Tag: preaching

Coming Down the Mountain

Background: March 1-2 was a preaching weekend for me and the lectionary reading was Luke 9:28-43a, Jesus’s Transfiguration on the mountaintop. The following is the text of my sermon given at Christ Church Easton.

“Coming Down the Mountain (We’re Not Finished Yet)”

This is our last reading before Lent; our last reading for the Season After Epiphany, and it really bookends how we started the season, with the magi searching for and acknowledging Jesus. The transfiguration on the mountaintop is the vision, the revelation to Jesus’s closest friends as to his true identity as the Messiah.

Let’s get ourselves into the scene a bit. Since our last couple readings out of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has healed people, cast out demons, taught and told parables, calmed a storm, and brought back a girl thought to be dead.

He has called the Twelve together, given them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases and sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. And they have gone out and done just as Jesus commanded. They came back to together and were excitedly telling Jesus about all they had done. As they were telling these stories, crowds gathered around Jesus and he welcomed them, taught them, healed them, and then working with the disciples and just a little bit of food, Jesus feeds 5,000 people.

Jesus then goes off by himself to pray, with only the disciples nearby and he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” And then he asks the disciples straight up, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter says, “The Messiah of God.”

Hearing Peter’s answer, Jesus says don’t tell anyone. “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected and killed and on the third day be raised.” He gives them some more mind-blowing, scandalous sounding teaching, which they can’t possibly make sense of, and then eight days later, Luke tells us, Jesus takes his closest friends, Peter, James, and John, and they go up the mountain to pray.

While Jesus is praying, his three friends have the ultimate epiphany. This isn’t just Peter saying “You are the Messiah,”—this is Jesus with his face changing and his clothes becoming as bright as lightning; Moses and Elijah appearing and talking to Jesus. There is a big difference between saying something and seeing it in miraculous form in front of you.

Peter, James, and John are weighed down with sleep, not sure if this is a dream or really happening. And Peter gives the line that we can all relate to, “Master, it’s good for us to be here; let’s set up three tents.”

A cloud overcomes them and out of the cloud they hear God’s voice saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”

I feel Peter here. Let’s stay in this moment. What else do we need. We’ve got the law, the prophets, and the Messiah, everything has been revealed, what else can there be? This is the ultimate!

Mountaintop moments. Have you ever had moments like that, where everything makes sense, everything is lined up, all the most amazing feelings—awe and wonder so much that you can barely contain it.

We’ve seen Holy Spirit moments at Alpha Retreats we’ve taken into the hills of the Claggett Center outside DC. Joy, laughter, the good kind of tears overflowing, a sense of community and connection to where no one wants to leave and go back home. We all wanted to stop time and stay in those mountaintop moments.


Wow, do we need those moments. We need those moments, those epiphanies, where we feel connected to God, where our doubts are erased, where darkness and pain are left behind and God’s love in the person of Jesus is as bright as lightning.

But we can’t stay there yet. Just as Jesus had been talking to Moses and Elijah, he had work to do—his exodus, which would be achieved in Jerusalem—was still ahead of him.

It’s back down the mountain. We’re not finished yet.

And no time is wasted, the very next day, a big crowd meets Jesus. A man shouts, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son. Suddenly a spirit seizes him and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth. It mauls him and will scarcely leave him.”

In all the synoptic accounts of the Transfiguration—in Matthew, Mark, and Luke—coming down the mountain is each time followed by the encounter with the father and his child who is seized by demons. In Matthew’s account, the father says instead, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he has epilepsy and suffers terribly.”

As the father of a daughter with epilepsy, who has seizures, I can tell you exactly what that looks like and how helpless you feel. Something happens to her and it’s not her there in front of me for a while. I don’t mind calling it seized by a demon, though we have a better understanding of it now.

The father tells Jesus that he brought his son to the disciples and they couldn’t cure him. Jesus gets miffed and says, “Bring him here to me,” and he casts the demon out, cures the boy, and gives him back to his father.

It’s interesting to think about: the disciples, who had been sent out to proclaim the kingdom and heal the sick, but couldn’t help the boy—they didn’t go up the mountain with Jesus. They weren’t there for his transfiguration and to hear God confirm his identity. They weren’t there for the mountaintop experience.

Something happened up there that came back down the mountain with Jesus and his three friends. This is how former Episcopal Bishop of Alaska, Steven Charleston puts it:

“The Spirit’s vision always takes us down from the mountaintop and out into the world. Our personal relationship with the Spirit opens us up to engage with others. In doing that, we begin with the one thing we all share in common: HOPE. Hope is the catalyst, the tipping point where what we believe becomes what we do.”


They came down the mountain with hope. And when we have our mountaintop experiences, our moments of certainty, our epiphanies—they give us hope that we can hold onto. Hope that lasts through the valleys, through the dark stretches we go through.

Jesus comes back down the mountain because he isn’t finished—there is work to be done. He gives us hope and the Holy Spirit because we are PART of that work. The hope we feel in our hearts is part of the way that His hope gets spread out into the world.

I wish with everything that life were all mountaintop moments. That we could dwell in them, build our tents with Peter and stretch them out. But the Kingdom isn’t the Kingdom until everyone is in it, until it fills the hearts of the poor, the sick, the confused, the outcast. All of us.

Jesus isn’t finished. And so neither are we. We come back down the mountain because the world needs that hope, that epiphany, that encouragement.

We can make the hope of the mountaintop our home on the ground.

Steven Charleston continues:

“When we claim hope for our home—when we make it the guiding energy of our faith—we transition from being scattered individuals who wish things would get better into being active partners with the Spirit, reshaping the balance of life toward mercy, justice, and peace. Hope becomes our goal. Once that hope has been released in the human heart, it cannot be forced back into the darkness. It is spiritually incandescent. The faith which we see penetrates the shadows around us like a searchlight seeking the future. Hope becomes a force that will not be denied.”

Incandescent. Like a searchlight. In the Old Testament reading, Moses came down the mountain with his skin shining because he had been talking to God. With Jesus it was more than that: Jesus’s face BECAME light. He was and is the light.

When we open ourselves to the Spirit, we allow that same light to shine in us. We can take that light into the world. What a privilege, what an opportunity, and what a challenge when life feels dark.

How do we keep in touch with the light? How can we find it when it seems distant?

We remember. Remember those mountaintop moments. Keep them in your heart.

We pray. We get vulnerable with God and open ourselves so that we can be filled with God’s love and light.

We share our stories, we share our hope, we come together in community.

My story as a father doesn’t have the healing in it that the father in today’s reading has. Yet. The demon of epilepsy is still in my daughter, and it breaks my heart at times.

But I’ve been on the mountaintop. I’ve seen and known that light, that incandescence, bright as lightning. I have hope and the Spirit.

And Jesus is coming down the mountain. He’s not finished yet. And neither are we.

08/06/15 was the date of Ava’s first seizure and the beginning of our lives with epilepsy. She hopes to get a second tattoo of the date where she knows it is behind her.

Living with Mercy and Grace

Background: The lectionary readings for Sunday, February 23 include Genesis 45:3-11, 15, where Joseph is merciful to his brothers who threw him into a pit and sold him into slavery, and Luke 6:27-38, where Jesus tells his disciples to love your enemies, as part of his Sermon on the Plain. This is a quick homily I gave at the Wednesday Healing Service at Christ Church Easton, as these are both readings I think we need to discuss more.

“Living with Mercy and Grace“

Jesus’s teaching today is a continuation of the “Blessings and Woes” or Beatitudes that Patrick talked about last week. Let’s remember that Luke’s version of the Beatitudes is different than the one we find in Matthew’s Gospel, both in nuanced ways and in that Matthew shows Jesus going up a mountain to teach, whereas Luke has Jesus going down to a level place. Matthew’s version is often referred to as the Sermon on the Mount; this speech in Luke is often called the Sermon on the Plain. That’s an intentional setting for Luke, who shows Jesus among the people, not above them, lifting up the poor, and being visited by shepherds, not wise men.

After Jesus has bowled the disciples over by calling the poor, the hungry, and those who weep “blessed,” now he’s gone totally off his rocker telling them to love their enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you.

If we think Jesus is just speaking theoretically, no, he gives examples: if someone hits you on the cheek, give them the other one too; if someone takes your coat, give them your shirt as well; give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes your stuff, don’t ask for it back.

Then Jesus drops a version of what we call the Golden Rule: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

How do you want to be treated? With love? With kindness? Then treat people that way. That’s a teaching we can get behind. We get something out of that, we think about how we want to be treated, which of course is to be treated well.

What about mercy? Hhhmmm… there is something to that. If only we had a case study, an example, something from the Old Testament maybe, to refer to…

Oh wait, we’ve got Joseph and his brothers from our Genesis reading. Joseph’s story is well known, even turned into a musical. Joseph was a dreamer and favored by his father; his brothers were jealous, decided to kill him, thought better of it, threw him into a pit; then got the bright idea to sell him into slavery; they took his robe or coat and put blood all over it and took it to their father, who assumed Joseph had been killed by wild animals.

From being a slave, Joseph works his way up to becoming the Pharoah’s top advisor in Egypt. He is able to see the tough times coming, store up food in times of famine; and in our reading today, his brothers come before him, in need. Joseph has all the power and can do with them whatever he wants. How many Hollywood movies would have this scene being sweet revenge, just retribution. But it’s not.

Joseph is merciful. And then some. The brothers don’t ask for forgiveness, they don’t fall down at his feet. It’s Joseph who initiates it:

“I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life… God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors”… And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.”

It’s okay. You didn’t know what you were doing. But God did. This is where I was supposed to end up, so I could save us. It had nothing to do with how his brothers acted; it had everything to do with who Joseph was and how he acted.

Joseph was merciful. Even when he had every right to get back at them. And he showed mercy in a way that let his brothers save face.

Fr. Richard Rohr from the Center for Action and Contemplation website.

Franciscan and best-selling author Richard Rohr in talking about today’s Gospel reading gives us a thought that connects both readings. He says that Jesus doesn’t forgive in a way that makes him look good and sinners look bad. Jesus doesn’t say look how great I am and how sinful you are.

Rohr writes:

“Forgiveness is loyalty to the truth of who you are. To forgive someone is to recognize who they are, to admit and affirm who they are, and to know that their best selves will be brought out only in the presence of an accepting and believing person. Forgiveness is basically the act of believing in another person and not allowing that person to be destroyed by self-hatred. Forgiveness involves helping people uncover their self-worth, which is usually crusted over by their own self-hatred.

“This is a way of forgiving people that does not make you look goodbut makes them look good. That’s the way God forgives us. In the act of forgiveness, God gives us back our dignity and self-worth. God is loyal to the truth of who we are. God affirms that we are good persons who have sinned. God asserts that we aren’t bad.”

Joseph doesn’t wait for his brothers to grovel and plead. He jumps right out and says, don’t be angry with yourselves. This isn’t your fault. God needed me here to help.

Let’s move back to the Gospel. Jesus says, loving people that already love you? You want credit for that? Doing good to those who do good to you? Giving to those who you expect to get something back from? That’s not love, it’s business. We’ve got plenty of that going around.

“But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

Jesus is a teacher whose actions back up his words. If the disciples, or if we think, yeah Jesus, that sounds great and all, but mercy isn’t how the world works. Jesus’s response, with his life, is to show mercy and to love those he encounters, to walk himself straight to Jerusalem, into the hands of those who will persecute and execute him and as he is dying on the cross, being mocked by the thieves on either side of him, as Luke tells it, one thief wises up and says, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

And Jesus replies, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Mercy. Forgiveness. Right up to his death. And in his Resurrection, does Jesus ask for retribution? Does God want justice? No. Again, and again, and again, God shows mercy. Jesus forgives.

And it’s love that wins.

This is from The SALT Project’s weekly commentary, which brings it together beautifully:

“And what do we call this kind of love, this completely free, above-and-beyond, gratuitous giving? We call it “grace.” We may think of grace primarily as the unmerited, saving love of God — and well we should, Jesus says, for God “is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” But at the same time, this is exactly the love Jesus calls us to live out, not as gods or angels but as “children of the Most High,” human beings created in God’s image: “Be merciful, just as God is merciful” When we love this way, we embody the imago Dei (the image of God). This is the love we were made for.”

How God Speaks to Us

Background: February 1-2 was a preaching weekend for me and the lectionary was “The Presentation of the Lord,” a feast day, which used Luke 2:22-40 with baby Jesus being presented at the Temple and Simeon knowing who Jesus was through a gift of the Holy Spirit. This resonated with discussions we’d been having in small groups during the previous week.

“How God Speaks to Us”

When we preach, we try to bear witness to Scripture, bringing our own witness to it—where we are, how we engage with the text, and where the Spirit takes us. The next time a reading comes back in the lectionary cycle, three years from now, what speaks to us in a passage will likely be different.

We’ve been having some great conversations this week about Scripture and faith. And what stands out to me in today’s readings are the Bible, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit: different ways of knowing God.

We start out with Malachai, our Old Testament reading. Malachai may or may not be a proper name here as the name Malachi translates as “my messenger.” And here the writer is facing toward the future, talking about “my messenger” who will prepare the way for “the Lord who will suddenly come to his Temple” (we can see why these readings are paired together). As Christians, we look back on a passage like this and we say, Malachai is pointing us to John the Baptizer and to Jesus.

And when we use Jesus as our lens, we can look back on different prophets and different passages in the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament, and say, look at the prophetic writings and how and where they point to Jesus. It’s an incredible exercise to do, and we start to make connections and draw threads throughout Scripture.

In our Gospel reading, Luke shows us Mary and Joseph presenting Jesus at the Temple, as was the custom: eight days after being born, a Jewish male child would be circumcised, and 33 days after giving birth, the mother was expected to participate in the rite of purification, a symbolic restoration of purity.

When they get there they encounter a man in Jerusalem named Simeon, who was righteous and devout. It had been revealed to Simeon that before he died, he would see the Lord’s Messiah. This is a revelation that came not from Scripture, but from God.

Simeon comes to the Temple, “guided by the Holy Spirit,” and he is able to recognize Jesus, to know who Jesus is by trusting God.

And look at his reaction, Simeon takes Jesus into his arms and says:

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;

for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”

Image from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.


He is overwhelmed with joy at this knowledge. He can die with peace. Another prophet, an old woman named Anna has a similar reaction, praising God and speaking about the child who would redeem Israel.

Their way of knowing who Jesus is, comes to them by God’s Spirit.

Let’s think back to our readings from a couple weeks ago: the Baptism of Jesus, which happens as he is about to begin his ministry, as an adult. After Jesus is baptized and he is praying, “the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.’”

That’s confirmation for Jesus as to who he is. The Spirit is testifying both in Jesus and in others as to Jesus’s identity as the Messiah.

But a funny thing begins to happen in Jesus’s ministry. We saw it last week, as Kelsey (Rev. Kelsey Spiker) read and preached: Jesus unrolled the Isaiah scroll, and read, and told his listeners about being sent to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free,” what great news! And then Jesus gives them the biggest news of all, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing!”

I picture Jesus in front of the crowd, “up here, gang—it’s me. I’m the Word made flesh. You’re not going to believe the things we are going to do.” But as he keeps talking, what started as excitement turns to anger and the gathered crowd chases Jesus out of the town, and they want to throw him off a cliff.

What’s going on here. Haven’t they read their New Testament, their Gospels? Oh wait, none of that has been written yet. It’s not in their Bible.

Jesus IS the Word made flesh. He is standing in front of them. He is writing the rest of Scripture. Wait, actually he is not. To our knowledge, from the stories we have in the Gospels, Jesus had a two or three-year ministry and he never wrote down anything he said or did or taught. He was too busy doing the work—loving and serving—to bother to write any of it down himself.

Isn’t it interesting: our Scripture, our Bible is written by regular people, inspired by God. But still regular people, who don’t always get everything right; who come at things from their own perspectives—that’s why we have two creation stories in Genesis and some differences in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John’s Gospel accounts—they give us our Scripture, from a human perspective, written in a particular time and place.

And when the one guy who can get everything right; who can and does speak for God; who heals, teaches, and forgives sins, with God’s authority; when the one person who can make everything crystal clear is here in the flesh—Jesus doesn’t write anything down. And when he teaches, he teaches in parables—in riddles, which we have to work on and work out, they don’t come to us ready-made.

Jesus’s life and ministry as it happened required people to use Scripture as the road map to get them to Jesus, and then they had to look up from Scripture to witness, follow, and continue what Jesus was doing in the moment. When we read Jesus’s parables and about his life, it also takes our involvement in the here and now. Scripture points to Jesus, points us to God, is inspired by God, but is not God.

The scribes and pharisees who focused too closely on Scripture, missed Jesus in their midst.

And then as Jesus goes about his ministry an even stranger thing happens. The folks who know their Hebrew Bible, their Old Testament, the Law, the Torah the best, they are Jesus’s biggest detractors, his biggest critics. And Jesus will get in trouble with them for actually doing things their Scripture says not to do: healing on the Sabbath, working on the Sabbath, hanging out with people who the law says are unclean.

Jesus is going to show them at every turn, that where love and the law are at odds with each other, go with love. Every. Time.

Look up from your Bibles. I am the Word made flesh. I am right in front of you. Follow me. Watch me. Learn from me. We will do this together. Together, we will write the next part of the story.

The disciples are going to walk through Scripture in real-time, face-to-face with Jesus. To do that, they’ve got to believe in him. They’ve got to trust him.

So we’ve got Scripture, leading to Jesus. Then Jesus holds the baton saying, “Word made flesh here, watch me, follow me, love one another as I love you.” And then, after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, we’ve got more Scripture written (the New Testament), so that we don’t miss out on who Jesus was and what he did. Scripture is the main way we learn about Jesus. But he also gives us something else to help.

Sticking to Luke’s Gospel, after Jesus’s resurrection and explaining everything to the disciples, he says wait for the Holy Spirit, which will give you power. The gift of the Holy Spirit is another way for us to know, understand, and participate in God and Jesus.

This is the same Spirit that revealed to Simeon who Jesus was. It’s the same Spirit that spoke to the prophets of the Old Testament, and it’s the same Spirit that convicts us in the work of God’s love.

Simeon was a devout Scripture reader, who also made space for God to speak to him through the Spirit.

There is not one singular way for us to understand God, and God’s will and ways. We need to stay on our toes and be open to how God might speak to us.

We need Scripture to point the way, to be our road map.

We need Jesus to show us, to be for us the way and truth and the life.

We need the Holy Spirit to fill us, convict us, and guide us.

We need each other to love and serve and to be God’s love, to build the community that Jesus began, and to be his hands and feet in the world.

God’s Word came alive, became flesh, in Jesus.

Through the Holy Spirit, God’s Word is alive and alive in us.

Conversion of St. Paul: Embracing Change

January 25 is the day the lectionary celebrates the Conversion of St. Paul. For our Wednesday Healing Services at Christ Church Easton, I have been using feast days that occur during a given week as a chance to do something along the lines of a homily to recognize them. This is what I put together for this week.

“The Conversion of St. Paul: Embracing Change”

Saul was not an atheist. He wasn’t a morally questionable person. He was a faithful and devoted Jew, who thought he was doing God’s work. And he was a persecutor of Christians. He approved the stoning of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr in the Book of Acts.

There is no way in the world he was going to be even supportive of this movement, these followers of Jesus.

Until he was. This was not a change-by-degrees situation; this was being struck blind on the road to Damascus and having to come face-to-face with not just the risen Christ, but with the idea that the things you were devoted to, committed to, SURE OF, turned out to be wrong.

This was not an unlikely conversion. It was an impossible conversion. It made no sense. Saul had to come into it and not only that, if you were one of the early followers of Jesus, you knew who Saul was and there was no way you were going to trust him.

From the account in Acts, Saul was blind for three days and didn’t eat or drink for that time.

The Lord called out to a disciple in Damascus named Ananias, and told him where to go to find Saul and lay hands on him so that Saul could regain his sight.

And Ananias said:

“Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem, and here he has authority to bind all who invoke your name.”

In other words, “Lord, I don’t think this is such a good idea.”

The Lord said to him, “Go for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel. I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

Even after his conversion, regaining his sight and becoming an incredibly powerful and persuasive preacher—so much so that now the Jews wanted to kill him; when Saul came to Jerusalem to join the disciples, they were all afraid of him and didn’t believe he had really changed.

Paul’s life got significantly more difficult after his conversion. Many of his letters were written from prison, which he found himself in and out of.

Now in terms of hand-picking apostles, Jesus hit the jackpot with Paul. Paul was Jewish, a pharisee. He was a Roman citizen, he spoke multiple languages, he was literate and educated, and passionate—he was actually the perfect combination of skills, upbringing, and knowledge to take this movement to the next level.

Let’s talk about change. Paul had to completely change his life, to repent, to turn around and go a different direction. And he is well documented in his own words for doing so.

Has your own path of following Jesus asked you to change or make changes in your life? What kind?

Our changes aren’t going to be a severe as Paul’s—I don’t think any of us were persecuting or killing Christians. Changes in our lives might look very different.

I’ll show you what I mean. I make this point a fair amount: over the past eight years, I have cried more than any other period of my life. Following Jesus has opened my heart and caused me to care about more people and more things, to take them into my heart—it’s a much more difficult way to walk through life. But it’s also richer and more rewarding.


Following Jesus with our whole hearts should make us care more about the world and be heartbroken by things we might have ignored before.

Following Jesus asked me to give up a temper that I had been developing over the years.

Following Jesus asked me to let go of judging people and situations. On the Meyers Briggs personality test that people take, I used to test as INFJ—introverted, intuitive, feeling, judging—over the past five years, anytime I have taken the test and been totally honest, I am INFP—judging changed to perceiving.

Change was necessary for Paul and it’s necessary for us. Transformation is a word that is not to be taken lightly.

Another thing we might learn from Paul is the difference between righteousness and self-righteousness. Saul, the pharisee who persecuted Christians was sure he was right. Jesus had a different opinion.

It makes me think of a more modern-day hero of mine. Verna Dozier was an African-American woman who was an English teacher at Dunbar High School. When she retired, became one of the lay (non-ordained) leaders of the Episcopal Church. I keep a copy of her book “The Dream of God” on a shelf near my desk. We did a small group study of that book, and I loved everything about this quote:

“We always see through a glass darkly, and that is what faith is about. I will live by the best I can discern today. Tomorrow I may find out I was wrong. Since I do not live by being right, I am not destroyed by being wrong.”

It is a powerful and humbling thing to live knowing I (or we) don’t and can’t know everything. I do my best to figure things out and have the courage and grace to keep learning and I realize that because something seemed right yesterday, it doesn’t mean it can’t be proved wrong today or tomorrow. If that happens, then I need to be willing to change. Just like Paul did.

So maybe humility becomes important, to realize I am not always right, no matter how passionate I might feel about something. I could have a realization—an epiphany—that I was wrong. Then I need the courage to admit it and think and live differently.

What else can we learn from Paul’s conversion? How about don’t write off your enemies. Saul wasn’t just disliked by the early Christians—he was public enemy number one. They were scared and skeptical of bringing him into the fold.

I apologize for bringing sports analogies into a discussion of such important things, but it’s still football season and we can make a couple points here.

There was a defensive back who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers named Rod Woodson, who is a Hall of Fame player, one of the best to play football at his position. The Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens are big rivals, they don’t like each other on the field very much. Rod Woodson ended up becoming a Raven, helped them win a Super Bowl, and now he is one of their radio broadcast announcers. Loved in both cities, he has dual citizenship.

If you follow the Philadelphia Eagles, running back Saquon Barkley was the franchise player of their division rival New York Giants. Philly fans booed him when the Giants came to town. This year he was traded to the Eagles, has been their best player, the most loved of the Eagles this year and one of the main reasons they are playing this coming weekend for a chance to go to the Super Bowl.

Sports are not life, but the point is, people who were once hated by entire cities and fanbases, become beloved and embraced.

Because someone was your enemy one day, or for a time, doesn’t mean they can’t become an ally, a friend, even beloved. Jesus wasn’t kidding when he said “love your enemies.” He showed the world with Paul, that your enemy is your brother or sister, and we and they are capable of change.


I have been reading Gregory Boyle’s book “Cherished Belonging” to get ready for our small groups that start next week. Boyle points out that on the day when Jesus entered Jerusalem on his way to be arrested and crucified, there were two parades that day.

On the one side, coming from the west on the main road, was Pilate and his show of military power and force. It was a display of power. Don’t mess with Pilate or you see what you’ll get. Boyle writes:

“Then there’s Jesus, on a small donkey, humbling entering the city from the east. Jesus’s trek and mission displays a way of life whose hallmarks are inclusion, nonviolence, unconditional loving kindness, and compassionate acceptance. The parade of warhorses announces the threat of violence, force, coercion, and the oppression of the poor. The “triumphant” entrance of Jesus is not an indictment but an invitation. Village transcending tribe. Jesus doesn’t draw lines (of division). He erases them.

Paul’s encounter with Jesus caused him to change his life completely. To become the thing that he despised. To embrace the other side.

Jesus invites us to do the same. To change. To be humble. To let go of our self-righteousness. To embrace his way of inclusion, even of our enemies, nonviolence, unconditional loving kindness, and compassionate acceptance.

Paul’s conversion changed everything. So can ours. So can anyone else’s.

Top image: “The Conversion of St. Paul” by Caravaggio, oil on cypress wood, 1600/1601.

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.

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.