Tag: sermon

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.”

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.

Putting Love First; Keeping Soft Hearts

Background: This past weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton and the lectionary Gospel reading was Mark 2:23-3:6, where Jesus and his disciples eat pick and eat grain from the grainfields on the Sabbath and Jesus heals a man with a withered hand against protests from the Pharisees. It was also a commissioning weekend for our newest Stephen Ministers and a new leader for the program. Following is the text of my sermon.

“Putting Love First; Keeping Soft Hearts”

Thirty years ago or so I remember having a discussion about integrity, and a definition that was put out there was “doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.”

I don’t remember anything else about the conversation, but I’ve thought about that definition a number of times since. And Jesus as we meet him in the Gospel stories seems to me a perfect example of what that kind of integrity looks like in action. We see it beautifully in today’s reading.

Jesus and his disciples are walking through grainfields. They are hungry, so they pluck the heads off grain and eat. The Pharisees call them out for working on the sabbath, doing something that is against their law. It’s unthinkable to the Pharisees that someone would do this.

Jesus tries to speak to them in their own language, with historical precedent. “Hey, we all agree that David is someone we revere right—you guys are on Team David. Remember when David and his friends were hungry and needed food? He went into the Temple and got the bread of the Presence and they ate it. That’s a way bigger deal than this.”

You can almost hear the Pharisees grumbling—who does this guy think he is, David?

Then Jesus makes a statement that they just aren’t ready for: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.”

When I look at the world today, the idea of sabbath rest might be one of the things the world needs most to help get us back on track. We are in full production mode—work, produce, more, faster, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a society, we’ve almost totally discounted the idea of the sabbath, a day to rest, to recharge, and enjoy the day.

Jesus was all about that. And he frames it beautifully—the sabbath was instituted, for the benefit of humanity, to make sure we rest, we take a break—not to be just another law that has to be followed and adhered to at all costs.

Something that Jesus understood and tried to make clear in his teaching and his actions was to look at the SPIRIT of the law, not the LETTER of the law.

The disciples were hungry, they weren’t harvesting. They needed something to eat, not to take grain to the marketplace. The spirit of what they were doing was sustenance, not work.

Now the Pharisees have their guard up. This Jesus character is shifty. He’s given them a what-for. Keep an eye on him. Now, they go into the synagogue and there is a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees have it in their mind, no healing on the sabbath.

“Jesus Heals a Man with a Withered Hand,” Scribe: Ilyas Basim Khuri Bazzi Rahib, ink and pigments on laid paper, 1684, collection Walters Art Museum.


Jesus calls the man with the withered hand forward. He looks at the Pharisees and says, “Is it lawful to good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”

Crickets. Not a word. Silence.

The power and condemnation of this line strikes me: “He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart…”

Mark is a Gospel writer of few details, but his words here and crushing and heartbreaking at the same time.

Jesus was “grieved at their hardness of heart.” Here is a human being at the synagogue who is suffering. How can he rest as the people of Israel were instructed to do if he has a condition that keeps him from living his life every day of the week?

The spirit of the law, not the letter of the law. Doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.

I wonder, in your lives can you think of times when what seemed to be the right thing to do was in conflict with the law or customs as they were practiced or commonly understood?

There is a great line that the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 15:4 that says, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope.”

Scripture was written to teach us, for our learning, for our instruction, to improve us, to make us better people, to make us a community, to help us understand God’s love and how to take care of each other—to help us come into an understanding of God’s will and God’s ways. To give us hope.

If Jesus took a literal approach, a letter-of-the-law approach to Scripture, almost every story recorded in the Gospels wouldn’t be there.

  • If Jesus had said to the centurion, sorry, you’re not Jewish.
  • If he had seen the woman at the well coming and gotten up and walked away from the well, as social custom told him to do.
  • Demon-possessed? Well, is he active at the synagogue?

If Jesus had the same understanding of Scripture as Nicodemus that Kelsey preached about last weekend, would we be talking about Jesus today? He wouldn’t have angered the Pharisees or the religious leaders and he probably wouldn’t have been killed.

Jesus put the love of God and the love of humanity, all of humanity, first. He lived by and for God’s love, in the spirit of the law, not as a literalist following the letter of the law.

If you want to go out on a limb like Jesus did, consider this statement, replacing “the Sabbath” with “Scripture”—

“Scripture was made for humankind, not humankind for Scripture.”

Now, Jesus did NOT say that these laws are dumb, that they should get rid of them; he didn’t say it’s time to write a whole new set of laws; he didn’t say riot in the streets, do whatever you want.

He tried to redirect people, where he could see they had gone—or were going—off course. The sabbath isn’t wrong, the sabbath is a good thing, but it was made for people, not people for the sabbath.

How was Jesus to enjoy rest on the sabbath, when there was a man suffering, right in their midst, when he could do something about it?

“Sorry about your hand. Too bad we didn’t run into each other on a different day, I would love to have helped you.”

Does that sound like a Jesus we would want to follow?

Jesus understood the spirit of the laws. He knew where love was in each of them, and he could see where laws and customs had lost their salt and were being used in ways and for purposes they were never intended for. They were to be for our learning, for our instruction, for our improvement—to give us hope.

And when it came to a choice between following the letter of the law, or following a love of God and humanity, Jesus chose love.

I wonder if there are places in our lives where we might do the same.

This weekend, we are commissioning 12 new Stephen Ministers and a new leader for the Stephen Ministry program. This is a program that trains people to walk beside someone going through a difficult time in their lives. It’s a program that has been a part of the DNA of Christ Church since 2005. This class will make the number of Stephen Ministers trained here top 100 people. More than 100 people who have responded to a call in their hearts to learn to be more loving, more empathetic, more compassionate, to be better listeners, and to make themselves available for people who are hurting.


My fiancé Holly is one of those in the class. And I have had the great perspective of listening to and watching her go through the 50 hours of training and reading they complete; of hearing her talk about what they were learning. So much of it is life skills that don’t get taught from K-12 or in college, or trade school, or anywhere else.

One of the parts of training that Holly talked about and stepped right into is assertiveness. And that sounds like an odd thing to have as a part of training to be a care giver, doesn’t it?

Let’s think about assertiveness in today’s story of the man with the withered hand at the synagogue. What if Jesus sees the man, looks at the Pharisees who are telling him that healing the man is against the rules, then drops his shoulders, and says, “Well, I guess not. I can come back again tomorrow and heal him.” We have a whole different story and a whole different Jesus.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is assertive in his love, in his teaching, and with his healing. He doesn’t back down when many of us probably would. He does the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.

Learning to be more assertive helps push us out of our comfort zones and into the mission field. And the mission field is everywhere people are hurting, need love, or want to know God in their lives. The mission field is where we work, it’s in our homes, it’s where go out to eat; it’s in doctor’s waiting rooms; and it’s in grocery stores.

Jack Anthony is a Stephen Leader and was one of the earliest Stephen Ministers at Christ Church. Many of you have heard him tell his story about why he became one and the part of his story that is so easy to relate to is where Jack said if he was in the grocery store and he saw someone at the other end of the aisle who he knew was going through a difficult time, he would avoid them because he didn’t know what to say. Jack didn’t like that about himself, so he did something about it.

It takes being assertive to walk up to that person who you know is going through something big. It takes getting out of our comfort zone to pick up the phone and call, text, or to stop by to see someone.

I come back to Jesus’s line on seeing the Pharisees standing by and doing nothing for the man with the withered hand, “He was grieved at their hardness of heart…”

Jesus lived his life with a soft heart. He wants us to do the same. In a hard-hearted world, it takes being assertive to keep a soft heart.

I give thanks this weekend for the Stephen Ministry program and for the 12 new Stephen Ministers and new Stephen Leader, who are going forth with soft hearts to love and serve the Lord.

Protected and Connected

This past weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The lectionary Gospel reading for the day was John 17:6-19, after Jesus has given his farewell discourse to his disciples, and he looks up to heaven and prays for them. I referenced a bit of John 17 before and after the lectionary verses.

“Protected and Connected”

This is the seventh and last Sunday of the Easter season. In our Easter lectionary this year, we have been heavy into John’s Gospel. We heard about the empty tomb and Mary Magdalene encountering Jesus there. We read about Jesus appearing to the disciples and coming back again to make sure Thomas had the experience he needed to believe.

But for the majority of Easter, the lectionary doesn’t give us Resurrection readings. It takes us back into John’s Gospel just before Jesus was arrested. If Easter is a celebration of the Resurrection, why do we have these other readings?

Here’s one way of thinking about it. The Resurrection IS the good news—it’s the revelation, the payoff, it’s what changes everything. It’s part of the proof of who Jesus is. It’s why we get charged up for Easter Sunday.

In light of this good news, the lectionary then takes us back to look at the last things Jesus says to his disciples before he is arrested and killed. Why? Jesus did most of his teaching and talking before the Resurrection. What we’ve been listening to and discussing the past few weeks is Jesus’s farewell speech, where he tries to make sure the disciples get all the biggest points of what he taught and modeled for them.

We go back to Jesus’s final words to his disciples, so that we might all take those things to heart, so that we might believe, live into, and spread the good news, as disciples of Christ.

In today’s reading, Jesus has just finished giving this last speech. And what he does here is heartfelt, crucially important, and a model for us whenever we face difficult times.

“After Jesus had spoken these things,” John writes, he looked up to heaven and prayed for his disciples. Jesus wanted them to know, even though he was going away, he is leaving them in the care of his Father.

“Christ Taking Leave of the Apostles,” Duccio di Buoninsegna, tempura on wood, Wikimedia Commons.

I want to look at a couple aspects of Jesus’s prayer here. First, he prays specifically for his disciples, his friends. He says:

“I am asking on their behalf, not on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those you gave me, because they are yours.”

We know Jesus to be the savior of the world, as we hear so often in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world…”… But here he’s not praying for the world, he is much more specific.

Praying this prayer for a world that is about to kill Jesus, using these words for a world that has rebelled against the way God intended things to be, wouldn’t make sense here. The disciples are the key to spreading the good news, to fixing things, to spreading God’s love. Jesus’s work in the world is being passed along—they are the ones entrusted with the right words, the knowledge of what needs to be done. Jesus is praying for his friends and the importance of what they have to do.

He knows he is leaving; he is not going to be there to protect them anymore, or to keep them in line; he knows what the world is about to do to him and he wants to keep them from scattering and giving up.

Jesus prays this prayer, out loud and in front of the disciples for their benefit, so they can see and hear him praying. In what he does, he is modeling something for them, which they are going to need, and he is showing them how close he is to the Father, which is how close they are going to need to be without Jesus there.

Jesus asks his Father to protect the disciples. And yet, look at what happened to many of them. They had difficult lives even after the Resurrection. Some were arrested, tortured, and a number of them were killed.

So I want to ask you a question: Did Jesus’s prayer work? Was it answered?

To get our minds around this, I want to talk about what it is to protect someone.

This is Mother’s Day weekend. Happy Mother’s Day to all the amazing moms here. You are so important in so many lives. When we think about protecting the way a mother might protect her children, we are talking about protecting them from harm.

My earliest memory of that kind of protection is when I was three years old. My favorite show was called “Emergency !”, which was about a Los Angeles Fire Department with one fire truck and an ambulance. I had a plastic fire helmet with the Emergency! logo on the front of it that I wore everywhere. I was obsessed with that show.


My cousin and I were playing in the neighbors’ yard next to the water where they had been building up the shoreline with rip rap, and they had a big pile of rocks and dirt. I remember standing on top of that pile, with my Emergency One! fire helmet on thinking I couldn’t be much cooler. We were throwing some chunks of dirt into the river and I wound up to throw as far as I could and tumbled down the pile, over the rip-rapped wall and into the river. I sank like a rock.

But my Emergency! helmet floated. To this day, almost 50 years later, I can look up from the bottom of that river and see that helmet floating. It wasn’t terribly deep, but it was over my head, and I couldn’t swim.

The next thing I knew there was a body breaking through the water, my Mom wrapped her arms around me and pulled me up and out of the river. She wasn’t right there with us, but she was nearby, she heard me tumble down the rock pile and looked and saw my helmet floating on the water.

She said she didn’t have any thoughts in her head, she just reacted, ran to the river, jumped in and pulled me out. For my part, I was a very grateful child: as she wrapped me in a towel and took me inside, I yelled at her for not calling the ambulance, because it would have been cooler if they had saved me.

That’s a mother protecting her child from harm. That’s a very clear and necessary kind of protection.

That’s not the kind of protection Jesus was asking his Father for. He knew that kind of protection didn’t exist for him or for his disciples in a world that had different priorities. They were doing something that was going to put them in harm’s way.

When Jesus prays for the disciples’ protection, he asks for two things:

  • Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.
  • I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but to protect them from the evil one.

He told them to abide in his love. He wants them to stay in that love, stay connected to God. Jesus knows that the good news, that the coming kingdom, depends on them—that the disciples are going to become His body and do the work of spreading the news to the ends of the earth, so that others might believe.

And he knows that there is pain and suffering, fear and distraction, and evil in the world—all kinds of things that could scatter the disciples.

With all these concerns on his heart, with everything on the line, knowing he is about to be arrested, hauled away, and killed, what does Jesus do?

He looks up to heaven, calls on his Father, and prays for his disciples. John gives us Jesus’s prayer in very theological way that is hard for us to make sense of. I wonder, to our ears, for our time, if it might have sounded something like this:

Dad, they know you. This crew you gave me, this rag-tag group of fishermen, tax collectors, and what all. You should see them, Dad. They might not always understand, but their hearts are in it, they are committed, they don’t give up. They are getting it. And they know it all comes from you. Everything that you’ve shown me, I’ve shown them. And they’re doing us proud.

I’m asking for them. Not for the world; the world who seem to come up with new and cruel and horrible things every day, the world that’s about to kill me… No, I’m asking for them, the ones you gave me, because they are yours.

I’m not going to be here anymore, but they are. They’ve looked to you through me, but I’m won’t to be here, I’m coming to you. I’m worried about them. I know there is a part of me that’s you, Dad, and there’s a part of me that’s like them, and that part of me is worried.

I’ve given them your word and the world hates them for it, just like it hates me, because I don’t belong to the world. The world. This place. This harsh, impossible, beautiful, incredible world. I’m not asking you to take them out of it—they aren’t ready to go where I’m going. But protect them from the evil one. We know what he can do. Keep them close to you and close to each other, that’s the only way this will work. And it has to work.

That’s what all this has been for, that’s why you sent me, that’s why I came, and now I am sending them out, just like you sent me. They can do it. I know they can. But they need your help, just like I do.

I’m setting myself apart, for them. Set them apart, Dad, in your truth. In your love. And it’s about more than them, it’s all those who will believe in me through their words—the people sitting in Christ Church Easton, 2,000 years from now—they won’t know you unless it’s starts with my disciples, my friends.

Dad, the world doesn’t know you. But I know you. And these who you gave me, they know you. And the way you have loved me, I’ve loved them. We’re all in this together. Keep them close to us.

Thanks, Dad. Love you.

Imagine the disciples watching and listening to a prayer like that. What an impact.

Sometimes the protection we need is to stay close to God. Life might take us through some rough places. A good friend who is a clergy person just shared with me his cancer diagnosis. He said, I know I’ve got to let the doctors do what they need to do and that I can’t control that. What I need to do is stay focused on God, stay close to God, through this.

We pray for healing, we pray for good outcomes, and we don’t always have control over those things. But praying, staying connected to and protected by God, gives us something to get us through life’s dangers no matter what happens.

That’s what Jesus wanted for his disciples. That’s what he wants for us.

I think his prayer worked.

Amen.

You are witnesses of these things

Background: At the healing service on Wednesday, April 10 and for the Zoom prayer service and discussion on Sunday, this is the text/basis for a homily and discussion we had on Luke 24:36b-48, where Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his Resurrection, per Luke’s account. (artwork: “Jesus’ Appearance While the Apostles are at Table,” by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255-1319))

“You are witnesses of these things.”

Today’s reading gives us Luke’s version of a story similar to what we heard from John’s Gospel last week. The disciples are gathered in a room and Jesus appears to them. In the course of their encounter, they go from being terrified and afraid, thinking they are seeing a ghost, to being witnesses, inspired and charged up to share their testimony.

How does this change happen?

Does Jesus make some rousing speech? Does he scientifically explain what happened to him?

He gives them his body. He says “look at my hands and feet. Touch me and see. That’s a line I want to let sink in for a bit.

Over the different Gospels we have heard Jesus say, “Follow me” and “Come and see,” now this is the most personal, most intimate invitation he could give, “Touch me and see.”

They are starting to come around, still not sure about all this—they know he died, there is no way this can be… Jesus looks around and says, “Got anything to eat?” And then eats fish to show them he’s legit.

I love the encounters with the risen Jesus in Luke—this story and the Road to Emmaus—there is a light-heartedness about Jesus, there is humor even in the serious work that he is there to do.

In light of the Resurrection, everything takes on new meaning. In the Road to Emmaus story, it’s just two disciples walking and Jesus comes upon them, and they walk and talk and he teaches them and then breaks bread with them, and their lives and hearts are changed. In a way that didn’t happen before. Things are different.

In today’s reading, for the disciples it is conversation, it is Jesus’s bodily presence, it is teaching, all things they have experienced before, but this is different. This changes everything.

I want to ask a question here and see what you think. Why does Jesus come back to his disciples? What’s his purpose in appearing to them and spending time with them?

To fulfill his mission; to do what he said he was going to do. To show them he is who he said he was; to show them that love conquers death.

It’s also this: to give them living and credible proof. To help them take the next step in their learning.

He is going to ascend and it is going to be up to them. His life, his love, his teaching, he is placing it in their hands to pass on to others.

“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,” … he goes back over what he told them before he was killed, but it all has a new significance; it means something different now.

Then he opens their mind to understand the Scriptures. Wow, that would be a lovely gift, wouldn’t it? Hey, Jesus, what does this mean? How do I make sense out of this? Like a phone-a-friend lifeline to Jesus.

In coming back, in appearing to the disciples, in teaching them, and being with them, in them touching him, Jesus says:

“You are witnesses of these things.”

If the disciples aren’t credible witnesses, it will never work. If they don’t believe, if they aren’t convinced and convicted, how will anyone else come to believe?

But not just credible witnesses, they have to be fired up, they have to be motivated, they have to want nothing more than to share their testimony, to share the good news. It has to be part of their core purpose.

Imagine if after Jesus leaves, the disciples are sitting on this amazing, life-giving story that can change the world, and they decide, “Okay, well, we’ve got this church here, a house church, and if anyone new comes in, we’ll tell them. That’s what it means to be a disciple, right—that we proclaim the word within the walls of our specific church, we celebrate Communion, we pray for others, and Jesus is happy, right?”

Jesus knows his work, his purpose, his life, his love for us hangs on the disciples becoming apostles—being sent out to spread the good news. So he supercharges them, gives them everything they need to succeed, including the Holy Spirit (that comes in Luke, Part II, Acts).

Let’s look at how Jesus gives them what they need in this story. He doesn’t come in and say, “Great to see you guys, would you please pick up your Bibles and turn to page 42 for today’s lesson.”

He shows them his scars, he says, “touch me and see,” he eats with them. He is vulnerable, intimate, and authentic. Explaining Scripture doesn’t come until later.


I love this quote from Debie Thomas in the book we studied last year, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She says:

“Maybe when the world looks at us to see if OUR faith is authentic and trustworthy, it needs to see our scars and hungers, too. Our vulnerability, not our immunity. Our honesty, not our pretenses to perfection. What would it look like for us to offer our stories of scars and graces, hungers, and feasts, in testimony to this world? How might our embodied lives become a way of love? Naming our hungers, widening our tables, sharing our scars and our feasts—what if THIS is practicing resurrection? Maybe more is at stake in a piece of fish, or a glass of water, or a loaf of bread, than we have imagined.”

Another question I want to ask you, and if it is something you feel like you have an answer for or want to talk about, wonderful, if not, ponder it over the week:

What is YOUR witness?

What is it from your life, your scars, your hunger, your passions, your relationships that might speak to others?

We are all different witnesses. The good news is the good news, but we connect to it in different ways, and we connect to other people in different ways. My witness, my testimony, is different than yours.

Part of this whole line of thinking came to me yesterday while I was skateboarding. I had been sitting at my desk for the afternoon, I needed to go to the grocery store, and there is a paved trail down next to Easton Point that goes across Papermill Pond, right on the way to Harris Teeter or Target. I wanted to stretch my legs.

And I got to thinking that the joy that I get from cruising on a skateboard, a joy I found when I was 13 and almost 40 years later is still there, is part of my witness. Writing is part of my witness. Discussing the Bible, laughing, asking questions, building friendships while wondering about Scripture, is part of my witness. Sitting outside in nature and feeling like a part of Creation is a part of my witness.

What things are a part of yours?

I want to mention one more aspect to this Resurrection story. Jesus is changed. The disciples are changed. Something has happened, they have received something from Jesus that has made them witnesses.

What is it and how can it help our witness? This is how Debie Thomas puts it:

“The resurrection is not a platitude or a line in a creed. The resurrection is fire in our bones, steel in our blood, impetus for our feet, a song of lamentation, protest, and ferocious hope for our souls. The resurrection is God’s insistence that we speak, stand, and work for life in a world desperate for fewer crosses, fewer graves, fewer landscapes littered with the desolate and the dead.”

This is the season of the Resurrection. This is the Easter season of new life. That power and love and energy is for us, it is supposed to be a part of our witness. Is it a part of yours?

Doubt and Faith

Background: This past weekend (April 6-7) was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The lectionary Gospel reading was John 20:19-31, which is popularly referred to as the “Doubting Thomas” story. I also preached on this passage last year and wanted to make sure to take it in a new direction. I am grateful especially to Debie Thomas and her book, “A Faith of Many Rooms,” which is quoted and referred to.

“Doubt and Faith“

It’s today’s reading where our friend Thomas earns the nickname that history and culture gave him: “Doubting Thomas.” And we are told not to be a Doubting Thomas.

I want to discuss whether doubt is a bad thing and whether in Thomas’s shoes, any of us might not do the same thing.

This is not the first time we meet Thomas in John’s Gospel. The first story he is a part of is the raising of Lazarus.

Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus that their brother Lazarus is sick, hoping that Jesus will come to heal him. Jesus famously waits a couple days before going to see them. And when he’s ready, he says to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

They know there are people in Judea who already want to stone and kill Jesus. Going back to Judea is exactly what they don’t want to do. They try to hash out whether this is a good idea and Jesus says, “Lazarus is dead, let us go to him.”

This is where Thomas pipes up and says to the group, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

If Lazarus is dead, and Jesus is walking straight into the storm and facing death head on, Thomas says, alright gang, let’s go die with him.

And off they go. Thomas has no fear and no problem going to die with and for Jesus.

Fast forward through John’s Gospel: there is the raising of Lazarus, Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem, then his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. Now the disciples are caught up in uncertainty, grief, and the lost feeling of what was going to happen now.

The story of the empty tomb, of Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Jesus there that we just heard last weekend on Easter, has just happened. It is evening on that same day, the first day of the week, and the disciples are locked in a room fearing the same fate that Jesus met might be waiting for them at the hands of the Jews.

Jesus appears to the disciples. This incredible experience. But Thomas isn’t there. He gets back after the fact. And the disciples all tell him, “We’ve seen the Lord,” he was here with us.

Thomas says, unless I see it for myself, unless I see HIM for myself, I will not believe.


Author Debie Thomas was born in India. Her father was a Christian minister there and their culture has a special relationship with the apostle Thomas.
In her new book, “A Faith of Many Rooms,” which we’ll have a few small groups reading and discussing, she has this to say about Thomas and his doubt:

“Cautious. Skeptical. Stubborn. Daring.”

“A man who yearned for a living encounter with Jesus—an encounter of his own, unmediated by the claims and assumptions of others. A man who wouldn’t settle for hand-me-down religion but demanded a firsthand experience of God to anchor and enliven his faith. To me, this speaks not only to Thomas’s integrity but to his hunger. His desire. His investment. He wasn’t spiritually passive. He didn’t want the outer trappings of religion if he couldn’t know its fiery core. He was alive with his longing.”

I don’t know about you, but I have never been able to just accept something that people tell me without finding out for myself. This didn’t make for an easy job for my parents. They came home once when I was 9 or 10 years old, to find me stuck in the mud in the middle of the creek behind our house at low tide. I didn’t think I would get stuck, despite people warning me. My mom’s boots are still at the bottom of the creek there.

Another time, my mom had to come extract me from the clay they dredged out of Town Creek in Oxford, which I walked into–waist-deep to see how far I could get.

As a teenager spelunking in John Brown’s Cave in Harpers Ferry, in the pitch black with headlamps, a friend and I climbed up a wall about 20 feet to see what it was like. It took a minor miracle for us to make our way back down.

My Mom’s boots are still under the water in that creek.


I grew up in the Episcopal Church, I was baptized and confirmed at Holy Trinity Church in Oxford, I attended St. James Episcopal School in Hagerstown for a time. As I got older, I kept at the periphery of church, I appreciated the teachings, I liked what this Jesus guy was all about, but I couldn’t make the leap from interested to invested.

I think I have always been Thomas when it comes to faith. I needed my own experience.

How does that happen? How do we find that kind of experience?

Let’s look at something that happens right after Thomas says he won’t believe unless he sees for himself.

After Thomas says he’s not on board, John writes: “A week later… his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them.”

A week has gone by, and Thomas is still there.

What does that tell us about Thomas? Even though he wasn’t ready to believe, even though he didn’t have the experience that the others had, he didn’t quit. He didn’t hang it up. He kept showing up. He was willing to give it time when he himself wasn’t feeling it.

What does it say about the disciples? They didn’t shun him. They didn’t ostracize him. They stood by their experience, they trusted Jesus, and they loved Thomas. They were willing to let things work themselves out.

Life goes on. The disciples stay together. Thomas keeps working through things. And a week later, Jesus comes back and gives Thomas the exact thing he asked for.

What do we learn about Jesus? He gives Thomas the experience that he needs to believe. He meets Thomas where he was and gives him his hands and shows him his side and says, “Do not doubt, but believe.” Thomas, man of his word, says, “My Lord and my God.” He believes.

What does that mean for Thomas? What does it mean for us to believe?

Here’s the thing about belief when it comes to faith. It sounds nice, it sounds reassuring: if you believe, you’re all set. If you believe, you’ll have eternal life. So how do we as Christians today show our belief? We go to church, meaning worship services. We take Communion. Maybe we wear a cross around our necks. If we’re on social media and someone says, “bet you won’t post the Lord’s Prayer,” we say, oh yeah, watch this… and post it… Hhhmm… that’ll show them.

I subscribe to the idea that if you want to know what someone believes, watch their actions. I think that’s what Jesus was and is banking on as well. If you want to know what the disciples did after their encounters with the risen Christ, go take a look in the Book of Acts. They risked their lives, they met in houses and walked and sailed hundreds of miles to win new followers of Christ. If that was a part of belonging to a church today, I think we’d all be in a bit of trouble.

One person whose journey isn’t outlined specifically in Acts is Thomas’s. Scholarship points to the idea that Thomas is who took Christianity to India. They have statues of him and monasteries and they hold that their Christian roots go all the way back to one of Jesus’s first disciples. A lot further than our roots in the United States go.


Debie Thomas outlines different stories that are associated with the apostle Thomas in India: the pared down version goes like this.

Thomas sailed to Kerala in 52 CE, so about 20 years after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension–20 years after Thomas’s encounter with the risen Christ. He wanted to preach to the Jewish colonies that were settled near Cochin.

He was very successful, converting both Jews and Brahmins and he followed the coastline south, winning hundreds of new followers and believers of Jesus and establishing seven churches along the waterways of Kerala. He crossed over the land to the east coast near Madras.

He was so successful as a preacher and a community builder that he made the devout Brahmins in the region jealous and angry and they speared him to death in 72 CE.

For 20 years, Thomas worked with the other disciples around Jerusalem and the Middle East spreading the good news of Jesus. And for the next 20 years after that, he went to strange lands where he didn’t speak the language, where he was an outsider, where it was Thomas and the Holy Spirit and the communities of believers he helped build. Right up until the religious authorities killed him for it.

The apostle Thomas’s actions show how deeply he believed.

Debie Thomas asks this question: “What if doubt itself can be a testimony?”

She says, “If nothing else, Thomas assures me that the business of the good news–of accepting it, of living it out, and of sharing it with the world–is tough. It’s okay to waver. It’s okay to take our time. It’s okay to probe, prod, and insist on more… I need Thomas–doubter and disciple, agnostic and apostle–to show me what faith truly is.”

His doubt is honest. It is heartfelt. It is a part of who he was and part of the process of who he was becoming. Maybe you can see yourself in Thomas. Maybe doubt and questions are a part of your faith journey. They are still a part of mine. God can use our doubt as a starting point or to lead us further down the path he has laid out for us. As long as we don’t give up.

I wonder about Thomas and what his style of evangelism would have been. I picture him having a meal with a group of people who are eagerly listening to what he has to say. Except for one person sitting at the end of the table who has a raised eyebrow, shaking his or her head. Slow to accept, skeptical to believe.

I see Thomas smile, laugh a little, and say, “You’ve got doubts, huh? Me, too. Let me tell you a story about doubts and how they can be a part of faith.”

Time to Follow

Background: This is a homily given in response to a reading from Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 1:14-20, where John the Baptist is arrested, Jesus begins his ministry proclaiming the word, and calls his first disciples to follow him.

How many people have a favorite character—movies, books, TV? Anyone want to name them? And how many of you can tell me his/her first lines, the first thing they say in the story?

My favorite character of all time in any media is Chris Stevens, the radio DJ from the 1990s TV show “Northern Exposure.” His first words, he is on air, and he relates a coming-of-age story of breaking into a house and while he is stealing a gold-leaf pen and a silver humidor, he finds a copy of the Complete Works of Walt Whitman and it changes his life. If you watched the show, that’s a solid indication of his whole character.

In Mark’s Gospel, these are the first words Jesus says in the story, “The time has come (or the time is fulfilled), and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Hard to have first words that are more indicative of who someone is. There is the key, there is the game plan, spelled out in front of us.

It sounds very similar to what John the Baptist was saying, right? Jesus is continuing where John left off, after John was arrested. Jesus’s ministry begins as John’s ends. But there is a nuanced difference in their messages. John was saying, “repent, and wait for the one who is to come.” Jesus says, “the time has come, repent,” and then “follow me.”

We’ve got just six verses here, but there is a lot going on. Let’s dig in a bit. First, let’s look at TIME.

The word Mark uses for “time” as Jesus talks is the Greek word, “kairos,” which means something special is going on, not the word “chronos,” which describes sequential time, the way we tend to think about it.

This is how rabbi, New Testament scholar, and author Amy-Jill Levine puts it in her book “The Gospel of Mark: A Beginner’s Guide to the Good News”—

“Kairos time is on God’s watch; it’s not a minute-by-minute concern but a recognition something special is happening. When I look at my watch, I can do more than determine how much time I have to finish a project. I can think about God’s time: what should I have done that I failed to do? What can I do to make every moment more meaningful?”

Fr. Bill Ortt (our recently retired rector and mentor) talks about chronos as minutes and kairos as moments. I’ve always appreciated that as a kind of short-hand way to remember the difference. And I love that kairos is among Jesus’s first words here. JESUS is moving us from MINUTES into MOMENTS. He’s clueing us in that something special is taking place, that this is something we want to pay attention to. And as he begins to call his first disciples, it’s something that they want to sign on for.


Let’s remember that we are in Epiphany, a season all about the manifestation of Christ to the people of the world. If you look up definitions of the word epiphany with a lower case “e,” Merriam Webster gives you: 1) “a sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something,” or  2) “an intuitive grasp of reality through something simple or striking.”

Epiphany.

I’ve come across a book that has me thinking more about how this whole opening chapter of Mark works. We know that Mark is:

  • the shortest of the Gospels,
  • the earliest of the four Gospels,
  • that Mark doesn’t add superfluous details, he tells the story straight,
  • and that if he had a copy editor in today’s world, they’d have the red pen all over the word “immediately” or “straightway” for how many times he uses it.

For the record, Mark uses “immediately” more than 40 times, more often than the rest of the New Testament combined. He is stressing the the urgency of what is happening.

Mark’s Gospel is also referred to by many scholars as “a passion narrative with an extended introduction.” Mark goes through Jesus’s teaching and healing, his ministry, and gets us to the point: his arrest, crucifixion, suffering, death, and empty tomb. We’re told that’s the meat of the story for Mark.


Saying that, in a book called “Mark As Story,” by David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie, they turn that idea around. They look at the opening of Mark’s Gospel and say what is happening here is the arrival of God’s rule.

“The arrival of God’s rule—the heavens opening, the defeat of Satan in the desert, and the announcement by Jesus—is the key watershed event in the narrative (storytelling) world. Mark, then, may be described as “the arrival of the rule of God with an extended denouement (fancy literary word meaning the final outcome, when everything comes together and is made clear)—that is, all events in the story are manifestations and consequences of God’s activity in establishing God’s reign.”

Mark’s whole Gospel is a series of epiphanies, or an ephipany working itself out, clarifying itself over the story. Jesus’s incarnation is the Epiphany. And Mark is rushing us headlong into this realization.

The world Jesus has come into, has come to change, has come to save, is moving in the wrong direction. The priorities are wrong, morality is wrong, the actions of those in power are wrong, even the sense of time needs help, and he’s got to set things in proper order. There is work to be done… immediately.

So right away, Jesus spells out what has to happen: “The time has come and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent, and believe in the good news.”

For our way of thinking today, one of the most problematic, confusing words and phrases in the Gospels is “the kingdom of God.” When you hear the word “kingdom,” what do you picture? A place. Somewhere to go. Kingdom of God? Sweet, let’s go! How do we get there? Who’s driving?

The way it was meant is better said as the reign of God. The king-ship of God. My other favorite Fr. Bill-ism is, “the kingdom of God is RELATIONAL, not locational.” It’s a way of being, a way of relating, not a place to go.

Let’s think about Jesus’s words that way, “The reign of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.” What that reign looks like, Jesus is going to show them. How compelling is it? Compelling enough to get fishermen to walk away from their livelihood, their families, and everything they know when Jesus walks by and says, “Follow me.”

“Follow me” is the a-ha moment, the sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of who Jesus is for his first followers. Jesus’s presence and his invitation or command are all the epiphany they need. And the rest of the story will break it wide open.

If we move our attention to the beginning of the narrative instead of racing our way to the passion, what does that do for the story? Here’s what our friends in “Mark As Story” say:

“This shift in focus to the beginning of the narrative does not diminish the power and climactic force of the execution of Jesus—an event that reveals more fully the nature of God’s reign and seals a covenant with all who would embrace God’s rule… the shift does place the entire narrative firmly in the broader framework of God’s activity in establishing God’s rule over all of life.”

Here’s Jesus at the beginning: It’s time. God’s reign, not the world’s, not Caesar’s. It’s here. Stop what you are doing, you are going the wrong way. Turn around. Believe in this good news. Want to see for yourself? Want to be a part of it? Follow me.

“Stars and Sea at Night,” by Bill Jacklin RA (monoprint), Royal Academy of Arts exhibition

Everything that happens in the story from there shows us manifestations and consequences of what it looks like, of what happens, in establishing God’s reign.

Mark’s story itself is an epiphany for those who first heard it and for us. He means for it, in itself, the telling of it and the hearing of it, to be a transformational experience, showing us, calling us to be a part of establishing God’s reign, in our own lives, and those of others.

Jesus’s call to “follow me” wasn’t just for the first disciples. It’s for us.

Will we?

Sounds like a good way to spend our time. Kairos time. God’s time.

The time has come.

Amen.

Epiphany: Some Attention Required

Context: This was a homily shared with the weekly Wednesday morning Healing Service at Christ Church Easton, tying together the two first Gospel readings of the season of Epiphany.

Let’s talk about Epiphany. The word comes from the Greek word “epiphaneia,” which means “appearance” or “manifestation.” This is an event and a season dedicated to the manifestation of Christ to the peoples of the world.

January 6, this past Saturday, was “The Epiphany,” and that’s where the magi, or wise men, come on the scene. It was revealed to them, a group of Gentiles from Persia, who had nothing to do with Judaism, that Jesus was a sign: they observed his star at its rising and came to pay him homage. When they got there, they were overwhelmed with joy. When they saw him, they knelt down and paid him homage. They knew this child to be a manifestation of Christ and they had to act on it.

All definitions of the word “Epiphany” start with that very specific occurrence, the revelation of Jesus to the magi, celebrated on January 6. But just like any word over time, meanings change, they expand. If you look up epiphany in Webster’s dictionary, you find, in the second and third meanings:

1 capitalized :January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or in the Eastern Church in commemoration of the baptism of Christ

2 : an appearance or manifestation especially of a divine being

3 a(1) : a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2) : an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as an event) usually simple and striking

You’ll sometimes hear people relate having an epiphany to having an “a-ha moment,” where all of a sudden, something makes sense in a way that it hadn’t before. But not in an, “Oooo… I finally remembered where I left my keys!” kind of way. There has to be more at stake. Something bigger has to click into place… you know, “a manifestation or perecption of the essential nature or meaning of something.”

I wonder, as we move through the season of Epiphany, which goes until Ash Wednesday (February 14 this year) when Lent begins, if we keep our hearts and minds open, if we are mindful of the season, what we might find?

It’s a Jesuit practice to keep a “Daily Examen” that looks back at each day for where the presence or touch of God met them that day. What a great idea–I wonder if in doing something similar, we can prime the pump for epiphanies with some awareness and reflection as we go.

If we are open to epiphanies, are they more likely to happen? The Magi looked to the stars for their sign–what if they’d been staring at the ground?

The fact that you are standing in a church at a healing service says that you might already have an awareness of who Jesus was and is. What if during this season, we tune in for moments, for instances, of his presence in our world today?

With the season of Epiphany and these manifestations of Jesus to the people, I want to use that lens to look at Jesus’s baptism (Mark 1:4-11), today’s reading.

This is four lines into Mark’s Gospel and we meet John the Baptist, a strange, but charismatic and influential leader who says, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

John has already had his epiphany, his realization of Christ manifesting his presence to the people of the world. Mark communicates John’s epiphany to his readers.

Now listen to Jesus’s actual baptism:

“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

God is making sure Jesus doesn’t miss out on who he is and the writer of Mark is making sure his readers, including us, don’t miss what is going on, or who Jesus is, and what God thinks about him.


Amy-Jill Levine is both a rabbi, New Testament scholar, and author of a number of books on Jesus. In her book, “The Gospel of Mark: A Beginner’s Guide to the Good News,” she says this about the dove descending:

“It seems to me historically plausible that as Jesus rose from the water, he saw a dove and interpreted it as a divine message. This approach means being open to the natural world. It means heavenly signs can be as ordinary as a pigeon strutting on the sidewalk. It means that all signs require interpretation.”

Coming up from the water, Jesus looked up and saw a dove. It was a clear sign to him, but he had to connect it. God can send us signs, epiphanies all day long, but some of them may require us to pay attention.

I can remember as kids, especially around Christmas time, we would see TV ads for some of the toys that we really wanted. And the ads would show other kids playing with these cool toys, and one of the last things the narrator said in the commercial—perhaps predicting the reality of some of today’s pharmaceutical fine print—was: “SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.” You put it together. And sure enough, come Christmas morning, whatever we were lucky enough to get, there was some… assembly… required. To get it to look like the commercials, we had to put it together.

“Some assembly required” was a 1980s phrase. In the 1970s, they just said straight up, “Assembly required,” no punches pulled.

Epiphanies are not quite that far afield. If they require a decoder ring, printed instructions, and an Allen wrench, that’s not in the realm of an epiphany—a sudden realization or perception. For an epiphany, God puts it together, it’s all ready to go, he’s done the assembly and he’s handing it to us. But we still have to look, we still have to see it, and take it. We have to pay attention.

What about the voice? This is what Amy-Jill Levine says:

“For Mark, the voice speaks directly to Jesus: it is personal, even intimate: You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well-pleased. The voice confirms Jesus’s mission. Mark here also unites Jesus with the audience of the Gospel: WE, like Jesus, hear the voice from heaven. WE know what the other people coming to John that day do not.”

God’s voice was a sign for Jesus. Mark’s Gospel and his telling the story, is a sign for us. God’s done the work, he’s put it together, Mark makes sure we don’t miss it.

This season, we are going to read about and talk about epiphanies, manifestations of Christ to the people of the world. Will we also experience epiphanies ourselves?

If we do, they might be “some attention required.”

Colored woodcut by Dr. P. Solomon Raj, a famed artist, author, professor and theologian from India.


Featured art at the top: “The Journey of the Magi” by Ralph Hulett.

Prepare the Way

Every Wednesday at Christ Church Easton, there is a small healing service. On December 6, using the lectionary readings for the second Sunday of Advent (Mark 1:1-8) I gave this homily, combining the Gospel reading and some of Kate Bowler’s Advent daily devotional we are using this season.

“Prepare the Way”

Does anyone know what the last book in the Old Testament is? Malachi. And does anyone know what thoughts or prophesy Malachi closes out his book with?

“See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me…“

“Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes… so that he can change the hearts of the parents to their children and children to their parents so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.”

With no Gospels yet written, Mark picks up the final promise of the Old Testament and its being fulfilled in this new good news he is sharing.

What else does Mark do for us as he starts his account? He kicks it off:

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.”

Where do we famously hear, “the beginning” in the Bible? At the beginning: Genesis, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.”

So in his opening lines, Mark connects us to the beginning of Scripture and echoes and continues the most recent thread of Scripture they had.

In doing this, he introduces us to John the Baptist.

In his book, “Mark: The Gospel of Passion,” Michael Card writes:

“When we meet him in Mark, John is standing in the Jordan with his camel-hair coat, preaching repentance. Repentance—it is the only way the people would be prepared to meet the one who was coming to forgive their sins. That is how John ‘prepares the way’ for Jesus.”

“John is all that is old and everything that is new. He stands with one foot in the Old Testament and the other firmly planted in the New. It is impossible to overstate his significance.”

In every Gospel account, Jesus’s ministry begins with and carries on from John the Baptist’s ministry (sometimes in talking New Testament it’s helpful to differentiate John the Baptist from John the apostle/Gospel writer). Mark, the shortest of the Gospels, known for giving us, the readers everything we need and not one thing we don’t, doesn’t even give us a birth narrative—that wasn’t important—Mark starts with John the Baptist.

John became hugely popular; he had a huge following and his own disciples. Mark tells us, “People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people from Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him.”

That would be enough to blow your ego up, make you feel important. And yet, listen to John in just these few short verses:

“The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

The humility of John the Baptist. He is not “The Way” (which is what they would call the early followers of Jesus)—John has come to prepare the way. He understands his job and his purpose, and he doesn’t try to hog the spotlight or make it all about him. He might dress funny and eat strange foods, but John is humble. And John is making a clear, straight path to Jesus. He is preparing the way.

Our first Advent reading, from this past Sunday, is where Jesus told his disciples, and us, to “keep awake.” Anticipation. Our second Advent reading, and the focus is preparation.

Maybe we can understand John’s role in preparing the people for Jesus. But what does it look like for us to prepare as we begin our walk through the season of Advent?


Throughout this month, I am going to be bouncing off, writing about, and connecting us to Kate Bowler’s daily devotional, “Bless the Advent We Actually Have.”

In these first four days of the season, Bowler has reminded us to see:

  • Hope As Protest – in world where we expect things to go wrong, hope in God, hope in Christ is a protest against the ways of the world (as opposed to the ways of God)
  • God Is With Us – on the great days and the impossible days, God is with us, that’s why Jesus is called “Emmanuel” and a big part of why he becomes incarnate, to assure us we aren’t alone
  • Teach Us to Pray – prayer as preparation.

This hit me. Bowler says:

“When we cry out to God just as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane—“God take this cup from me”—our voice joins the chorus of the fellowship of the afflicted… I take comfort in knowing I don’t cry out alone. And my cries don’t fall on unlistening ears. So if today is not your day of wholeness or hope… let’s look around at others and see where God is working in their lives. Maybe see where we can make their loads a little lighter. Together may we become people who look for signs of hope and act in hope while we wait.”

One of the points of Bowler’s devotional is that even as we wait in hope, we have difficult days. And even on those days, when we are low, there is still hope. If we can’t find anything in our lives at a particular moment, we can remember that we are connected to others who are going through things, including Jesus, and when we look around, maybe we can ease our burdens together.

  • Compressed Hope – is her theme for today (December 6). Can we find those moments, those stories, those friendships, that connect us to hope? What are the ways we can package this expansive hope in God into something we can carry with us in our daily lives?

When I think about John the Baptist, he had seen no huge change in the world when he started his ministry. Israel was enslaved to Rome, the state of the world was bleak, and he trusted God, trusted Jesus who was to come, and powerfully proclaimed the need for people to repent. We know things did not turn out great for John in any worldly sense. But he was a man on a mission, and he was full of hope.

As Bowler was going through cancer treatment, she came to this reminder:

“How easy it is to forget. Forget there is someone turning on and off the stars. Forget that the sun rises and sets without us having to remind it to. Forget there is someone who makes each snowflake unique… These tiny miracles can be reminders that God holds the world together, not us.

Hope is found in knowing that even though it feels like the world is coming undone in my time and maybe in my life situation, the truth is that the sun keeps shining every day and the stars will still shine at night. The whole world shines hope upon us every day.”

God is bigger than we are. The universe is bigger than we are. God takes care of the biggest parts of our world, like the sun rising and setting, the planets in their orbits, and we are a part of that ride. But as small as we might be in the big picture, he has a part for us. Like he did for John, God has a role for us to play, preparing the way, preparing our lives, for something bigger to follow.

This Advent, as we are intentional in our waiting, in our hopefulness, in our preparation, we know that God’s love in the form of the incarnation and coming of Jesus, is what’s coming, is who is coming. And that’s worth the wait. Let’s do our part to prepare the way and prepare our hearts and lives.

Amen.