Author: Michael Valliant

I am a father, writer, runner, hiker, reader, follower of Christ, soul adventurer, longboard skateboarder, stand-up paddleboarder, kayaker, novice birder, sunrise chaser, daily coffee drinker, occasional beer sipper. I live in Easton on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where I am an Episcopal Deacon and the Assistant for Adult Education and Communications at Christ Church Easton by day.

Love God, Love Your Neighbor

Background: Last week I preached at Christ Church Easton’s weekly Wednesday healing service and led our Zoom Prayer service and Gospel discussion. The lectionary Gospel was Mark 12:28-34, where a scribe asks Jesus, “What is the first (greatest) commandment?” This is the text of the homily and what we used to get us discussing the reading on Zoom.

“Love God, Love Your Neighbor”

What is the first/greatest/most important commandment?

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

How many people have heard this answer from Jesus? It’s one of his teachings we’ve become pretty familiar with, I think.

I’m curious, if you’d never heard Jesus say this and someone put a list of the commandments in front of you, which one would you think is the most important commandment?

Jesus always seems to understand what is behind the questions that people ask. To use a saying that goes around, the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees are all playing checkers while Jesus is playing chess. And I’ve always laughed at the line Mark gives us at the end of this reading, “After that no one dared to ask him any question.”

I’m serious when I say that I thank Jesus for this teaching every day. In part, because I hate having to memorize long lists, particularly of rules to follow. Two is a good number for me to remember.

The reason there are only two is because Jesus has taken it down to the very essence of all the laws. And he’s done it with one action verb: LOVE.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

If we were to paint a picture with words, what would it look like in our world and in our lives if we loved God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? Can you give me any examples that pop into your minds?

Part of it for me is that we would love what God loves. Have you had the experience of loving someone so much that their love of something becomes your love of it too? When there is something that your loved one gets so charged and excited about that you then come to love it as well?

What if we allowed ourselves to love God so much that what God loved, we loved as well, feeling the joy that God gets out of something.

How about Creation. The universe, the world—Creation of which we are a part. In the creation story in Genesis, God looks around at the end of each day and says, it’s good. And as he is finished, he looks at mankind and says, you are in charge. Take care of it.

If there is anything we have royally screwed up in modern times, it’s caring for Creation. But darned if we aren’t willing to ruin the world for lower gas prices, a better economy, and convenience for ourselves.

I can remember reading Dr. Seuss’s book, “The Lorax” to my girls when they were little and thinking that we should be reading this book to grown-ups every day in regular conversation. That and Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree.”

Under Michael Curry as our Presiding Bishop (whose nine year term ended on October 31), the Episcopal Church prioritized a few core initiatives to focus on along with its program ministries. What it picked as the key things we need to focus on as a church to further the work of Jesus are: evangelism, racial reconciliation, and Creation Care.


This is the charge for Creation Care:

“In Jesus, God so loved the whole world. We follow Jesus, so we love the world God loves. Concerned for the global climate emergency, drawing on diverse approaches for our diverse contexts, we commit to form and restore loving, liberating, life-giving relationships with all of Creation.

“The Episcopal Church’s Covenant for the Care of Creation is a commitment to practice loving formation, liberating advocacy and life-giving conservation as individuals, congregations, ministries and dioceses.”

“We follow Jesus, so we love the world God loves.” That’s it in a nutshell. We’ve got our work cut out for us. To form and restore, loving, liberating, life-giving relationships with all of Creation. I can’t think of anything more important than that when it comes to living out what it looks like to love God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength.

Don’t forget, Jesus gave us a second commandment—whether we want to call it number two, or 1-A, because it is absolutely connected to the first. How about loving our neighbors as ourselves? What does it look like if we take this commandment seriously?

One of the things you are taught not to do when preaching is not to use a different Gospel, say Luke, to make or prove a point when talking about Mark’s Gospel. So let me tell you a parable:

A man was going down to Oxford and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half-dead. Now, it happened a priest was going down Oxford Road, and when he saw the man beaten and in the ditch, he crossed over and passed by him on the other side. Likewise a deacon came to the place, saw him, and passed by on the other side. But a pagan biker while traveling down Oxford Road saw him and was moved with compassion. She went to him and bandaged his wounds and spared no expense of her own money. Then she put him in her sidecar, took him to an inn, and gave the innkeeper money and said take care of him, and if it costs more than this, I’ll pay you when I come back.

Which one of theses three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?

If you’ve ever heard a different version of that story, the Samaritan, or pagan biker, is the one least likely in the minds of those hearing the story, to stop and offer help.

And yet, we can all agree that the biker is the one who treated the wounded man as her neighbor.

If we take a point from the story, it might be that everyone is our neighbor, when it comes to caring and being cared for. It doesn’t matter how rich or poor, what race, how they vote, who they love, how they dress: we are all created in the image of God and we are all neighbors to each other, and if we are to take the commandments by their name, we are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. In the same way we look after our own self-interests, we are charged to look out of our neighbors’ care and well-being.

Our Mark reading today begins with a scribe asking Jesus a question. This wasn’t a scribe who was trying to trick Jesus, as we’ve seen in some other cases. This was a scribe who saw people arguing and heard Jesus answer questions so well, that he put the question to him: which of the commandments is the most important?

And hearing the answer Jesus gave, the scribe thinks about it and says, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ —this is much more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

What an amazing answer. Not nice job, or ‘atta boy’, or even ‘your faith has made you well.’ You are not far from the kingdom of God.

We’ve heard this throughout Mark’s Gospel, and we can agree that the kingdom of God is what we are all aiming for—that’s the end result we want.

The scribe, in taking Jesus’s words to heart, letting them sink in, letting them work on him, has moved close to the kingdom of God.

If we are to take Jesus as his word, wouldn’t the same thing be true for us? If knowing and fully understanding that loving God and loving our neighbor are the most important commandments God has given us, and that Jesus has summarized and made easier for us to remember; that if we have this understanding, then the only thing standing between us and the kingdom of God is actually putting it into practice, actually living it out in our daily lives—that fully realized and lived, LOVE of God and loving our neighbor is what brings us to the kingdom of God…

If that’s the case, and Jesus says it is, shouldn’t we spend a bit more of our time, effort, and resources trying to do so?

At this point in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has already entered into Jerusalem. He’s already cleansed the Temple. He’s about to get arrested and be put to death. He’s put his life on the line for us. What are we willing to do for him?

‘Hear, O Believers: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Amen.

Was Blind But Now I See

Background: Last weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The Gospel story in the lectionary was Mark 10:46-52, the story of the blind beggar Bartimaeus and Jesus giving him his sight back. Following is the text of the sermon.

“Was Blind But Now I See”

This is a story that begins and ends in faith. Sometimes faith starts in the dark. And sometimes things go dark or at least get obscured without us losing our physical sight.

Faith is not about seeing. Faith is about trust. And trust can lead to vision.

Over the past several weeks, Mark has shown us the disciples failing to understand what Jesus is telling them, failing to understand his mission, and putting their needs and desires before his.

In contrast to that, Mark gives us Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, who shows all the characteristics of being a faithful disciple.

Profession of Faith

Bartimaeus is blind and an outsider and all Jesus has to do is come close to him for the beggar to know who Jesus is and what he can do.

He shouts out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Doing this, Bartimaeus proclaims both Jesus’s identity and his own faith, his trust in Jesus’s power and what he can do.

Even as people try to silence him, Bartimaeus calls out again, louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

This stops Jesus in his tracks. We’ve seen this before in Gospel stories, where someone’s extraordinary belief or faith in Jesus causes him to stop.

Jesus calls him over and in his response to being called, Bartimaeus throws off his cloak—everything he owns—and he leaps up to come to Jesus. Does that remind us of the rich, young ruler, who Jesus tells to give away everything he owns and follow me? Bartimaeus has already done what the rich man couldn’t, and he wasn’t even asked.

The Big Question

As Bartimaeus comes before him, Jesus asks the key question: “What is it you want me to do for you?”

I wonder if there are two questions that Jesus asks in Mark’s Gospel that are the primary questions of our faith:

  • Who do you say that I am?
  • What do you want me to do for you?

Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” And they’ve been working on what that means for the disciples and for Jesus ever since Peter’s answer.

Last week, Jesus asked his followers James and John, “What do you want me to do for you?” The same question he just asked the blind man. And their response was, “We want to sit at your right hand and at your left hand in glory.” They wanted glory, prestige, power. Jesus wasn’t going in that direction, and he told them they didn’t know what they were asking for. Their desires and Jesus’s mission were not aligned.

Now he asks Bartimaeus, a man who has been a beggar, who has been blind, who has figured out how to live his life on the charity of others, what do you want me to do for you?

Bartimaeus being blind, that may seem like a simple answer. But getting his sight will require him to try to live a completely different life, to leave everything he has known and learned, and to go in a new direction.

I wonder, if we are living lives we aren’t happy with… lives that feel empty, or broken, or even just less than we would like them to be; but lives that have become comfortable…. Would we ask for something miraculous that would give us new life, but also ask something of us in return, something that would require us to leave our current lives behind?

If Jesus asked you, what is it you want me to do for you, and you had every feeling that he would give you what you asked for, what would it be?

How We Answer

“The blind man said, ‘Teacher, I would like to see again.’”

He has cast off all he had, he has stepped out of his old life and is taking a risk. He is asking for sight, to go along with the faith he has already shown.

“Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ (And) Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.”

Bartimaeus expressed the faith that the crowds lacked. He gave up everything in a way that the rich young ruler wasn’t able to do. And he answered the question Jesus also asked the disciples, with humility and gratitude. This is what discipleship looks like.

Blind = lost

Last weekend we were in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and I got up early to walk trails through meadows and along the woods to look for and listen to birds. It was a beautiful and quiet morning, and overnight, fog had settled in.

I went to bed with my full eyesight and woke up and my eyes still worked (at least after coffee) and yet, as I was walking around, fog had taken over and I couldn’t see as well as I could the night before.

We live in an area that has fog delays for schools, so I know you can all relate to trying to see through a foggy haze.

I wonder if you’ll take a step with me when I say that fog is also a helpful metaphor in our own lives for when our vision gets obscured, obstructed, and we can no longer see clearly.

I wonder if we can go blind without losing our physical eyesight.

It would be nice to dismiss the story of Bartimaeus by saying, hey, I’m not blind, this story doesn’t apply to me. But I think we are all blinded from time to time, often without realizing it.

Thinking about this reading during the week, I’ve had the lines from the song “Amazing Grace” in my mind:

“I once was lost, but now am found,
was blind, but now I see.”

I wonder if being lost is like being blind. Have you ever felt lost in your life in a way that you couldn’t see to find your way out?

From 2010 to 2014, I commuted across the Bay Bridge to Washington, DC, writing for the Coast Guard. It was a cool job and I met some great people. I never thought I would be able to stomach commuting like that every day and driving into the city.

The jobs I had before that were non-profit jobs here on the Shore. They kept me in touch with the community, they connected me to parts of my family history and opened new doors and new ways of seeing and being in the place where I grew up. And I felt like I was doing something for, and contributing to our shared community.

But it’s hard to make ends meet working for non-profits. My DC job more than doubled the salary I was making on the Shore. I remember driving one day—I don’t remember whether it was on the way to work or on the way home—and thinking, I’m stuck now. I am going to have to keep commuting, keep working in DC for the rest of my career, now that I’ve started this and found the proverbial pot of gold.

There was a slight pause in 2013, when the contract we were working on didn’t get renewed and I had to figure out what was next. I started interviewing for jobs on the Shore and out of nowhere, I had this uncanny and sure sense that I was supposed to go to seminary. Which made no sense, we weren’t even going to church. But that feeling was there.

During that time, I got a job offer on another contract for the Coast Guard, which solved all the financial concerns. It didn’t shake the sense that I was supposed to be doing something else; that I had become completely alienated from the community around me, that I had less time with my daughters for having to commute. But I convinced myself that this was the right decision for my family.

The fog was thick. I took the DC job. During that next year, my entire life fell apart. Family, job, sense of self and self-worth. I had become lost, even though I saw every step I was taking.


Last weekend, when I was walking in the fog, a cool thing happened. I was walking up the hill towards the B&B where we were staying and the fog was laid in, but the sun was also coming up. And as we know happens, the sun started to burn off the fog. If you can take the time to stand in one place, facing toward the sun, and watch as it overcomes the fog, and the fog begins to fade, clarity sets back in. It’s nothing short of miraculous to watch.

I don’t have 20/20 vision as my glasses attest to. But over the course of the last 10 years, I have gone from feeling lost, to being found. From being blinded, to regaining my sight.

And the question that helped me get there—though at first, I didn’t recognize that it was Jesus asking it—was, “What do you want me to do for you?” What do you want your life to become?

Following and Freedom

On my West Virginia morning, and really anywhere there is fog, it takes the sun to burn it off. There was nothing I could do on my own to see through it, it was the sun that had to do the work. In my life, in Bartimaeus’s life, and for many others, it took the S-o-n, Jesus, to give us back our sight, our vision.

Bartimaeus needed his sight to live the life he wanted to live. But he showed it wasn’t just about him. When he regained his sight, what did he do with it? He followed Jesus. In doing so, with his new life, I think it is fair to say that the seeing Bartimaeus was more truly who he was supposed to be than the blind version of himself ever was.

He used his sight in the service of God. Not because he was told to—all Jesus said was “Go.” Bartimaeus followed Jesus in act of gratitude and of realizing what his sight was for.

Author, pastor, and theologian Frederick Buechner put it wonderfully when he said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

It’s been my experience that when we put our trust in Jesus and start to follow, when we let the sun burn off the fog, that meeting place of our deep gladness and the world’s hunger becomes more and more clear.

Are you seeing clearly or do you feel lost? If you feel lost, when Jesus draws near to you, do you trust him enough to call his name? If he asks you what you want him to do for you, do you know what your answer will be? Will it be to ask for the sight to live your life to the fullest, to live the life that God has envisioned for you? To align your sight and your life in following the one who gives us both life and sight?

“I once was lost, but now am found.
Was blind but now I see.”

Feast of St. James

Background: Wednesday, October 23 was the Feast of St. James of Jerusalem, the brother of Jesus. Christ Church Easton‘s weekly Wednesday healing service fell on the feast day, so we used the lectionary readings and I gave a homily on St. James to observe the feast day. Following is the text of the homily.

James, the Brother of Jesus: Get in the Game

We run into a number of Johns and James’s in the New Testament, so it’s helpful to differentiate who is who. Today is the Feast of St. James of Jerusalem. This is not James the Apostle, one of the 12, brother of John, and one of Jesus’s closest friends in the Gospels. This is James, the brother of Jesus, who we learn about primarily in the Book of Acts and in Paul’s letters, though this James is mentioned in the Gospels, as we see in the Matthew reading from this morning.

And this James, the brother of Jesus, is thought to be the author of the letter of James that we find in the epistles, which we’ll talk about a bit today and you would do well to read and spend time with.

Now, the first thing that jumps into my mind when thinking about James is to feel sorry for him. Of all the lines of work he could go into, to go into ministry as the younger brother of the Messiah, who performed miracles, healed the sick, drew huge crowds when he taught and preached, and oh by the way was also resurrected from the dead and ascended into heaven… James was clearly signing on for a supporting role—he wasn’t going to be the main character. He might have considered agriculture, becoming a soldier, tent-maker, or sticking with carpentry like his father.

But that also gives us a feeling for James’s sense of mission, seeing what his brother did, who Jesus became, and knowing how critical it was to continue the work that Jesus began, we can see the selflessness that James had.

Some of the background I am about to relate comes from the website, “The Bible Project,” which if you are not familiar with, is a wonderful resource, with short video summaries of all the books of the Old and New Testaments and many of the themes that run throughout Scripture.

Poster of the Letter of James from The Bible Project.

In the Book of Acts, we see that Peter moved on from Jerusalem to go start new churches in other areas. It is then that Jesus’s brother James rose to prominence as a leader in the mother church in Jerusalem, which was mostly messianic or Christian Jews. Some of the new churches and followers of Jesus being started were made up of Gentiles.

The church in Jerusalem was the first Christian community and James was the leader of the community for about 20 years; a pillar of the church and a peacemaker until he was murdered.

The letter that James wrote is a summary of his wisdom sayings. It is not about so much about theology and the philosophical underpinnings, he seems content to leave that to Jesus, James is concerned about what now and what next: how do we live our lives?

Some key influences we find when reading the letter include: Jesus’s life and teachings, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, and the Book of Proverbs, especially the poems in chapters 1-9. James grew up with Jesus and with Proverbs and his language sounds like each of them.

James wants their community to become truly wise by living according to Jesus’s summary of the law: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

James is urging his readers and listeners to live complete or whole lives, fully integrated where your actions are always consistent with the values and beliefs you have received from Jesus.

“Works” is a big concept for James—who says we become a new humanity when we don’t just listen to God’s Word, but we also DO WHAT IT SAYS. That may seem like a no-brainer, but 2,000-plus years later, I would say the world probably has a lot more professing and confessing Christians than Christians who live out their faith by doing good works.

James calls us to:

  • Speak with love
  • Serve the poor
  • Be wholly devoted to God

The guys at The Bible Project calls James’s letter: “A beautifully crafted punch in the gut for those who want to follow Jesus.” We’ll see why in short order.

As with the Sermon on the Mount and Proverbs, James has a talent for zingers, one-liners that really stick with you.

Let me throw a few of them at you:

“Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”

“Be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”

“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.”

“Humble yourselves before God and he will exalt you.”

And here is a big one, which James may be most known for:

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works… Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

James brings this to a point by saying, if a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says, “Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet does nothing to supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?

He goes on to say it even more pointedly: “Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it commits sin.”

Can we send James to DC?

We might rather have Jesus’s parables back. Then we don’t feel so called out and we can claim that we are confused and we don’t really know what to do. This James is tough.

This morning let’s ask an easy question then. Is James correct: is faith, without works, dead?

There are folks over the course of church history who haven’t loved James, among the most notable, Martin Luther, for whom the concept of works confuses what justification by faith is all about—faith is what gets us there, not works.

I will forever quote Nicky Gumbel, former vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton in London and pioneer of The Alpha Course, because he put it as succinctly as I have heard:

“We are not saved BY doing good works. We are saved IN ORDER TO do good works.”

If our faith is important to us, if our salvation is important to us, shouldn’t our lives show it? We shouldn’t have to get our membership card out of our wallets to show someone we are Christians. Our lives should proclaim it in some meaningful way.

For me, James is the pragmatist that many of us need. There are plenty of people who find Scripture confusing, too much reading, just tell me what I need to do. You want to live life the way Jesus modeled and told us to do likewise? Read James, he has you covered.

It’s worth pointing out that James was murdered, he became a martyr for the faith, not long after his letter was written. As he wrote, he lived. Creating stability, giving the new church, the first church community a foundation and leadership for 20 years at a time when your faith could mean your death, that’s an incredible legacy.

James doesn’t want armchair Christians. We don’t get to sit in the comfort of our living rooms, profess our beliefs, and complain at the TV about the decisions the coaches (bishops, priests, etc.) are making and how the players (active Christians) keep messing up.

We’ve got to get in the game.

There is a contemporary Christian song by the Newsboys called “We Believe” that Fr. Patrick has our contemporary band at the Saturday service playing and singing the chorus from to give us a kind of creed to hang our hats on. It’s very much like the Nicene Creed in what it professes. There is a line that stands out to me in the song:

“So, let our faith be more than anthems
Greater than the songs we sing.”

Let our faith be more than the songs we sing. Let our faith be more than the prayers we pray. Let our faith be more than the worship services we attend. Let us live out our faith in and with our lives, integrated, whole, and devoted to God.

Let us remember and celebrate the life and example of James, the brother of Jesus.

Luke’s Witness

Background: October 18 is set aside on the lectionary calendar as the Feast of St. Luke, the Evangelist. At Christ Church Easton‘s weekly Wednesday Healing Service, I gave an appreciation homily for Luke. This is the text of the homily.

Luke’s Witness

Matthew’s Gospel begins with “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah…”

Mark gives us, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

John goes deep: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Brace yourselves. In each case, we’re diving right in.

Here is how Luke starts his Gospel:

“Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative about the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I, too, decided, as one having a grasp of everything from the start, to write a well-ordered account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may have a firm grasp of the words in which you have been instructed.”

The author of Luke is also credited with being the author of the Book of Acts, which begins: “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day he was taken up to heaven.”

The name Theophilus can be translated to mean, lover of God, friend of God, or loved by God. “God lover” may be a more fun way to say it, and our sister-in-Christ, Rev. Barbara Coleman used to like to call all her church friends “Theophilus.” “How’s it going, Theophilus?”

As an aside, if you ever find yourself wondering who was the most prolific New Testament writer… you might jump to John, hey he wrote the Gospel and possibly the letters, so probably him, right? Wait, we have all those letters, the epistles, attributed to Paul, it’s gotta be Paul. Good guess. If you take Luke as the author of both the gospel and Acts, he’s got more words and pages than anyone else in the New Testament. The scales tilt to Luke.

Luke is our only transparent Gospel writer: he’s intentional, he tells us what he’s trying to do. Lots of folks have tried to put this story together. I think I have a good grasp on these things, so I want to give you a well-ordered account so that you can understand what happened here. Not that there is anything wrong with the others, but check this out…

What do we get from Luke’s witness? What’s different from the other Gospels?

15th century depiction of St. Luke, the Evangelist


It’s Luke who gives us Mary’s perspective, her encounter with the angel and news of her pregnancy, along with Elizabeth and the cousin connection to John the Baptist.

It’s Luke who gives us the shepherds coming to see Jesus at his birth and thereby Linus’s speech from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

It’s Luke who gives us the only glimpse of Jesus’s childhood with the 12-year-old Jesus in the Temple

Whereas Matthew gives us Jesus’s family tree back to Abraham, Luke goes all the way back to Adam (interestingly, the family trees don’t perfectly match, but that’s another story).

It’s Luke that gives us the parables of the Good Samaritan, the neighbor asking for bread for an unexpected visitor, Lazarus and the rich man, and the prodigal son. They aren’t in the other Gospels.

And the Resurrection story of Jesus and the men on the Road to Emmaus is a story only in Luke.

In Luke we see the elevation of women in ministries, a huge push on lifting up the poor and on social justice. When Jesus gives us his Beatitudes, he is not giving the Sermon on the Mount that we see in Matthew, he comes down to a level place to talk with people.

In talking about how Luke put together his Gospel, Franciscan author Richard Rohr says:

“Luke is creating his gospel using Scripture and tradition, and he’s doing it within a believing community. In putting together his gospel, he’s not only drawing on past Scriptures, such as the Hebrew Bible and Mark’s Gospel, but he’s also weaving in contemporary spirituality, knowledge of the theological schools of Judaism, experience of the times, insights of the believing community (the living body of Christ), and putting it all together.”

Luke looked around, talked to everyone he could, incorporated his own perspective and knowledge, and synthesized this kind of composite account that gives us a deeper understanding of who Jesus was than if Luke had just figured the other accounts were enough.

And there is nothing else in the New Testament like Acts, the days of the early church—Peter finally putting it altogether and becoming “the Rock” of the movement that Jesus predicted he would be; the opening of the ranks to include Gentiles; earthquakes and road trips and shipwrecks, and the conversion of Saul the persecutor of Jesus followers to Paul, the Apostle.

In about a month and a half, when the new church year begins with Advent, we’ll be in a Luke lectionary year, and we’ll see more closely what Luke’s witness is.

Here is a question I have for you. We can see what Luke felt it was important to include in the Gospel that no one else had. We can see what questions Luke asked and wanted answers for. Now take out your reporter’s notebook and pen or pencil: if you were to write your own account of the Gospel, what are the things that aren’t there, the questions that aren’t answered in the other accounts, that you would ask and want to find answers to? What details or eyewitness accounts would you put in your Gospel account?

I want to bring us back to today’s Gospel reading. Luke shows Jesus coming to Nazareth, going to the synagogue, taking and reading the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Jesus reads:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And with everyone staring at him, Jesus then says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus just read his mission statement: bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Luke’s witness to who Jesus is and what his messiahship looks like is Scripture-based, radical, relevant, and social justice-minded.

Talking about Luke’s witness, preacher and author Frederick Buechner says:

“To put it in a nutshell, by playing all these things up Luke shows he was a man who believed that you shouldn’t let the fact that a person is jailbait keep you from treating that person like a human being, and that if you pray hard enough, there’s no telling what may happen, and that if you think you’ve got heaven made but don’t let it worry you that there are children across the tracks who are half starving to death, then you’re kidding yourself.”

The people in Nazareth who heard Jesus read the scroll and go on to call them out got angry, drove Jesus out of town, and up to the top of a hill hoping to throw him off of it.

How do we react to the Jesus Luke shows us?

Let’s shoot for the disciples on the road to Emmaus, for whom Jesus blessed and broke bread and gave it to them, “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him… and they said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’” And they go to Jerusalem and tell everyone, “The Lord has risen indeed.”

“The Road to Emmaus,”  by Robert Zund

Let’s Get Back to Love

Background: October 5-6 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The Gospel reading for the lectionary was Mark 10:2-16, where Jesus is questioned about divorce and he goes on to say, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” This is the text of the sermon I gave.

“Let’s Get Back to Love”

In the not quite three years I have been preaching, this is the second time I’ve landed on one of Jesus’s divorce readings. As someone who has been through a divorce, last time out I bounced off personal experience to talk about how devastating divorce can be and how it is to be avoided if at all possible.

This time I want to take a step back and look at why Jesus always seems to make our lives harder by making the laws and rules even more strict than what the Pharisees and scribes bring to him.

Something to keep in mind: Jesus fully engaged and answered everyone who came to him with an honest question or concern. We’ll see that next week in the case of the rich, young ruler. But Jesus is wary when the Pharisees try to test him or trick him into saying something that will get him in trouble. He is wise to what they are up to.

The Pharisees ask: is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Jesus asks: what did Moses command you? They said: Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.

And now Jesus gets to the crux of the matter: “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.”

The law gives us the least we have to do to in order to play by the rules and to get what we want. The Pharisees who repeatedly question Jesus are concerned with the law for the sake of the law. They aren’t concerned with the why behind the law, the intent of the law.

First of all, if you are approaching marriage with the attitude and question, is it legal to get divorced? You probably shouldn’t be thinking about marriage.

People then, and now, want to know what rules or code do I have to follow to be considered righteous, to be a good person, and to go to heaven, right? We’d all like to know that, and to know if we are on the right path, or if we need to make some adjustments.

That’s putting the cart before the horse. Jesus, then and now, is concerned about our hearts, about our relationships, with God and with each other. About us living life and living life abundantly. If we are going to do that, our abundance can’t be at someone else’s loss, pain, or cost.

Jesus was aware of what happened back then to a woman who had been divorced. It would be hard for her to find protection, provision of any kind, dignity, or to have much of a future. That does not give her much of a chance to live life abundantly, to be in right relationship with God and her neighbors.

The laws are the lowest standard. Let’s look just quickly at the commandments that are concerned just with how we treat each other:

  • Honor your mother and your father
  • Don’t commit murder
  • Don’t commit adultery
  • Don’t steal
  • Don’t give false testimony against your neighbor
  • Don’t covet anything that belongs to your neighbor

If we live and follow those laws, does that sound like a happy life? Does that sound like abundant life? That sounds like the bare minimum you can do to stay out of trouble.

All of these laws address the hard-heartedness of people; what they had become, what we are still, and where we fall short in needing clear-cut rules to keep us straight and spell out how to treat each other.

That’s why in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “murder? That’s a pretty low bar. You’ve got to deal with and address that feeling when it’s still anger, long before it gets anywhere close to murder.” It’s not about the law, it’s about the heart. We need soft hearts to love.

Here is what we’ve lost: LOVE IS OUR DEFAULT SETTING. Jesus gets that.


In Mark Chapter 12, one of the scribes asks Jesus, which commandment is first (or greatest) of all? And Jesus gives the response we’ve come to know: “Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love. Be passionate. Care for each other. Live life to the fullest. There is no, “thou shalt not…”; there is no, “is it legal if…”

Jesus is trying to help us get back to our default settings. But we’ve put so much in the way of that, even as the church, which is the issue Jesus kept having with the Temple leadership who cite laws left and right, but keep out the people—the poor, the sick, the marginalized; the sinners and the tax collectors, who Jesus was at the table with and caring for.

In last week’s Gospel, we heard Jesus say, “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”

These little ones, who are learning to believe, learning to love, don’t go quoting Scripture, quoting laws at them, don’t belittle them or cause them to stumble. Help them. Encourage them.

But how? How are we supposed to do all that? People are so weird and hard to deal with. They’re too people’y.

On the road with his disciples, Jesus has been trying to get it through to them. You’ve got to put down, you’ve got to give up, these lives that society is trying to hand to you. You’ve got to put down the things that divide us and put barriers between us. You’ve got to give up the lives you’ve been living, pick up your cross, and follow me.

If we put down the crap that we’re being fed, if we give up the lives that are full of judgment, hatred, power, and status, we are free to pick up and be filled with Jesus’s love. We give up our small, ego selves so that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit.

When we let go of the doubt, the fear, the skepticism and pessimism we are being handed, we become like children: free to love.

“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

As a little child. Open, innocent—not jaded, tainted, asking which laws are the ones that really count.


Love is our default setting. Jesus and gift of the Holy Spirit are the reset button. God’s grace is our fresh start.

Well, sure, that’s easy for Jesus to say; He’s Jesus. What about us, who are flawed and human and who mess up? What does it look like for us to let go and start again?

Let me introduce you to Francis. Saint. Francis. Of Assisi. October 4 was the Feast of Saint Francis, who is often held up as the human being who most fully lived a life of Christ-like love. He saw the divine in everything and everyone and lived his life in a simple way. He didn’t start out that way, he found it as a new way of being.

Francis let his love of Christ guide him, rather than rules or laws. Franciscan Friar and author Richard Rohr describes Francis like this:

“Creation itself—not ritual or spaces constructed by human hands—was Francis’ primary cathedral. His love for creation drove him back into the needs of the city, a pattern very similar to Jesus’ own movement between desert solitude (contemplation) and small-town healing ministry (action). The Gospel transforms us by putting us in touch with that which is much more constant and satisfying, literally the “ground of our being,” which has much more “reality” to it, rather than theological concepts or ritualization of reality. Daily cosmic events in the sky and on the earth are the Reality above our heads and beneath our feet every minute of our lives: a continuous sacrament, signs of God’s universal presence in all things.”

Wow. Not a bad way to live and look at the world.

Imagine being so filled with God’s love that when we go out the doors of the church, we carry it with us and give it to everyone and everything we encounter. Imagine someone’s impression of us being, “wow, they were full of love and light”—where did they get that? How can I get some too?

The Pharisees and scribes asked Jesus questions to try to trip him up and to get him in trouble. They were the law-abiding citizens. They wanted to know if it is legal for a man to divorce his wife.

That’s one end of the continuum: following the rules for the rules’ sake. Righteousness is following the law. Now listen to the words that St. Francis is most known for, the prayer that is attributed to him:

“Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

That’s not about the law, it’s about love; the self-sacrificing love that Jesus modeled for us with his life and through his death—the love that overcame death. The love that opens the door for us.

Which do you want your life to be about? Let’s go with Jesus and Francis. Let’s get back to love.

Amen.

A Francis Experience

Context: October 4 is set aside as the Feast of St. Francis. It’s a day I celebrate by both remembering him and by trying to be outside and honor the environment and creatures he so loved. The image at the top of the page is from artist Sue Betanzos, who creates art for people who love animals and nature, and whose portrayals of St. Francis, I rather dig. At this week’s healing service at Christ Church Easton, I gave a short homily on Francis, the text of which is below.

“A Francis Experience”

I first experienced God outside, in Creation. And that is still where I experience God’s presence most frequently. So when I first came across St. Francis of Assisi years ago, in context of being the patron saint of the environment and of animals, I was drawn to him.

If you dig into his life and teachings, Francis (1181/82 – 1226) is fascinating. He was the son of a wealthy merchant and he lived it up until he was taken prisoner in battle and held captive for a year. Following his release, he was sick for a year and during that time he had dreams and visions that caused him to transform his life. He was in his early 20s when this happened. And he proceeded to live a life most of us couldn’t handle or live up to. He embraced and marveled in all of God’s creation.

We hear stories and picture Francis preaching to animals and wandering around in fields taking in and basking in God’s love. But that misses so much of who he was. People who lived at the same time he did said Francis lived out the Sermon on the Mount better than anyone besides Jesus. Taken that a step further, it is St. Francis who many hold up as the human being who most fully lived out what it is to live a life of Christ-like love.

The current Pope adopted the name Francis after St. Francis, and there is an order of Franciscan friars or monks, among whom Richard Rohr—who is one of my go-to theologians and writers—is one of the most widely published public figures. About Francis, Rohr says:

“The truth of Francis’ respect for animals is far more profound than mere “birdbath Franciscanism” lets on. Everything was a mirror for Francis. What he saw in the natural world, in the sky, in animals, and even plants was a reflection of God’s glory. His first biographer, Thomas of Celano, writes about how Francis was constantly praising creatures for giving God glory just by their very existence. They could simply be and be themselves. Eventually, nature mirrored back the same message to Francis himself: He could just be and be himself in all of his freedom and joy and poverty.”

In my experience, teenagers don’t often get excited about things that their parents get excited about. This past Saturday, Holly and I were sitting on the deck, in a wonderful light breeze, reading and watching and listening to birds at the feeders in the back yard. My 19-year-old daughter Ava came out to join us. She knows how I get worked up over sunrises and sunsets and birds.

We sat outside having a wonderful conversation and laughing. And using the Merlin Bird App Sound ID, we were hearing a new-to-us bird, an American Redstart, a migratory warbler, that are coming through the area in big numbers right now. The adult males are black and orange similar to a Baltimore Oriole (the bird, not the baseball team). We started seeing two small gray and yellow birds and Ava became fascinated by them, and was able to spot them everywhere they went around the yard—she was totally absorbed and dialed-in to their presence. It was like watching a little kid follow a butterfly around. Turns out they were immature and/or female Redstarts, which is how most of them look in the fall.

Photos are from the Merlin Bird App from Cornell Lab.


It was the simplest, most incredible afternoon and Holly and I looked at each other and said, “This is the very best stuff.”

One more story. Seventeen years ago a friend and I decided we wanted to run an ultramarathon, a race longer than a marathon, and we picked a 34-mile trail race around Holiday Lake in Appomattox, Virginia. The race was directed by a guy who once held the records for fastest hikes of the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail.


It was early February. It was 14 degrees and the race started in the dark, a few hundred of us running through the woods on singletrack trails with headlamps. It’s hilly, and beautiful, and we’re winding along next to the frozen lake.

As the sun comes up, there is fog lifting off the lake and this crazy, loud sound, which sounds just like whales communicating back and forth, is echoing through the woods. I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s the ice beginning to melt and cracking and shifting the length of the lake.

We move just away from the lake, into an opening field and meadow, the sun is moving into the sky and reflecting off frost all over the trees and ground. The group of us running together have never met, don’t know each other at all, and as we are all taking this scene in, in awe and wonder, a woman says, “This is why I do this.” And that begins a conversation with a handful of us, new friendships over the next several miles.

Backyard birding with Ava and running around the lake in the winter, these are what I call having a Francis Experience. I can describe so many of them, with new ones each week. I wonder if you have had your own Francis experiences, outside, in Creation, where you felt love and connection in a simple and deep way.

When we remember St. Francis in our prayer book, it is with the prayer that is attributed to him, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, let us so love” and so on.

Today, I will leave you with some of Francis’s words you may not have heard, an excerpt from his “Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon,” which give you a sense of how he looked at and revered God, Creation, and everything and everyone therein:

“Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
Who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour,
Of You Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all weather’s moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water,
So useful, humble, precious and pure.

Praised be You my Lord through Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You my Lord through our Sister,
Mother Earth
who sustains and governs us,
producing varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.

Praise be You my Lord through those who grant pardon for love of You and bear sickness and trial.

Blessed are those who endure in peace, By You Most High, they will be crowned.”

This Feast of St. Francis, today and every day, may we have, may we cultivate, and may we share our Francis Experiences.

Thank you

Thank you.

Thank you for breakfast with Anna this morning at Rise Up.

Thank you for laughter and conversation taking Ava to work.

Thank you for the slow driver on Oxford Road who reminded me to slow down.

Thank you for the Oxford Conservation Park.

Thank you for the body and energy to skateboard and for the joy I get from it.

Thank you for the Eastern Bluebirds who cut across my path.

Thank you for the tree I sit under to think and pray and listen.


Thank you for the Great Blue Heron who squawked and landed on the dock across the cove.

Thank you for the hammock on the point across the way, which has been there for years and always reminds me to rest.

Thank you for the Bishop’s words on Wednesday that “Every day is a conversion experience.”

Thank you for giving me new eyes to see familiar places afresh.

Thank you for giving me words when I frequently don’t know where they come from.

Thank you for making my path clearer and clearer for me each day, even though I don’t fully know where it leads.


Thank you for companions on the way.

Thank you for the everyone I have crossed paths with, people walking their own paths, walking together for a time; thank you for those who have encouraged me and for those who I have struggled with.

Thank you for forgiveness for the countless times I have screwed up and the countless times I will screw up in the future.

Thank you for your Creation and for making me feel at home and at peace in it.

Thank you for the wisdom and inspiration that comes from your Word and from the words you’ve given to poets, mystics, artists, musicians, and prophets, known and unknown.

Thank you for the conversation this morning, under the tree, through Mary Oliver:


(Note: I was compelled to pick up Mary Oliver’s book “Devotions” when I left home this morning. I always start reading at the bookmark, where I stopped reading last time. I opened to “When I Am Among the Trees” and it picked up steam from there.)

“Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with
the fragrance of the fields and the
freshness of the oceans which you have
made, and help me to hear and to hold
in all dearness those exacting and wonderful
words of our Lord Jesus Christ saying:
Follow me.”

Thank you for your Son and for his invitation to “Follow me.”

Thank you for your love, which always comes from you, and your love that comes through others.

Lord, help me use my life and myself to serve you, to glorify you, to be your love and to shine your light in the world.

Here I am, Lord.

Thank you.

It’s About the Heart and a Blessing

Background: Labor Day weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The Gospel reading was Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, where the Pharisees and scribes call Jesus out for his disciples not washing their hands before they eat (not following the tradition of the elders) and Jesus explains how it is not what goes in a person that defiles, it is what comes out of us that does that.

“It’s About the Heart”

For the record: Jesus was not against washing your hands.

Jesus was not against the tradition of the elders.

Jesus had a problem with making traditions for the sake of traditions and acting without the heart being in the right place.

Particularly human traditions that went against commandments God put in place. He says:

“You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

This lectionary reading skips over verses 9 through 13 of Mark’s Gospel, where Jesus gives them an example of this. He says:

“You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!  For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God), then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus nullifying the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”

There was a Jewish tradition that allowed you to make a donation to the Temple, which would absolve you from having to financially care for your parents as they got older. This goes against the whole idea of honor your mother and your father.

Do you think we still have some human traditions that we follow, possibly in spite of the commandments of God?

I will grab some low-hanging fruit here:

“Remember the Sabbath, keep it holy.” Unless your child or grandchild has sports. Or you need to go grocery shopping. Or you want to go out to eat. Or you have work to do….

How about make no idols? Don’t covet? Adultery? Well, these aren’t the big ones, right? These things happen, it’s not like murder. But we can even make murder okay if it’s on foreign soil, and if it’s in the name of national security, if it’s sanctioned by the government (also known as war).

If we stick just to the Ten Commandments, we’ve pretty much found loopholes or ways to justify any kind of behavior we want to normalize.

‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;’

Jesus has no issue with washing your hands and ritual purity. But when he and his disciples are hungry and tired and eating, and that’s the human tradition the Pharisees want to call someone out on, when their holy people are doing things so much worse all while staying within their established traditions, Jesus is going to call them out.

In many ways, our traditions define us—as a country, as a people, as a community, as a church. Even inside our liturgy, we pray a certain way, we say confession together, we celebrate the Eucharist. We consider our traditions in the church to be holy, and they are. Our traditions can also become a form of gatekeeping—if you don’t do things this way, you’re not one of us, you don’t belong.

What would be a good litmus test to ask, are these traditions the kind of thing we want to be known for? Do we like what they say about us as a community? Would God condone/endorse what our traditions look like?

In her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories,” Debie Thomas asks a few questions along these lines:

“Does your version of holiness lead to hospitality? To inclusion? To freedom? Does it cause your heart to open wide with compassion? Does it lead other people to feel loved and welcomed at God’s table? Does it make you brave? Does it ready your mind and body for a God who is always doing something fresh and new? Does it facilitate another step forward in your spiritual evolution? …Like everything Jesus offers us, his encounter with the Pharisees is an invitation. An invitation to consider what is truly inviolable in our spiritual lives.”

Our human traditions may not be physical food, but we take them in, they go into us and become part of us. And this is where the rubber hits the road for Jesus. When what becomes a part of us effects what comes out of us.

Jesus isn’t signing on to become our dietician: he’s not sitting in our car and giving us a lecture when we go through the McDonald’s drive thru. But it’s fair to say he cares how we treat the person working in the drive thru.

“Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come… these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Over and over again, in each of the Gospels, Jesus talks about and is concerned about hearts. He never tries to legislate what we do, he wants our hearts to be in the right place, and then what comes out of us will be in line with having loving hearts.

How many of us, before we eat, make a habit of washing our hands first? That’s a smart practice, we want our hands to be clean before we take food into our bodies.

How many of us have a similar practice before we say something, before we post something online, before we comment about something we disagree with? Do we have a practice like washing our hands, before something comes out of us?

What if before something comes out of us, we asked ourselves a few questions:

Do I know this to be true? Does it bring me closer to God? Does it help me love my neighbor? Does it bring my neighbor closer to God? Does it help my neighbor love me? Would I want someone saying this to someone I love? Does this sound like something Jesus would say or do or condone?

What comes out of us, both individually and collectively, is largely unchecked and not considered. And we are approaching a boiling point in our country with a Presidential election in a couple months.

Image credit: Paul Craft/Adobe Stock from Everyday Health.

I had to dig back in my mind for more than a decade for the last time two Presidential candidates treated each other with respect: Obama vs. Romney. They didn’t see eye-to-eye, they didn’t agree with what direction the country should go in, but when they debated, when they were asked questions about each other in interviews, and even Romney’s concession speech, they treated each other like human beings.

What has been modeled for us ever since has become a big part of the way we think about people who don’t agree with us, people who have a different vision for where we should go as a nation, as a people, as a community. If you don’t see things like I do, your opinion doesn’t matter—I am going to call you names, I am going to belittle your views, attack your credibility—because you clearly aren’t even human; by believing what you believe, you aren’t worth the air you breathe.

Does that sound familiar? Do we recognize that in ourselves and in each other? It’s dehumanizing, degrading, and heart-breaking. That’s what we are taking in. That’s what is being modeled for us.

Ultimately, we decide what comes out of us. We decide what behavior we are going to model. That’s what Jesus is talking about. We’re defiling ourselves and each other. We are so far from where Jesus is calling us to be in loving God and loving our neighbor. Is there another way, is there an alternative to thinking about what comes out of us?

Here’s something we might give a shot. I’ve been reading “An Altar in the World” by Episcopal priest and professor Barbara Brown Taylor this summer. Her book is about giving us concrete practices that we can do to find the holy, to find God, everywhere and in everyone. She spends the last chapter of the book on “The Practice of Pronouncing Blessings.”


In our church, there are certain things that only a priest can bless—the elements for Communion, a marriage, or the congregation as we leave: the priest confers blessings. Those aren’t the kind of blessings Barbara Brown Taylor means. She says that to pronounce a blessing on someone or something is to see them as important: to see them as created by and loved by God.

We don’t make anyone or anything blessed, loved, or holy—God has already done that. We’re just giving our words to it.

She says that when we choose to bless, it requires us to ease up on judging what is good and what is bad for us or for the world. It’s God who ultimately reveals that.

And she says that pronouncing a blessing puts us as close to God as we might ever get because we are asking ourselves to try to look at someone with God’s eyes.

“To learn to look with compassion on everything that is; to make the first move toward the other, however many times it takes to get close; to open your arms to what is instead of waiting until it is what (we think) it should be… to pronounce a blessing is to (try to) see things from the divine perspective.”

What if we thought about trying to see things from God’s perspective before we let something come out of us? That’s a tall order, one that takes practice and effort. But it’s a practice that can help us love each other.

What if we offered a blessing to those we encounter, instead of our anger, our judgment, and our doubts.

Let’s give it a try. Here’s a blessing to take with you:

May the Day

May the day bring you closer to love—
real love, big love, the kind you feel in your bones and your soul,
that opens you up and comes out of you like rain, like tears,
like laughter that leaves you shaking.

May the day bring you closer to God—
the One who loves you, who knows you, who created you,
whose face you want to see and study and hold
and never turn away from.
The One who knows your questions, your confusion,
your sorrows and joys and
whose presence holds all the answers you seek.

May the day bring you closer to your neighbor—
the neighbor who you know and love,
the neighbor who annoys you and who you avoid,
the neighbor who smiles at you when you walk by them on the sidewalk,
the neighbor who is afraid to make eye contact,
the neighbor in the produce section of the grocery store,
the neighbor who just got news they don’t think they can recover from.

May the day bring you closer to understanding—
that love, God, and neighbor are the same,
we need them and they need us, and that we are connected
in ways that we can see and ways that we can’t,
but connected nonetheless and always.

May the day bring you compassion—
when and where you need it,
to be seen, heard, and cared for,
and also to see, hear, and care for
those who need it in their day.

May the day bring you peace—
the kind that slows your heart rate, eases your pulse,
emanates from your soul, drives away your worries
and leaves a contagious smile on your face.

May the day wake you up—
To all these things—love, God, neighbor,
understanding, compassion, and peace—
may you be aware of and know these truths
today, this day, and all days,
knowing and loving God and all of God’s creation
more each day.

Saying Yes and What Happens Next

Background: August 15 is the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin on the lectionary calendar. The Gospel reading used for the liturgy is Luke 1:46-55, a song Mary sings while pregnant, now referred to as The Magnificat. The following is the text of a homily I gave at the Christ Church Easton weekly healing service, where we used the St. Mary readings.

“Saying Yes and What Happens Next”

Mary said yes. She said yes to God. Today’s reading gives us Mary’s song of joy in what is happening with her; but the “yes” happened first. If we stick to Luke’s Gospel, the angel Gabriel comes to Mary and says, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid, you have found favor with God.”

Gabriel explains what will happen, that she will bear a son and who he will be and what he will do and mean for the world. When she has questions, he explains that “the Holy Spirit will come upon her and the power of the Most High will overshadow her; therefore the child will be born holy; he will be called Son of God.”

Mary’s response was, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

As far as we know, that is the last conversation Gabriel and Mary had. All it took was Mary’s consent. She said yes, when God called on her.

Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was barren, and became miraculously pregnant with John the Baptist. The two women come together and are overjoyed and anxious and excited, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps at the presence of the pregnant Mary.

Caught up in this excitement, Mary gives us today’s reading, which we call, “The Magnificat,” which is used in Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican/Episcopal Vespers (evening) services and sung or prayed as a canticle.

Mary’s song echoes older songs, including the Song or Prayer of Hannah, in 1 Samuel 2:1-10, which Hannah—who couldn’t conceive and prayed to God and who then had a son Samuel—sang to rejoice.

So this is the kind of joyous song someone is filled with when an incredible, overwhelming, and unexpected thing happens.

It’s the saying yes to God’s call, big or small, that opens us up to being filled with the Holy Spirit. And what that looks like can be big or small as well—it could look or feel like laughter, tears, joy; it can come over us as we do something we love or we feel called to do, it can feel like affirmation, it can feel like connection, it can feel like closeness—it’s a feeling inside us that comes from outside us, or that stirs something up in us that we didn’t know was there.

But here’s the thing: they are moments. They are gifts, but they don’t necessarily last. Here was this moment shared by Mary and Elizabeth, but it isn’t the moment or the Magnificat that we remember Mary for.

We remember her because she said yes to God. She said, “let it be with me according to your word.”

And what did saying yes then entail?

Mary then had to lean into Joseph’s understanding and compassion and bear an unexpected pregnancy in a culture that stoned women for what it seemed she had done.

Image: Giotto, The Arena Chapel Frescoes: The Boy Jesus in the Temple (1305-1306).

We learn later in Luke the story of Jesus going missing from Mary and Joseph and their having to return over days to come back and find their 12-year-old son teaching in the Temple. Imagine that prayer to God—”Hi, God, it’s me, Mary. I kind of lost your son…”

We’ve heard and recently talked about the story where Mary and Jesus’s later siblings come looking for him when they fear he has lost it, or gone too far, and he says, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters?”

And Mary lives to see Jesus crucified in front of her.

These are bullet points, not going into any kind of detail. But pointing out that Mary’s life got more difficult, more confusing, and more heartbreaking after she said yes to God. We see similar storylines with John the Baptist, the Twelve disciples, and the apostle Paul.

We rightly celebrate and revere St. Mary the Virgin, not because she was unattainable and so far beyond human, but because she was human, scared, unsure at times, and she said yes and stepped up anyway, not even knowing what the cost might be.

Mary’s willingness might help us look at our own lives and see and seize opportunities to say yes, when we are called.

Debie Thomas, in her book “Into the Mess & Other Jesus stories” frames it like this:

“At its heart, Mary’s story is about what happens when a human being encounters the divine and decides of her own volition to lean into that encounter…

“In pondering Mary’s yes, we are invited to consider what our own might look like. What can we anticipate if we give our consent to God. What will happen within and around us if we agree to bear God into the world? Who will we become, and who will God become, in the long aftermath of our consent?”

A question I have for us this morning, can you think of an example, it could be from your life, or a friend or family member’s, or it can be an example that you have read about or know about that inspires you in some way, of a person who has said yes when called upon, and what that looked like?

I want to put it out there that if Mary’s life had been cushy or easy and she rode around in chariots and was carried everywhere she went, we wouldn’t think of her as a saint.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says that “saints are persons in heaven (officially canonized or not), who lived heroically virtuous lives, offered their life for others, or were martyred for the faith, and who are worthy of imitation.”

That sounds like a tall order. None of us might aspire to be a saint—just living a good and commendable life seems like a plenty high bar to shoot for. But we are all called to be saints. When Paul used the word saints in his letters and when the earliest church talked about saints, it meant everyone, the whole body of the church, the Body of Christ.

If you look at the ending of the Apostle’s Creed, we say:

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
    the holy catholic Church,
    the communion of saints,
    the forgiveness of sins
    the resurrection of the body,
    and the life everlasting. Amen.

The Communion of Saints is all the faithful followers of Christ, living, dead, past, present, and future.

Rev. Katie Shockley, a Methodist minister, frames it like this:

“When we gather in worship, we praise God with believers we cannot see. When we celebrate Holy Communion, we feast with past, present and future disciples of Christ. We experience the communion of saints, the community of believers –– living and dead. This faith community stretches beyond space and time. We commune with Christians around the world, believers who came before us, and believers who will come after us. We believe that the church is the communion of saints, and as a believer, you belong to the communion of saints.”

We are bound together, lifted and carried by grace, with those who have come before us and those who will come after us. And we look to someone like Mary for inspiration, to remind us that we too can say yes, in our own ways, in our own lives.

When Mary said yes, I don’t think her thought process made her say, “hey, if I agree, maybe people will remember me as a saint someday!” Based on how Luke frames it, it was more along the lines of: God is asking for my help: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”


And she was willing to bear whatever came with that saying yes, though she knew not what that was.

Here is Debie Thomas one more time:

“The particularities of our own stories might differ from Mary’s but the weight and cost of ‘bearing’ remain the same—and so does the grace. When we consent to the unbearable, we learn a new kind of hope. A hope set free from expectation and frenzy. A resurrected hope that doesn’t need or want easy answers. A hope that accepts the grayness of things and leaves room for mystery.”

We don’t know what saying yes might mean. We don’t know exactly what comes next when we open and offer ourselves up. But we know that it brings us closer to God; we know that it allows us to be a part of God’s plans for the world; and we know that in God’s love for us, He invites us into richer, fuller lives, being a part of the Communion of Saints, and His holy mystery.

We can look to Mary as an example and for inspiration.

Choose Wisely

Background: August 3-4 was a preaching weekend for me. The lectionary readings included 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a–the fallout from King David’s underhanded actions with Bathsheba and Uriah, and John 6:24-35, where Jesus talks about the sign of feeding the 5,000 and proclaims, “I am the bread of life.” Following is the text of the sermon I gave at Christ Church Easton, connecting the two readings.

I want to take us back a couple months ago, to one of our readings at the beginning of summer, just after Pentecost. It’s from 1 Samuel.

The people of Israel tell Samuel they want a king. Samuel passes the message along to God, who says, “You shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

Samuel relays God’s warnings of all the nefarious things a king will do. And then we hear:

“But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

Now, God wasn’t warning them that they were going to get a bad egg as a king. He was warning them against placing trust in worldly power; he was warning them against what being king does to people, how they can get caught up in all that goes with the position.

In the case of this particular king, God loved David. He wasn’t against him. And when all this went down with Bathsheba and Uriah, God didn’t give up on him. But David sure messed things up.

Not every story in the Bible has a fairytale, happy ending. We get the good, the bad, and the ugly—and some of the stories leave us in a bad spot. They are supposed to. The story of David and Bathsheba leaves us in a lurch.

I have to say, I like Nathan and the approach God came up with for him. The story about the one little ewe lamb and watching David get fired up about it—revealing that he still has some sense of justice and compassion in him, outwardly looking anyway.

God blasts David for what he’s done; He speaks to David in David’s own language, based on his actions and the things that are important to him. God didn’t say to Israel—“See? Didn’t I tell you bad things would happen if you went with a king?” Instead God still loves David, tries to work through what has happened, avoid anything like that happening again, and come to a better understanding and a better relationship on the other side.

And though God doesn’t say I told you so, the king issue is still a problem. In this case, a problem that may have a proposed solution, right in our readings over the last two weeks.

In last week’s reading, after Jesus had fed the 5,000 people with just a few loaves and some fish, they had a notion that Jesus was the prophet to come into the world.

“When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”   


Jesus wants no part of the worldly power that the crowds want to give to him. God warned Israel that they didn’t want a king. Israel said, “oh yes we do, we want to be like everyone else in the world, the king can fight our battles, and we’ll be on the news just like the cool countries.”

The people witness the signs Jesus is doing and they think, well finally, here’s the guy, this is the king we’ve been waiting for. Jesus says thanks, but no thanks.

Jesus’s mission is much bigger, more profound, more earth-shattering, more kingdom-bringing than becoming the next king on a throne.

Remember, these aren’t bad people who want to make Jesus king. These are people who witnessed him healing and curing the sick. They followed him and Jesus loved them and had compassion enough that he performed another miracle and fed them.

In writing his Gospel account, John doesn’t call these things that Jesus is doing miracles: he calls them signs. Because they point to something bigger than the sign itself. And in this week’s reading, Jesus explains something about this sign. He says:

“Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

People eating their fill of loaves is what they do in the world of kings. Food that endures for eternal life is what they do in the kingdom of God. Jesus uses this feeding sign to point to the thing behind it: to point to God.

This is tough stuff for the people to get their head around. They’re not getting it. They ask:

“What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing?”

Maybe now we can understand why Jesus walks away from the crowds sometimes. “What work are you performing?” Hey guys, Jesus is going to do another magic trick! Let’s set up a tent and some seats and take in the show!

The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, is full of stories of the relationship between God and His people, where the people get confused, lose sight of God’s love and their covenant; they get tempted and give into temptation, and God keeps giving them course corrections. Reminders. “Remember, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… I’ve done all these things for you.”

What we see in Jesus and what we see in the Gospels is what it looks like to make the right decisions, to repent from the wanting of kings and the low-hanging fruit of worldly desires, power grabs, and putting ourselves first. Where Israel wanders lost in the dessert for 40 years, Jesus doesn’t give into temptation during his 40 days in the wilderness. Jesus is the course correction, he shows us how to live in this life, what to focus on, who to care about, who to take care of, how to love, so that we move beyond our small, selfish selves, by giving up our lives and our want for kings and focusing on heavenly things and eternal life.

Every day we make choices. In some cases, those choices can move us away from God and towards the world who wants to be ruled by kings. Some of our choices can move us closer to God, closer to Jesus, who is trying to show us how to make the right decisions.


In her book, “An Altar in the World,” Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor is invited to go speak at a church in Alabama. She asks what they want her to talk about. The priest says, “Come tell us what is saving your life now.”

Brown Taylor says:

“All I had to do was figure out what my life depended on. All I had to do was figure out how I stayed as close to that reality as I could, and then find some way to talk about it that helped my listeners figure out the same things for themselves.”

“Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

How do we come to Jesus? How do we believe? What are things we can do to draw closer to God, to make the right decisions?

Tell us about what is saving you now. Here are some of things that have helped me lately:

Rest – I am less likely to rush into a bad decision when I rest, when I pause. We’ve spent the last couple Sunday evenings on the screened in porch and in the yard to watch the sunset and the sky. Taking an afternoon walk down the tree-lined, gravel lane to Claiborne Beach. Hit the reset button. If people’s energy is intense and they are spun up about something, as we see so often right now, if I have caught my breath and come to a situation rested, my chances of making good decisions are better.


Prayer – when I am in conversation with God, when I am listening, I am more likely to be looking at life from a bigger perspective than just my own. We stay close to people we spend time with. Prayer is a great way to spend time with God. At our healing service this week, someone talked about, when she feels distant from God, she starts her prayers with, “Lord, have mercy on me.” That puts us in a place of humility. Being humble can be its own category.

Gratitude – if I find something to be grateful for each day, my heart and my mind are aligned. If David had looked around and said, “Wow, look at the kingdom I have, the life I am living, and been grateful to God for it all, maybe he doesn’t put himself in the situation that gets him in so much trouble.

Heartbreak – this is about perspective. Over the past few weeks, I gave a homily at a friend’s funeral and watched his 16-year-old daughter give a eulogy for her father; another friend lost his wife about this time last year and now his brother is in home hospice. Another friend last week was in the church praying on her late husband’s birthday and we got to catch up, and what a gift to see that their love continues even now. So many people around us, our friends, our family, members of our congregation, are going through so much. If we allow our hearts to break with theirs; to know we can’t fully understand what someone else is going through, but we can try to be there with them; that’s what Jesus asked us to do. Heartbreak reminds us what things are most important and what decisions to make.

Study – I have so much more to learn about the Bible. God’s inspired Word; a library of readings for our learning, sometimes as night and day different as someone sleeping with a neighbor’s wife and then plotting to have that same neighbor killed; to feeding 5,000 hungry people who are looking for something more than food. When I spend time reading and reflecting, learning from Scripture, I am being fed with more than food.

Jesus is talking about feeding people spiritually, going beyond just our human hungers and thirsts. Not discounting them but using them to point to something bigger. To point to the one who was sent to give us these signs; the one who was sent to show us how to love and how to live; and when the crowds asked what they had to do, Jesus said believe in me. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Believing, when it comes to Jesus, isn’t about just agreeing with him, it’s not some mental exercise. It’s about how we live our lives, how we love, and what we do with our time. I still make a lot of bad decisions. But prayer, gratitude, rest, heartbreak, and study are some of the things that help me make the decisions God hopes I’ll make. As you go about your week, think about what things are helping you. What is saving you, bring you closer to Jesus, helping you believe, right now?