invites him to see and touch the mark of the nails and the hole in his side, the wounds of the crucifixion. Thomas believes: “My Lord and my God.” 

But let’s back up. Let’s take a good look at Thomas, because I don’t think this is a basic case of doubt. After all, all the other disciples, those other ten, they doubted, too. They didn’t believe Mary Magdalene or the women. 

Thomas appears a few times in the gospels. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he only appears when all of Jesus’s disciples are listed. In John’s gospel, he is part of a few key stories. We heard one of them this morning. Another important moment comes from John 11, when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. You remember the story: Jesus has got word that Lazarus is sick, but he delays. Finally, Jesus says, well, gang, let’s go to Judea to see Lazarus. The disciples are not fans of that plan. They remind Jesus that the religious authorities in Judea were just trying to stone him. Why would you go back into danger? But Jesus is adamant; let’s go. He tells them Lazarus is dead, and he has to go raise him. 

It is at this moment that Thomas gets one of his big lines: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Thomas is resigned. He’s saying, let’s follow Jesus, and we’re going to die, but let’s go anyway. Thomas has unwittingly discovered something here: following Jesus means we must die. Thomas would die a martyr’s death, giving his life for Christ. So would countless others, like Bonhoeffer, a German pastor killed by the Nazis. He said it this way: When Christ calls someone, he calls them to come and die. You and I may not die a martyr’s death, but we are called to follow Christ and die just the same–to die daily to sin, to die to our own will, to die to ourselves, and to put on Christ, to put on holiness, to put on newness of life in God. At this point, Thomas is sure: he will follow Jesus and die with him. That’s what any good disciple would do. Thomas thought himself a good–maybe even a perfect–disciple.

This episode shadows the one we read today. Thomas, who was once willing to follow Christ to his death, has now discovered something about himself. When Christ was arrested and taken away, tried and crucified, Thomas fled. As sure as he had been that he would follow and die with Christ, when the time came, he couldn’t do it. He ran away and hid out. And he was left with shame, with guilt, with disappointment in himself. He was faced with his true self–and it’s a far cry from that grandiose person, that perfect disciple he thought he was. He’s not willing to just accept that Christ is back from the dead. Such a sight would confront him with those memories of fleeing, the disappointment he harbored at his response, the shame and guilt he felt at what he had done. 

More than doubt, I think Thomas struggled with a sort of perfectionism, a perfectionism that had been destroyed that Good Friday and replaced with internal shame and loathing. The events of Holy Week showed him he was far from the perfect disciple he thought he was; no, he had fallen, and fallen all the way to the bottom. 

Have you ever been confronted with yourself like that, with your own failings that strip you of any illusion that you are perfect? If you have, perhaps you can understand Thomas’s response to his fellow disciples. 

This happens to us in all sorts of ways. We start diets and exercise regimens, and we don’t live up to our expectations. New Year’s resolutions end before January is out; sometimes Lenten fasts don’t last a whole 40 days. We make plans–financial plans, careers plans, family plans–and they fall through. We break our promises: our promises to our friends, our promises to our children, our promises to our spouses, our promises to ourselves, our promises to God. Like Thomas, we are confronted with a hard truth about ourselves at each failing: We are not perfect, and we cannot live up to that perfect version of ourselves that lives in our minds, that we try to cling to. And we suffer for it. We carry around shame and guilt. Our esteem is damaged. It all weighs us down, a heavy, self-imposed yoke. 

Then Christ shows up. In Christ and his perfect love, we are painfully confronted with all of those ways we don’t love, those things we have failed in, the brokenness in our lives. We are confronted with that heavy yoke of suffering, of promises broken, of pain imposed, of perfection thwarted. But what does Christ do? He invites us to come to him and lay those burdens down. Come here, Thomas, Jesus says. “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Yes, Thomas, you fled, you hid out, you did not live up to your own expectations of perfection. But come to me anyway, and lay down those heavy burdens you have heaped on yourself. 

In Matthew Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” It’s Jesus’s invitation to Thomas, and us, today. Come to me, lay down your burdens of past failures, of promises broken, of disappointment at your own human imperfection. Lay all of that down and just come to Jesus. And he will give you rest. Take off that heavy yoke of perfection you have made for yourself. And put on Jesus’s yoke. For his yoke is easy and his burden is light. 

The 50 days of Easter are about God’s victory over sin and death, God’s victory over everything in this world. Nothing is too big for God: No sin is too great, no fear is too insurmountable, no burden too heavy. God has conquered all through the death and resurrection of Christ. And that includes our failings, our missteps, our disappointments, our human imperfections. For in the end, Christ does not ask us to live up to that vision of perfection we carry around within us. He knows we cannot live up to that. No, he just asks us to come to him; to die to our sin, our way, our illusions of perfection; and then to live. To live by him and with him and in him, forever and ever. 

A sermon for Easter Day
April 17, 2022

“Woman, why are you weeping?” Mary Magdalene has come to the tomb of her friend and teacher. She has come to anoint his body after the unimaginable, after a tortuous death, a brutal death, a public death. After resting on the Sabbath, she has come to do her part, to give this man executed as a criminal the last religious rites: the anointing of his body. She no doubt spent the Sabbath preparing. Preparing the spices. Preparing herself. Preparing herself to see him again. To see his mangled corpse. There had been much weeping. 

She comes to the garden. The other gospels tell us other women joined her. John just focuses on Mary. She arrives. The stone is rolled away. The place abandoned. She runs to tell the others. They come and see, and then they leave again. She stays. She weeps some more, her eyes nearly spent from crying. She looks in the tomb and sees the angels, perched at the head and the foot, just like the angels on the Ark of the Covenant. It doesn’t register. “Why are you weeping?” “They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him.” 

Another man approaches. “Woman why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She doesn’t recognize him, either. She pleads with the gardener. 

Grief does strange things to a person. It sends us headlong into a fog. We put ourselves to work at a task–preparing spices and ointments, calling the funeral home, writing the obituary. But there is a fog that doesn’t lift for some time. Through this fog we cannot see clearly. Mary Magdalene cannot either. She has the tunnelvision of grief. Where is the body? I must anoint the body. 

Jesus speaks. “Mary!” “Teacher!” she cries. His voice of love expels the fog. His voice of love expels all of those other voices screaming in Mary’s ears–the voice of worry, the voice of anxiety, the voice of fear, the voice of grief and death. He speaks. She recognizes her Lord. 

In chapter 10 of John, Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” That’s Mary. She hears the voice of Jesus. She is snapped from her all-consuming, tunnelvision, grief-stricken reality. Her Lord is standing there. Alive. And in that moment, the fullness of the Church, the fullness of this Body that confesses the Resurrection, is held completely and entirely and only in Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles. She has seen the Lord. She has heard his voice of love. It is not a mirage. It is not some cheap metaphor. It is a real Resurrection. Christ is as alive as you and I are right here, right now. 

Of course, this isn’t the only time God has spoken in a garden. God is a gardener from way back. In Genesis we have a similar story. You remember it. Adam and Eve have eaten from the fruit. They have sinned. They discover their nakedness. They have listened to those other voices–the voice of the serpent, the voice of going their own way, the voice of pride, the voice of greed, the voice telling them they can be greater than God. And then the voice of God, the voice of love, speaks. “Where are you?” Adam, son of earth, where are you? Adam and Eve stay hidden in the bushes. Mary lunges for the risen Christ, her teacher and Lord, clinging to that voice that banishes all others. She’s a sheep who will follow. Adam and Eve hide out, ashamed. They know the voice of God, but unlike Mary, they are not keen on running toward it. They have bought into the other voices. 

Today, as Christians, we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. Not a metaphor. Not a neat story. But a real story, with a literal Resurrection, a real body that was really dead but now is really alive. And that Resurrected One is calling our individual names, just as he called Mary’s name. “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” Will we follow? After all, there are plenty of other voices competing. The voice of pride calls to us, telling us to lift ourselves up and our wants up over God. The voice of hatred calls to us, telling us it is okay to hate others who aren’t like us. The voice of conceit calls to us, telling us we’re better than others for whatever reason. The voice of war calls, telling us love and peace are fools’ errands. At their root, it’s the voice of fear. The voice that says we’re not good enough. That God doesn’t care for us. That we have to look out for ourselves because no one else will. That we have been abandoned, left to our own devices. Take that fruit from the tree. Resign yourself to your fear. 

In the middle of all of that, the voice of Love calls you by your name. The voice of love speaks through the fog, through pride, hatred, conceit, violence, all of our fears. And that voice of Love, of Love that is resurrected and alive, that perfect love casts out all of those fears. If we will allow him. 

Our duty and delight is to run toward his voice. To cling to that voice. That’s what we do in worship and prayer. Like Mary, running toward her Lord, allowing that voice of Love to thunder over the competing and cacophonous voices of the world. Like Mary, we will hear the Resurrected Christ, that Voice of Love, calling us, by name, to new and transformed resurrected life. Right now and forever. 

A sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter
April 16, 2022

For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven: By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures.” 

Do we believe this? Over this Triduum, these three holy days, I have been asking this question. Do we believe? We say this statement week after week in the Nicene Creed, but is it something we truly, really believe? That Christ came for us, that he died for us, and that he was literally and bodily and physically raised from the dead, for us and for our salvation? 

I have been telling us Ann’s story. Her story is not so different from ours, really. A respectable woman in a middle class family. She grew up in the church, but fell away for years. She came back when her kids were teenagers, not for them, but for herself. She needed Jesus, and she met Jesus at her church, just as we do, week after week. Several months after she started coming back, the Bishop visited. Her teenagers and her husband were confirmed; she renewed her baptismal vows alongside them, just as we did earlier in this service. She reaffirmed her renunciation of evil and renewed her commitment to Jesus Christ. She said, “with God’s grace I will follow him as my Savior and Lord.” And that’s what she has done–by God’s grace. 

When I met her several years ago, it was in a Sunday school class. We were all sitting around a table. It was the Easter season, and she spoke up. She wasn’t shy about sharing her opinion. “Can I be honest?” she asked. “I have always had trouble with the Resurrection. I mean, how can someone who is dead come back to life? We know that isn’t possible!” We spent the rest of the class talking about the Resurrection and what it means. 

Our reading from Luke takes us to that empty tomb. We don’t see Jesus, not yet. But the women see a couple of angels. “Why do you search for the living among the dead?” they ask. “He is not here, but has risen.” The women rush back to tell the others. But Luke tells us, “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” Ann would have probably called these words an idle tale, too. A metaphor for something else, perhaps, but not physical, not literal. It just didn’t make rational sense to her. 

That began to change one Holy Week a couple of years later. Ann was busy. Busy at her office, and busy at the church, like many of you. She had a full work schedule, but she also enjoyed helping with the Holy Week liturgies. She was a reader, on the altar guild, helped with flowers. All of this while caring for her father in his early 90s. He lived in the same town as she did, in an apartment at a senior living community. She would go see him everyday. In Holy Week, she would pick him up and take him to each service. They were cut from the same cloth. 

It was Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday. The Vigil would be that night. She called her father on Saturday morning to tell him the schedule. No answer. He must be out for coffee. She called around lunch. No answer. He must be out for lunch. She called at 2:00. No answer. Worried, she called his neighbor. Yes, his car was in its usual spot. She drove over. Her father had died in his sleep the night before after the Good Friday service. They called the manager of the senior living community, who called the coroner. She and her husband called the priest. He arrived before the coroner, and they knelt by his bed to say the litany at the time of death. Last rites. She doesn’t remember the rest of the day. Losing someone at any time is hard. But losing her father at Easter, with all this talk of death, burial, and resurrection, seemed extra painful for her. Of all times, why Holy Week? Why Holy Saturday? Why Easter? She was in darkness, in the tomb. It was night for her, indeed.

Time passed on, as it always does. Grief doesn’t go away, even for a man who died at 94. But it does get easier to carry. Eventually the sting of grief was softened with gratitude, gratitude for the many years together, for the wonderful times, for the memories. Like it always does, Holy Week and Easter came around again. 

The next year, she had a different experience of Holy Week and Easter. On the advice of her priest, she didn’t help with anything. No reading. No altar guild. No flowers. She just came to pray. She heard the stories from the pew. The Last Supper. The talk of Jesus’s coming death. The arrest, trial, and torture. The death on the cross. The burial. And she was like those women we find at the tomb tonight. Her grief came back. Her cheeks were stained with tears, her heart full of pain. 

She visited her father’s grave on Holy Saturday. She took flowers. She prayed the prayers for Holy Saturday morning, while Christ is still in the tomb, just her and her dad. “O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life.”

To newness of life. Standing at the grave of this man she loved so much, more than life, that phrase caught in her throat. To newness of life. That’s the promise of the Resurrection of Christ: newness of life. St. Paul says it this way in our reading from Romans: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” If we have been united with Christ in baptism, resurrection awaits us. 

Suddenly for Ann, this reasonable skeptic who had trouble believing in a literal, bodily resurrection–suddenly a metaphorical resurrection wasn’t enough for her. Because if Jesus were only metaphorically raised, then what did that mean for her dad? It meant that he would only be metaphorically raised, too, perhaps as a memory that would last a few decades and then pass away forever, as his name was lost to the annals of time. A metaphor wasn’t enough. No. The resurrection had to be literal, physical, bodily. Because if Jesus, the first fruits, was physically and literally and bodily resurrected, then that meant her dad would be physically, literally, bodily resurrected, too. She would see him again in glory. And he would never be lost. Not to God. Not to her. At that moment, a fire of hope was kindled in the darkness of her grief, like the first fire of the Easter Vigil. Not optimism. Not wishful thinking. But hope. A real and eternal hope you can hang your hat on. 

Do we believe that in that hope? Do we trust in that promise? Do we live as if this is the defining reality of our lives?

“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” That promise is for Ann and her dad. It’s for you and for me. It’s for all who have died with Christ in Holy Baptism. Thanks be to God, and alleluia!

A sermon for Good Friday
April 15, 2022

“For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried.” 

Do we believe this? As I said yesterday, my sermons over this Triduum, the three holy days, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter, all center on this same question: Do we believe? Do we believe that Christ has come for us and for our salvation? That Christ accomplishes our salvation and all that we need for our souls through his life, death, and resurrection? Do we believe? 

Today we gather with the church stripped of its usual ornaments. In a few moments, a rude cross will be placed in our midst. Not a fancy cross. Not one covered in gold. But a wooden cross. It is a reminder that Christ died, not on one of those fancy crosses we wear around our necks, but on a wooden, Roman cross. An unsanded cross with splinters. A most brutal tool of execution, of prolonged suffering. We see this cross, we remember this death, and we call it all good. It is a horrible death, but it is a saving death. It is a terrible Friday, but it is a good Friday–the best of all Fridays. For in this act, in Christ’s dying, in his blood shed, we have the forgiveness of sins and the hope of new life. All of this is for us and for our salvation. 

Yesterday I talked about Ann and about how she came back to church. She found that there was a place in her soul that was reserved only for God. Nothing in this world could satisfy that longing, that restlessness within her heart. For it is the Temple of God, the place where God desires to reign from the midst of our lives. Ann came to believe that Christ has really given us himself, in the bread and wine at the Eucharist, his Body and Blood, to nourish us and feed that part of our soul reserved for him. 

Ann is a good Episcopalian now. Like us. She has served on her church’s vestry. She and her husband pledge annually. They are at church on Sunday–I would bet at church right now for Good Friday. They try to pray Morning Prayer and remember to say grace before meals. But Ann is also human. She is a sinner. Like us. She would tell you that. 

For as many years as Ann was out of church, she fell right back into a church routine. She found her activities, her friends in her big church. They put the Episcopal shield stickers on the back of their cars and shared their church’s social media announcements. Ann and her family look like they have it all together. Just like us. 

Ann and her husband are classy people. You only ever see them at their best. Their home is always picked up, the yard always pristine, the cars always washed, their dogs don’t shed. They have a good public image. So good, in fact, the church put them on an ad this year. “Come worship with us this Easter,” the ad says. The picture on the ad is a picture of Ann, her husband, their two boys, ages 16 and 19. Their dog is in it. They are standing in front of their church. Looking at that ad, you might be tempted to think, “Hey, they have it all together. That must be the church where all the together people go. The people who know what they’re doing, who aren’t too bad.”

Christ died for them. Christ died for Ann and her husband and children. Christ died for all the together people. Christ died for all the unkempt, the untogether people, too. Christ died for those with good yards and pretty homes. Christ died for those who have concrete instead of grass, who live in cardboard boxes. Christ died for those with family photos lining the hallways. Christ died for those who have no family, or no family they want to be with. Christ died for those with nice cars and hypoallergenic dogs. Christ died for those who are just hoping their car will start, who can’t afford to take the dog to the vet. Christ died for all the lovely people. And Christ died for unlovely, too, for those who are impossible to love. Christ died for those who will go into that church, and this church, on Sunday. And Christ died for those who don’t even know it’s Easter. Christ died for all. Christ died for you. 

Christ died. For us and for our salvation. So our sins might be forgiven. So his righteousness, his holiness, his blood might cover our lives and make us worthy before God. For all of that, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came to die. To break our curse of sin and death, the curse that has haunted humanity since Adam and Eve took the fruit. 

It’s a curse we all have–this sin and death. It’s a reality for Ann and her put-together family. It’s just as much a reality for them as it is for that person who never steps foot in church, for that person who lives on the streets, and for you and for me. For all of us he came to live and to die. To really die. There is no last minute magic trick. There is no slight of hand. There is no anesthesia to numb the experience. God in the flesh, God Incarnate, God is dead as a doornail on the cross. Jesus’s body begins to decompose. There are no vitals. He is dead. Brutally dead. For us. For our sin. In order to take away our curse of death, of sin, of shame. 

That’s why we call this horrible death, this terrible Friday, good. A Good Friday. The best of Fridays. Because Christ has died in our place, taking our sin, taking our death, and giving us the hope of eternal life, of redemption, of forgiveness. 

But sometimes, I think we believe that Christ only died for the best part of us. I think we only believe that Christ died for that postcard version of us, like Ann and her family on the church advertisement. It’s easy to believe that Christ died for that–for us when we’re put together, our best behavior, everything figured out on our own. But can we believe that Christ died for us when we’re at our worst? Can we believe that Christ died for us–the part of us very few others, maybe no one else, sees? The part of us that remains hidden, secret, tucked away, unloveable? The part of ourselves we hide in shame? 

Christ didn’t die for you at your best only. Christ’s death and the salvation that comes from that death does not come with conditions or asterisks. Christ died for you–for the real you, the you that perhaps only you know well. Christ died for everything you are–your good qualities and the most shameful part of you. For you, even at your worst moments. Christ died for you and the salvation of your whole soul. Not just the parts we like to show off to other people, not just the parts we show off at church or on social media, but for all of who we are. 

And here’s the thing: his cross, his blood, his death, they are enough. They are enough for you. They are enough for all of you. The grace of his death, the grace of this Good Friday, the love of God shown in this sacrifice, it’s all enough to cover you and everything you are. It’s enough to cover every part of us. 

Christ died for you. For everything you are. Do we believe that? 

A sermon for Maundy Thursday
April 14, 2022

“For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.” We say these words week after week in the Nicene Creed. My question for us this Triduum, the question that I will ask tonight, tomorrow night, and Saturday night, is this: Do we really believe that? Do we really believe that Christ has come for us and for our salvation? 

At one point in her life, Ann would not have known what to tell you. She was raised in the church, like most everybody else in her hometown. Baptized, confirmed, the whole thing. She went off to college and got off track. She didn’t get off track in any big way. She lived a respectable life, nothing shocking. She would still pop into church occasionally when she visited home. She was married by the Episcopal priest. She had a couple of kids. A happy marriage. An interior designer, she put in hours and hours. Her kids were baptized in the church, like she was, but they rarely went to church. Easter and Christmas mostly. 

It happened one day, a normal day, nothing special about this day. Her kids were now teenagers. She woke up next to her husband, 6:30 am. One of her kids’ alarm clocks had been going off for a solid 10 minutes. She yelled at him to get up–a normal thing. She turned on the coffee pot and watched the coffee drip. Then something hit her. What it was, she couldn’t say. 

There are many words to describe it: a cloud, a veil, a curtain, a void, a sadness, an uncertainty, a falling oblivion, a restlessness, a spiritual malaise, an emptiness. Staring at that coffee pot, all she could think was, “What is this all for?” This life, this routine, this rat race, everyday the same–why? What is meaningful in all of this? 

She had had different answers to that question at one point or another. Success in her career–but she had a thriving interior design company, and there was still an emptiness. Financial security–but they were doing fine, more than fine, and still there was an emptiness. Participating in community causes–she was on several boards, active in everything, but that didn’t take the emptiness away. Making memories with her kids–she loved that more than she could say, but why was there this emptiness gnawing at her? 

There was a hole in her soul. An emptiness. A restlessness. And nothing, no matter how good or praiseworthy or noble or pure or lovely, nothing seemed to fill that void. Ann’s is a common dilemma. It’s the human dilemma. 

Without God, there is no way out of this dilemma. We cannot puzzle our way out on our own. We cannot work our way out of this spiritual malaise. That void in our souls was meant for God, and nothing else, no matter how good or praiseworthy or noble or pure or lovely, nothing in this world can fill that emptiness. It’s the place reserved for God and for God alone. St. Augustine of Hippo said it this way: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” 

You likely know where I’m headed with this. Ann found her way back to an Episcopal church. The first Sunday, she settled in a pew. It was not the same church she grew up in. But she knew the words. The prayer book seemed to fit naturally in her hands. The words–words she thought she had long forgotten–bubbled up, almost like natural instinct. And when she went up for Communion, everything was automatic. Her hands unfolded to receive the bread as naturally they ever did. “The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven.” The chalice, as awkward as that exchange can sometimes be, transported her back to receiving Communion with her parents and grandparents. “The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” And in some way, although not all at once, that curtain began to lift. That veil edged up slightly. That emptiness didn’t feel so heavy; the restlessness was not so daunting. 

Each of us has a space in our soul for God. Our hearts yearn for God, they are restless for God. And we try to fill that yearning, that restlessness, in so many ways. Not necessarily in bad ways. We throw ourselves into our good work. We contribute to worthy causes and work hard for our communities. We spend time with our family, make memories with our children. These things are all good and praiseworthy and noble and pure and lovely. But it’s not all there is. There is a space yet reserved for God, and for God alone. 

On Maundy Thursday we remember the Last Supper, that first Eucharist. Christ takes bread: This is my Body. He takes the cup: This is my Blood. Do this in remembrance of me. We read those words tonight in St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, written around 50 AD, a mere 20 years after Christ’s death. From the time of the Last Supper, Christians have been gathering weekly with bread and wine, praying the prayers, and taking the Body and Blood of Christ. Here, 2,000 years later, we do the same thing. And just like Christ was there at that Last Supper, he is here tonight. The bread that we break is his Body. The wine that we share is his Blood. He is really here. He has put himself, his presence, his life, on offer for us. And this bread and wine, this Body and Blood, this spiritual food is feeding that part of our souls that only God can reach. 

For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven. Do we believe that? Do we trust that? Are we willing to take him at his word? He came down from heaven in order to give us himself: this is my Body, this is my Blood. Do this in remembrance of me. And nothing else in this world can take his place. 

In a few moments we will break that bread and share that cup. And Christ will be here. Christ will be present in the bread and wine. Christ will be present at your fingertips and on your lips. Christ will be present in your heart, in that spot in your soul that only God can reach. And like Ann, we will find that we are fed–fed with true food and true drink, with Christ himself, who gives us himself completely and without reservation–for us and for our salvation. Everything our souls need for eternity is at this Altar. Do we believe that?

A sermon for Palm Sunday: Sunday of the Passion
April 10, 2022

This is not what we expected.  

“This is not what we expected,” said the crowds that laid down palm branches and cloaks to herald the Messiah on a donkey, who now hangs suspended between heaven and earth on a Roman cross. The victorious conqueror they imagined appears to be vanquished and conquered, breathing his last, yet another example of the brutality of the Roman Empire in their occupied land. 

“This is not what we expected,” said the twelve disciples as Jesus took bread and wine at a familiar feast, and said, this is my body, this is my blood. They revolt at the announcement that Jesus was near death’s door. They take offense at his claim that they would desert him. 

“This is not what I expected,” said Peter after the arrest, as he followed Jesus from the garden to the courtyard. He thought he could stay by Jesus’ side, but he denied–one time, two times, three times–I do not know the man. 

“This is not what I expected,” said Pontius Pilate, as he washed his hands. Here was a man in which he could find no fault, and yet the crowds cry, crucify him, and give us Barabbas. 

“This is not what I expected,” said Simon of Cyrene, a passing visitor in town for the Passover, as he was forced to pick up the cross from a struggling man, badly beaten, whom he had never seen, that he would be bathed in the blood of this man sent to die for reasons Simon didn’t even know.. 

“This is not what we expected,” said the women at the foot of the cross, as they watched Jesus suffer, cry out to God forsaken, and die. Their grief and shock were overwhelming. And how could they, all women, be the only followers of Jesus there?  

“This is not what I expected,” said the Centurion at the cross, as the sky turned black, as the veil of the Temple was torn in two, as the earth shook. “Truly this man was God’s Son,” he said as he watched the lifeless body of Jesus, still nailed to the tree. And yet this Roman soldier confessed  who Jesus is: the Son of God. 

“This is not what I expected,” said Joseph of Arimathea, as he led a group with the body of Jesus to a new tomb. Joseph thought that he would lie there with his family, but now this great rabbi lies there instead.  

Is this what we expected? Did we expect that God would become man and die? Did we expect that God’s power would be shown in weakness, in pain, in suffering, in death? Did we expect that we, mere fickle human beings, would turn so quickly from shouting “Hosanna” to “Crucify him!”? 

Palm Sunday reminds us that this story we know so well, the story we tell week after week at the Eucharist, is something unexpected. God in Jesus Christ subverts what we think of power and strength, for in Jesus Christ power is shown in submission, and strength is shown in weakness, even to the point of death. We look for God and find God where we do not expect: in a beaten, tortured man on a cross; in a scarecrow lifted high and mocked as a king; in a dead man laid in a borrowed tomb. 

It is still in the unexpected that we find Jesus. We find him in those places where we don’t tend to look, in forgotten places, in unseen corners of the world. We find the crucified Christ in people who do not look like us, who are so different from us, in the faces of the poor and the oppressed. We find the crucified Christ in the war torn areas of our world, among the scared and dying. We find the crucified Christ in ourselves, staring back at us in the mirror, in the middle of our broken lives. We find the crucified Christ in our suffering, in our pain, and in our death. 

This is not what we expected. This is not who we expected–God Incarnate, riding into our lives on a donkey. God in the flesh, on a cross, sharing our death. 

Today, we remember and celebrate all that is unexpected about Jesus as we are invited, once again, to walk his final steps to his death with him through this Holy Week.  Come and see and be surprised to discover the depths of his Passion for us, the great unexpected shock that awaits us all on the other side of his cross.  

A sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent
April 3, 2022

We learn early on to count our losses and gains. Growing up I had a toy abacus, one of those ancient instruments for counting and commerce. It had five or so rows of different colored beads. I would move the different colored beads from one side to the other to count and compare sides of a ledger, keeping track of what was pulling ahead, what was falling behind. I think the point of the toy was to help with math. But at a deeper level, perhaps, toys like this make us learn to attach value to things, to quantify everything. The one who has more is the winner, and that’s good. That means you’re worth something. The one who has nothing–or worse, the one who has less than nothing, who owes something–is the loser, less than. We can calculate worth on the beads of an abacus. 

This impacts our friendships. Researchers have shown that when we buy gifts for other people, we equate the value of a friendship with money and the monetary value of previous gift exchanges. We think, “They got me a gift last time; it was probably $30. So I should spend $35. Yeah, my friendship with them is worth $35.”

We can count worth on the beads of an abacus. But it also impacts our own life. This old pattern we learned from the time we were toddlers dies hard. As we grow, we can figure out a percentage of how worthy we are based on papers or tests we turn in, or by an ACT score or scholarship amount, or by our number of volunteer hours. As we grow older yet, we can calculate our worth with a calculator; our value is tied to our 401(k), our investment portfolio, the number of degrees we have, the number of streams of income we have, the number of toys we have (boats, cars, ATVs). We race to a finish line in life, worried whether at the end we will be a winner, or if the market will beat us down into losers. 

Yes, we can calculate worth on the beads of an abacus. It is a dangerous game. It is consuming. If we aren’t careful, it eats at us until it devours us, until our soul is replaced by a pocketbook, by prestige, by power. This game is nothing new. The things we count changes over time, but the danger is the same: We only see our value in countable things outside us. We fail to see our belovedness as children of God–a belovedness that has nothing to do with what we have done, but only with what God has done in Christ.  

In our reading from Philippians, Paul is writing along the same lines. Paul is writing to a group of people he knows and loves dearly, people who have been there for him. At times his writing in this book is poetic, breaking out into song about the mystery of the Incarnation and the love of God. Today’s passage is sandwiched between these better known, uplifting passages. But it sounds a little different. 

Paul is taking up an old discourse, a conversation already in progress, a conversation that has defined his ministry to the Gentiles. There are those who are preaching that the Gentiles must do more to be accepted into the covenant. Paul rejects this. While Paul himself is a Torah observant Jew, like Jesus himself was, Paul believes Gentile converts do not need to keep the Law in all the same ways that Jews do. 

Paul begins by reviewing his resume–and it is some resume at that. He writes, “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more.” He calls himself a Hebrew of Hebrews, someone who has followed the Law faithfully from his birth. He calls himself “blameless.” That is some claim. He is calling out his rival preachers and beating them at their own game, on their own terms. He is moving the beads of the abacus, one by one, to his side of the ledger. 

But then he breaks the abacus. “Whatever gains I had,” Paul writes, “These I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.” His confidence. Loss. His religious credentials. Loss. His righteousness. Loss. 

We all have things we are proud of. Like Paul, we have worked hard–tirelessly–for some things. Degrees. Jobs and promotions. Toys. Friendships. And like Paul, even our religious devotion. All beads on our abacus. We can reimagine what Paul is saying: I am a Christian of Christians. A member of the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement. I am faithful in worship and giving. I give to the poor. I fight for justice and peace. I keep my Lenten fast. 

But the problem arises when these things become idols. When these things are lifted up above what is truly important, when instead of pointing to God, they point to ourselves. For while these things are important and praise-worthy–while these things are even necessary, they cannot begin to scratch the surface of God’s love for us and the grace we have received. Nor can these things earn us anything, for we have been given everything already. All of it is loss in comparison to what God has done in Christ.

When our striving sidelines grace, when our own righteousness replaces faith, we’ve missed the mark. Paul is calling us to break the abacus. Paul is calling the Philippians and us back to Christ. “I want to know Christ,” Paul says. “I want to know Christ.” This is not about deeds of righteousness or checklists. It’s not about resumes or accomplishments. It’s not about quantifying impact or importance. It’s not about our ledger of value and worth. It is about falling into the heart of God. It’s about sharing the life of God. It’s a journey into Christ. 

Break the abacus. Let’s put on Christ. Let’s see ourselves through the eyes of God. Let’s understand ourselves, at our core, to be beloved of God. Break the abacus. 

Someone once told me that Paul’s letter to the Philippians is a love letter–a love letter between Paul and this faithful congregation, a love letter about the love of God for us. Philippians is a love letter, they said–except chapter three. A love letter–except the part we read today. Today’s passage just did not seem to go along with the rest. It seems competitive, boastful, out of place. 

I do not think that’s correct. I think this passage is just as much part of the love letter as the rest of it. Paul is pouring out his heart here, just as much as he is elsewhere. It is a word of warning to people he loves, a word of warning about where we put our trust, about how we value ourselves. And it’s a word of encouragement about seeing ourselves as Christ does, seeing ourselves beloved of God, seeing ourselves floating in a sea of grace, surrounded by God’s endless love.  

It’s a love letter to us. It’s an invitation into love, into belovedness, into a truer way of seeing our lives.  Break the abacus. You can’t count your worth there. There aren’t enough beads to even begin to scratch the surface of how loved and valuable you are to God.  

A sermon preached for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 27, 2022

I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.

These are familiar words to us, the words of the so-called prodigal son after he realizes how far he has fallen into sin. After squandering all he has been given, here he finds himself in a pig pen–a Jew in a pig pen–with no hope. But he comes to himself and realizes he can go home, even just as a servant. And he hopes beyond hope that his father will somehow find it in his heart to forgive him. 

We all know this story so well. It is one of Jesus’s best known parables, and it is all about forgiveness. About how God forgives us and never gives up on us. It’s also about how we can accept forgiveness, or grow in pride, resentment, and hatred. 

We call it the parable of the prodigal son, but that’s not what Jesus calls it. Jesus starts the parable by saying, “there was a man who had two sons.” For Jesus, this is the parable of the two sons. Which son would you rather be? The one who finds himself rehearsing his lines in the pig pen, or the one who dutifully stays home and cannot believe his father is such a pushover? No matter which son we are, the father is there, waiting for us. For like Jesus, the father in the parable, our stand-in for God, “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” That’s you and me. 

Let’s look at the parable. Out of greed, the prodigal son cashes in his inheritance early. He goes off to a distant country, outside of Israel. There he squanders everything on dissolute living. He hits rock bottom, and only then is he able to look up, to realize what he had, and he dares to go back to his father. But he does not do so with any pride or arrogance; all of that has been stripped away. He goes humbly, knowing he has messed up, simply asking to be a servant. 

He is a model of what repentance looks like. He knows he has messed up, and messed up badly. He acknowledges he has messed up, and he confesses his sin to his father. He asks for grace. He isn’t demanding his former place, for he knows he could not deserve that. He lowers himself as low as he can, and he begs for mercy. The youngest son that once was oozing pride and greed and lust and envy at the beginning of our parable has now been taken down to size. Instead of pride, greed, lust, and envy, we see humility, lowliness of heart, sincerity, meekness. He knows he is a sinner. And he prays that simple prayer: Father, have mercy on me, a sinner.  

Truthfully, most of us cannot identify with that youngest son. In fact, when I ask folks who they identify with in the parable, at least 90% of people will say the oldest son. The youngest son is just too much unlike many of us. But I bet he wasn’t unlike the people Jesus was eating with. Maybe, as they heard the story, they exchanged looks of recognition with one another. “Oh yeah, I’ve been there before.” 

We usually identify with the elder son–I always have. But I’m not so sure about that now. The elder son shows up at the end of the parable, but he’s been there all along. He saw how brazenly his younger brother took his inheritance. He would shake his head in disbelief as his father doled out the cash. Maybe he had already written off his younger brother. As the father watched the road for the return of the younger son, I wonder where the elder son was? Did he care anymore? When his brother comes back, all of this hatred comes out on his father. Jesus tells us he is so angry he even refuses to go into the party, refuses to welcome his brother back. He’s dead to him. “Listen!” he tells his father, “For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” Can you hear his anger, his resentment and bitterness? 

The parable ends there. No reconciliation. The older son refuses to show mercy, refuses to give grace to his brother, he cuts off the relationship. The father gives his explanation, but Jesus doesn’t tell us that the elder son admitted his wrong, asked forgiveness, and went into the party to welcome his brother home. No. Jesus just leaves us hanging. 

Maybe Jesus doesn’t have to tell us the end, because everyone in the room around him already knew it. When Jesus finished telling the group about the prodigal, we imagined that all those sinners and tax collectors in the room shared a knowing glance. “That’s me. I’ve been there before. Thank heaven I’m not there now.” In the same way, when Jesus ends the parable, I imagine there are some more knowing glances, but this time between those grumbling pharisees and scribes. “Oh, Jesus is saying we’re that elder son.” 

Is it better to be the prodigal, or the older brother? Is it better to be the one who fell so fast but asked for mercy, or the one who did what he was told but in pride, with hatred, resentment, and bitterness in his heart, refused to show mercy?  

Maybe we haven’t fallen as low as the prodigal. Maybe we have. Regardless, I hope we can all adopt his spirit of lowliness, of humility. I hope, like him, we can all recognize that we need mercy and grace, even if we don’t deserve it. I certainly hope we are not like that older brother, so full of ourselves, so puffed up with pride, that we close the door to mercy, we close the door to grace, we close the door to reconciliation and healing and wholeness and love. It’s better to be prodigal but repentant, than prideful and merciless.

The truth is, we’re all sinners in need of the Father’s mercy and grace and forgiveness. And it’s on offer. God’s got it on tap. But like the elder son, it is so easy to cut ourselves off from it. It is so easy to get puffed up in pride, to put our noses up in the air at those sinners over there, and to rely on our own work, our own righteousness, our own goodness–when the truth is our own work and righteousness and goodness do not amount to anything at all. No matter who we are, we need the Father’s mercy and forgiveness and love. And we can have it. We just have to take a lesson from the prodigal, and, in humility and sincerity, ask for it. Jesus is telling us today to be like the prodigal. 

We carry around a lot–each one of us. We carry shame from past mistakes. We carry guilt that keeps us awake at night. We carry around those what-ifs that never go away. Those old tapes of past misdeeds play in our mind on repeat. We think that what we’ve done, who we are, is somehow unforgivable–that the father will have nothing to do with us. Perhaps like that elder son, we carry around pride, too, some resentment, bitterness, and hatred. Whatever it is we carry, we beat ourselves up, never letting go of that past, never letting ourselves be forgiven or daring to forgive ourselves. And we fear–fear that there is no hope for us and we will be left alone, unloved by God our Father, unloved by Christ himself. We fear we cannot be redeemed. 

But that’s a lie. We can be redeemed. We can be forgiven. We are loved. When we dare to be like the prodigal, we ask for mercy and grace and forgiveness, and we lay all of those heavy burdens down. We don’t find a vengeful father who throws us out. We don’t find that all of our worst fears of rejection come true. We do not find that we can never be loved or forgiven. By no means. Instead, we find a Father who picks us up again, who restores us even though we do not deserve it, who gives us grace and love. Because for the father, for God, forgiveness is easy and love is who he is. We don’t have to keep beating ourselves up. We don’t have to wallow in shame and guilt. We just have to ask for forgiveness. 

You and I, we can go home. The Father is already watching and waiting for us. The arms of God are open wide, waiting to embrace you, waiting with forgiveness and love.  

A sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent
March 20, 2022

“Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Jesus is not beating around the bush here. He’s really telling us like it is. Repent. Turn around. Turn to God. It’s the call of this penitential season. In Lent we acknowledge we don’t have it all figured out. We are sinners in need of God’s grace. Perhaps, though, I am preaching to the choir, as they say. After all, we good people are in church, where we confess our sins all the time, not just during Lent. The truth is, though, we good church people need this message desperately. 

The people Jesus is talking to today considered themselves good church people, like us; they were righteous, trying to follow God, concerned with the ways of God. They come to Jesus today and tell him about two tragedies. The first is an apparent massacre by Pilate, and we know he was a brutal ruler. So brutal, in fact, that Rome would eventually recall and remove him from his post. He went too far, even for Rome. The second is an accident where a tower fell on people. We don’t know the details of either of these events; they have been lost to the historical record. But based on Jesus’s response, we can surmise that the people coming to Jesus must have thought that those who died were somehow deserving because they were sinful. “Hey Jesus,” they must have said, “Did you hear about those Galileans that were killed, and about those people who were killed when that tower fell. They must have been sinners, huh? I’m glad we’re not like that. We’re church good people. We go to church every Sunday. We give a pledge. We volunteer. We sing the hymns and pray the prayers. Yes, we’re good church people–not like them.” 

Jesus hears what they’re saying, and then says something startling, something that must have shocked them. He warns those good church people to look out: “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” He’s saying, you may be in church every Sunday; you may give a pledge; you may give your time and talent; you may sing and pray; but you’re a sinner. Repent. 

His warning is for us, too, the good church people today. If we’re not careful, we can fall into the same trap of self-righteousness. We can think, oh we’re so good and we have it all figured out. That’s exactly the moment when we push our savior out of the picture. That’s exactly the moment when we know we’re not living by God’s grace and mercy. Because the truth is, yes, we try to do right. We try to do good. We come to church. We pledge. We give of our time and talent to worthy and holy causes. We sing the hymns and say the prayers. And all of that pleases God. But we’re still sinners. And we still need Jesus. We’re not all good by ourselves; we need our savior.  

A favorite theologian of mine, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, said something along these lines. He is comparing the church–the real church with real people–to what he calls the pious community. So often, instead of encountering the real church with real people, we encounter this pious community. Said another way, instead of meeting sinners in the pews, we meet good church people who have it all figured out. Here’s what Bonhoeffer said: 

The pious community permits no one to be a sinner. We are not allowed to be sinners. Many Christians would be unimaginably horrified if a real sinner were suddenly to turn up among the pious. So we remain alone with our sin, trapped in lies and hypocrisy, for we are in fact sinners.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together

I hope we Episcopalians on the Prairie have enough grace to fess up to who we are: we’re not good church people; we’re sinners. Sure, we try. We try to do good. We give our time, talent, and treasure. We sing the hymns and say the prayers. And we know that all of that pleases God! But we don’t have it all figured out. We can’t save ourselves. This is not a pious community, full of perfect, good church people. This is the church. And that means we are a community of sinners, and we need Jesus. We need his grace, his forgiveness, his love, his life. And if one of those sinners, out there, walks through our doors, I hope we will see them for who they are: Just like us. 

At the end of today’s gospel, Jesus tells this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ The Gardener replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'” Often, when we think about what this parable means, we think God is the one who comes up to the tree and tells us to cut it down. You and I, the gardener, we ask for another year. We dig around to see if we can make it better. 

I want to suggest that there is a better way of seeing this parable. That little fig tree does represent us. It’s our spiritual lives. And sometimes, our spiritual lives need some work. We’re not very impressive. But it’s not God who walks up to it and says, cut it down. No, it’s those good church people. The people who have it all figured out. They come up to our spiritual life, and they say, oh this is worthless. We can’t have this kind of pitiful tree here. What would the neighborhood association say? This is a sinful tree. It’s not worth having around. We only keep good company with good church people, with respectable trees in respectable, well-manicured gardens, no weeds at all, perfectly pruned and always looking exactly right. And if this tree wants to be with us, it’s going to have to be like that. 

Maybe, in some backwards way, we are the ones who walk up to that tree, to our own spiritual lives. After all, we have heard all of this talk of what we are supposed to look like, be like. Those expectations of those good church people can become our expectations of ourselves. We can get caught up in their way of seeing, and we can begin to evaluate ourselves through the eyes of others. And we feel worthless, less-than, out of place, shameful. 

We walk up to our own little tree. We look down on our own spiritual life. We see the truth of it all, the stuff not everyone can see. We see our shame, our guilt, our missteps, our failings. We look down on our prayers, on our faithfulness. We consider all of those expectations of the good people who have it all together, or so they say. Even though we have tried so hard, we find that we come up short of those expectations. Cut it down, we say. It’s not worth it. I have worked so hard myself, and I haven’t been able to make that tree look like I want it to. This spiritual life of mine isn’t pretty enough, isn’t good enough. What’s the use? Cut it down. Give up. 

But then we hear that voice. The gardener. He’s filthy. He’s been working hard. He says, Wait! ‘Sir, Madam, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ Give me some time, he says. I will do the work. I will help the struggling tree. I know what to do. 

We don’t recognize the gardener. He is almost a nuisance. We would rather just be done with it and wipe our hands clean. No, we don’t recognize the gardener. But hey, Mary Magdalene didn’t recognize him either. We don’t see that it’s Jesus. Jesus, our savior, who wants to work on us. Who wants to dig around. Who wants to help us. If only we will let him. If only we will turn to him and allow his grace, his work, to change us. 

Lent is calling us to give in to what the gardener wants to do in our lives. Lent is calling us to give up trying to do it ourselves–give up trying to be those good, perfect church people. The world has enough of those. No, Lent is calling us to confess to who we really are: we’re sinners in need of God’s grace. And God in Christ is right here. Christ the Gardener is digging around, trying to help us grow, making us healthy and fruitful. 

But we, that little tree, we have to stop fighting. We have to let the Gardener work, and stop trying to work it out ourselves. We have to let the grace in. We have to turn to the Gardener–that’s what repentance is. We admit that we don’t know how to do it on our own. We need the Gardener to work on us. We turn from our own way and turn to him. We trust that he knows what to do. And then we really start living and growing and bearing good fruit. And just maybe, we can stop looking down on that little tree. Maybe we can learn to see that little tree of our spiritual lives through the loving, gracious, and caring eyes of Christ. 

I imagine The Trinity gets together at Jesus’s place. It’s a standing meeting for coffee and cookies. The Father and the Holy Spirit ask the Son, “Well, Jesus, what’s new in your garden?” His eyes light up. He puts his hat and gloves on, grabs his shears. “Let’s go see,” he says. They walk out into a big garden. In the middle of it is a big apple tree: the tree that started it all, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A chunk of it is missing, just enough wood to put a cross together. Around it are other trees: the St Alban boxwood hedge, the St Peter giant oak, the St Mary Magdalene rose bush as big as a redwood. But Jesus leads them all past all those, and he takes them to a small fig tree. There’s a small stone at the base of the tree, and your name is on it. He bends down, touches the branches. He points with excitement to the smallest blossom—fruit is starting to come in. He says, “I’ve been working on this one. I think it’s the most beautiful thing in the whole garden.”

A sermon for Lent 2
March 13, 2022

What do you seek? This question comes from the historic Catechumenate process in the Church. The Catechumenate was the three-year method for preparing candidates for holy baptism and confirmation. And y’all think my 6-week course is bad! As the priest is enrolling people in the program, the priest asks this very simple question: What do you seek? 

What do you seek, Abraham? Abraham, that wandering Aramean, would respond, I am seeking that land of promise, that country that God swore to show me. We first hear this promise in Genesis 12, when God calls Abram from his home in a place called Ur. 

‘Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.’ (Genesis 12:1-4a) 

The rest of Abraham’s life (and his son’s life, and his grandson’s life, and countless other lives all the way through Egypt and the wilderness) would be spent seeking after that land of promise. 

But in today’s reading, Abraham is having a little doubt. Can we really blame him? Here God has promised to bring him to a new land and to make a great nation. But there’s a problem with that. Not only is Abraham an alien in a foreign land, but God has not yet given Abraham children. You have to have some of those if you hope to be a great and vast nation. So, naturally, Abraham is doubting. He’s thinking, maybe I didn’t hear God quite right? Maybe God meant something a little different than I was thinking? Or, maybe God has forgotten me? 

Have you been there? When I was visiting seminaries, I visited Virginia Theological Seminary, in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside D.C. I flew into Reagan Airport, as I had been instructed. I grabbed my luggage and I went outside. My ride was supposed to be there. No ride. He had forgotten. Sometimes our life of faith can be like that. We’re going on this journey, we’re in a new and strange place, and we can feel as if God has forgotten to pull the car around to get us. We can feel like we have been left alone, stranded. 

I saw a news story from Ukraine this week. A man and woman, in love, engaged, had planned to be married later on. They no doubt wanted to be married in one of those beautiful Ukrainian Orthodox churches, with the priest chanting, incense billowing everywhere, candles and loved ones surrounding them. Instead they got married on a battlefield. They put down their weapons for just a moment, still dressed in their camo, although the bride had donned a veil. They made vows before God. They promised everything and forever, though they knew, more than ever, that they were not guaranteed tomorrow. They asked God to watch over them. The priest blessed them and placed the cross over their joined hands. And then it was back to war. I couldn’t blame them–I don’t think any of us could blame them for lamenting, God it wasn’t supposed to be this way. We were supposed to be headed for a very different land, and we thought our lives would look much different. This battlefield isn’t what we were expecting or hoping for. Have you abandoned us? Have you forgotten us? Did we hear your call right? 

If we listen, we will hear God respond: even though your life looks different than you may have expected or hoped for, I haven’t forgotten you. Abraham hears God say that today. In fact, Abraham hears God double down on the promise. God says, 

“Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great. Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be.” (Genesis 15) 

Maybe Abraham does look around at this point. He looks to his left and sees he is a foreigner in a strange land, with no country to call his own. He looks to his right and he sees he has no children, no descendants to make a nation. But then he chooses to believe God anyway. Against everything that is obviously true, he bets it all on God. Despite all the evidence he can see, he hopes for something unseen. He believes in God’s word, and he keeps looking for that land of promise. 

This is why we call Abraham the father of faith. Faith is not some magic bean that grows a beanstalk; faith is not some magic coin we put into the vending machine to get out something we want. No, faith is believing that God is trustworthy. Faith is trusting in God. Faith is continuing to walk with God, continuing to look out for that land of promise, even when everything we can see is telling us something different. That’s what Abraham does, and that’s what we’re called to do, too. 

Like father Abraham, you and I are called to look for that land of promise, and to journey with God until we get there. St. Paul tells us today what that land of promise is. He writes, “our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” We do not put our trust in the things of this world; we keep our eyes on heaven, for that’s where we belong. That’s the land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey. 

But sometimes, like father Abraham, it is hard to believe. Sometimes the things of this world take us over. The things of this world are hard to carry: we see images of refugees; we see children who are suffering; we see veterans stuck on the streets; we see our own suffering, our sickness, our pain, our grief; we see our lives and how they look very different than we expected or hoped for. And we wonder, like I did at the airport, did God forget to pull around and pick us up? Has God forgotten about us? Has God already driven off with someone else, leaving us behind? 

When we are assailed by such doubts and worry, like ole Abraham, we can rest assured that God’s response to us will be the same as it was to Abraham. God doubles down. God shows all his cards. 

God restates the promise. We hear it every time we baptize someone or renew our baptismal vows: We are claimed by God, marked as Christ’s own forever, sealed by the Holy Spirit. We hear it every time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist: This is my Body given for you, this is my Blood shed for you. Take and eat in remembrance that Christ died for you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I in them. 

We have to be like Abraham. We look around and see what we did not expect or hope for. We see suffering and pain and heartache; we see loneliness and fear and violence; we see a world that seems so unredeemable; we see ourselves, our sin, our unworthiness, and who are we that God Almighty should care for us? But we believe anyway. We have faith anyway. We trust anyway. 

What do you seek? I began with that historic question from the early Church. There is an answer provided for us in the liturgy. The candidate, standing in front of the priest and the whole congregation of the faithful, responds, “I seek life in Christ.” 

That’s where we belong–in Christ. That’s the land of promise we are looking for–life in Christ forever that begins even today. And it’s been promised to us. In fact, our citizenship papers are already on file. Our part is to keep trusting, keep believing, keep having faith, and keep holding on to our loving God, knowing we are going to get there by grace through faith. 

God has promised us everything, and God cannot lie. So like Abraham, we believe.