Sermon – Genesis 7.1-5, 11-18, 8.6-18, 9.8-13, UJCCM Lenten Series, March 9, 2022

Tags

ark, ecumenical, flood, God, history, judgment, Lent, Noah, pandemic, relationships, salvation, salvation narrative, saving, Sermon, transforming

This Lent, we as an ecumenical body in Upper James City County are retelling the “salvation narrative” – or at least that is the fancy phrase we use to describe the body of stories that show us time and again God’s saving deeds in history, and how those stories inform how we understand what will happen on Easter Sunday – how the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus will bring the fullness of redemption.  We started last week with the story of creation – the ways in which God lovingly called the created order good and made us in God’s image.  Tonight, we shift to another of the legendary stories – the story of the flood.

This is a story we know and love:  we use Noah’s ark as artwork in babies’ nurseries, I have Noah’s ark in the form of Christmas ornaments, we even sing songs about how God told Noah to build an “ark-y, ark-y” made of “bark-y, bark-y.”  I think we love this story so much because of the good news at the end.  But before we get to the end, we have to wade through a whole lot of a horrible beginning and middle.  You see, despite the goodness of creation, of the ways in which we were made in God’s image, we humans fall into sinfulness.  We do not hear much of that part of the story tonight.  Despite all the verses we did hear, what we do not hear is how horribly sinful humanity has become in Noah’s time.  This sinfulness grieves God so very much that God set God’s mind to do a terrible, awful thing[i].  Those waters out of which God formed the earth – those waters that God used a dome to separate – separate the waters from the waters, God uses to destroy the beautiful creation God has made.  God removes the dome, and the waters came down from the skies and the waters rise up from the ground.[ii] 

From the beginning of this horrible decision, God makes a choice – a choice to save some life instead of recreating life again[iii].  And so, on that ark that Noah builds, floats the people who will repopulate the earth, and the animals that will restore the created order.  We hear very little in scripture what those days are like[iv]:  the panic of rising waters, the death all around them, the solitude and silence of watery chaos, the noise of a bizarrely filled boat.  We have only our imagination to fill in what those desperate days may have been like. 

In some ways, I think Lent is a lot like those days on the boat.  There is the obvious forty days connection, but more telling is the stark reality of sinfulness and judgment.  Imagining the depravity of those days that would drive God to destroy most of creation is not as hard as we might like to think.  Sometimes, I wonder if God is not similarly grieved by us today.  Here we are after two years of a pandemic where our own country spent more time arguing over the supremacy of personal freedom over the call to love one another.  Here we are, for likely the millionth time debating whether there is such a thing as a just war as we watch civilians and children slaughtered in Ukraine.  Here we are divided by political party, divided by socioeconomic status, divided by race, divided by theology into denominations and faiths.  Here we are, refusing as individuals to love all our neighbors as ourselves, and love the Lord our God.  Lent is our season to float in the lapping waters of our sinfulness, wondering whether we should be on that boat or not.

But here’s the funny story about the flood.  This story is not about you.  This story is not even really about Noah, or the animals God saved, or even the rainbow at the end of the story we like to cling to so desperately.  This story is not about our sinfulness and brokenness and inability to live into the image of God in which we are created.  No, this is a story about God.  Everything in this story that we value, that makes this story a “salvation narrative,” is about God’s actions.  The reason we do not hear all the gory details about the lead-up to the flood – the details that even movies have been made about – is because this is a story about salvation, not judgment – on what God does to preserve creation.[v]

One of the exercises I have done with young adults is to talk about images of God.  We create a safe space where we can talk about those images – not just the ones the church likes us to see – of the shepherd caring for the flock, even at times with a lamb on his shoulders, or of the saccharine-y Jesus’ we hang around that look more like an American Jesus than a Middle Eastern Jesus.  Instead, we try to get real with the youth.  The images they often have are of a foreboding man on a throne, an intimidating father figure, or a judge behind a bench.  And when we adults are honest, our images are pretty similar.  But the images of God in this story, as one scholar writes are “striking:  a God who expresses sorrow and regret; a God who judges, but doesn’t want to, and then not in arbitrary or annihilative ways; a God who goes beyond justice and determines to save some creatures, including every animal and bird; a God who commits to the future of a less than perfect world; a God open to change and doing things in new ways; a God who promises never to do this again.  The story reveals and resolves a fundamental tension within God, emphasizing finally, not a God who decides to destroy, but a God who wills to save, who is committed to change based on experience with the world and who promises to stand by the creation.”[vi]

That’s the funny thing about this story.  The flood seems like a story for Lent because we find ourselves as sinful as Noah’s world, and we know we need to change our ways.  Lent is all about repentance after all – a turning from our sinfulness and returning to God.  But here’s the thing: even after the flood (and let’s be honest, even after this Lent), the people will keep going back to sinning.  I mean, we’re just in chapter nine of Genesis:  there is a whole lot more sinning left in the Old Testament for us to read.  Scholars argue, “The flood has effected no change in humankind.  But [the flood] has effected an irreversible change in God.”[vii]  This salvation narrative tells us more about God than ourselves.  God establishes the covenant with humanity and creation to never flood the earth again.  Certainly, there may be judgment again, but never the kind that annihilates the earth.  That rainbow that we love is not meant to remind us of God’s promise, but to remind God of the covenant – the restraint God promises to keep in the midst of well-deserved judgment.[viii]  Every promise God makes, all the salvation narratives we will hear the rest of this Lent, are made possible by the foundation of the promise God makes to Noah.[ix]

So, if this salvation narrative is not about us, does that mean we get a free pass for Lent?  Not exactly.  The real question for us tonight, based on everything we just learned (or remembered) about God, is “So what?”  Professor Patricia Tull argues, “Scripture says that a good and wise God created us good.  We’re capable of great evil, as the flood story says and as we know every day.  But God means for us to be transformed, just as the flood transformed God’s intentions.”[x]  Lent is our opportunity to mirror God’s transformation of intention.  What in your life this year needs transforming?  What have you been holding on to – a grudge, a hurt, an anger, a self-righteous indignation – needs to be released?  God learned in the flood that God could not change humanity – but God could change God’s relationship with humanity.  Our invitation this Lent is not necessarily to change ourselves, and certainly not to try to change others (which never goes well), but to transform our relationships – our relationship with God, our relationships with others, and even our relationship with ourselves.  Use the watery chaos of this Lent to listen through the noise of animals around you to hear the promise of the rainbow come Easter.  Amen.

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[i] Leander E. Keck, ed, The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 1 (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1994), 394.

[ii] Keck, 392.

[iii] Keck, 394.

[iv] Keck, 389.

[v] Keck, 389.

[vi] Keck, 395.

[vii] Keck, 395.

[viii] Keck, 400.

[ix] Keck, 401.

[x] Patricia Tull, “Commentary on Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18; 8:6-18; 9:8-13,” April 15, 2017, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/vigil-of-easter-3/commentary-on-genesis-71-5-11-18-86-18-98-13 on March 9, 2022.

Sermon – Luke 4.1-13, L1, YC, March 6, 2022

Tags

devil, evil, faithfulness, God, good, Jesus, Lent, pondering, relationship, Satan, Sermon, sinfulness, tempt

Having grown up in the mostly Methodist and Baptist South, I grew up a culture that had no problem talking about the devil or Satan.  If you are starting to doubt yourself or are feeling abandoned in some way, a Methodist or Baptist would easily declare, “That’s just the devil trying to pull you away from the Lord.”  My experience with Episcopalians is we are not as comfortable talking about the devil and labeling the devil’s work in our lives.  I am not sure why we get so skittish talking about the devil.  Even the Great Litany, which we [prayed] sang this morning had a lot of “devil” references.  My suspicion is our hesitancy is a fear of sounding superstitious, a general lack of understanding or comfort with talking about the devil, or maybe a little disbelief.  But I must admit, when I have been told that my current troubles were due to the devil meddling in my relationship with God, I have felt oddly better.  There is something quite freeing about naming the devil in the midst of our lives.

Our gospel lesson today highlights why we are so skittish about the devil.  The devil works in the thin space between good and evil.  The three temptations of Jesus from the devil are just ambiguous enough that Jesus could reason his way into responding positively to the devil.  First the devil asks Jesus to turn a stone into bread.  Now if Jesus decides to do such a thing out of self-serving relief, we might align his actions with the devil.  But if Jesus turns the “abundant stones that cover Israel’s landscape into ample food to feed the many hungry people in a land often wracked by famine,”[i] then in good conscience, he might begin to consider the devil’s tempting offer. 

Next, the devil tempts Jesus with the power to rule over all the kingdoms of the world.  Now if Jesus decides to take such authority out of a desire for power and greed, we could easily deem his action as rooted in self-serving sin.  But, if Jesus agrees to take that authority so that he can rule the world with justice, then the deal with the devil becomes a bit murkier.  All we need to remember is heavy hand of Rome in Jesus’ day[ii] or the suffering in Ukraine today to wonder about the devil’s offer of turning suffering to justice.

Finally, the devil tempts Jesus to prove God’s protective care.  Now if Jesus were jumping from the pinnacle of the temple just to show off how protected he is, then we could judge Jesus to be behaving in a sinful way.  But Jesus is committing to a tremendous journey.  Seeking some assurance God will care for Jesus does not seem like that much to ask.  The devil’s work is to constantly keep picking away at trusting relationships with God, fostering mistrust between God and God’s people.[iii]

Several years ago, the film Doubt received several Oscar nominations.  The movie explored a Catholic Church and School where the head nun accused the priest of sexual misconduct.  But the story is presented so ambiguously that even by the end of the movie the viewer is not sure if abuse took place or not.  This is that thin place between truth and lies, between trust and mistrust where the devil thrives.  And truthfully, even in the movie, with whom the devil is cooperating is unclear.  This is the danger in all our lives today – the lines between God’s work and the devil’s work are so close that we have a hard time naming the devil in our lives.

Luckily Jesus’ responses to the devil give us some guidance today.  In each of the three temptations, Jesus leans on his deep understanding of Holy Scripture.  We see how powerful Jesus’ scriptural responses are because the devil attempts to distort this strength as well.  In the third temptation, the devil quotes scripture himself, trying to lure Jesus back into that thin place.  But Jesus cannot be fooled.  Jesus knows that the devil is using partial scripture citations that can be misleading out of context.[iv]  Jesus knows a dependence on Holy Scripture will support him in his weakness.

As we begin our Lenten journey, today’s gospel lesson gives us much to ponder.  First, we are invited into a time of pondering how the devil might be acting in the thin spaces between our faithfulness and sinfulness, manipulating our mistrust of God for the devil’s gain.  To understand how the devil might be acting, we will need to first label the areas of our lives with which we do not entrust to God: a particular relationship, a big decision, something challenging at work or at home, or an uncertain future.  These are areas that are most susceptible to the devil squeezing his way into our lives.  Next, Jesus invites us into a deeper relationship with Scripture this Lent.  We have already seen how Holy Scripture sustains Jesus at his weakest hour.  Whatever your Lenten practice, consider how you might incorporate some Scripture reading into your week, whether on your own or with one of our Lenten offerings.  You may be surprised at the parallels in scripture and your own life.  Finally, we are invited this Lent to lean into one another and to God.  If Jesus can lean on God in his weakness, we can lean on God in our weakness too, even if we are not totally ready to trust God with all of ourselves.  Just admitting our hesitancy is the first step to kicking the devil out of our thin spaces.  Amen.

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[i] Sharon H. Ringe, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 47.

[ii] Ringe, 49.

[iii] David Lose, as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=668 on February 15, 2013.

[iv] Darrell Jodock, “Antidote for Temptation,” Christian Century, vol. 112, no. 6, Feb. 22, 1995, 203. 

Sermon – Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21, AW, YC, March 2, 2022

Tags

Ash Wednesday, church, disciple, disciplines, honesty, humility, invitation, Jesus, Lent, normal, pandemic, Sermon, vulnerability

For those of you who have known me for some time, you know that Lent has always been my favorite liturgical season.  Lent is a season marked by profound honesty about the brokenness and sinfulness of our lives, the confessing of the darkness of our souls, and the desperate searching for a way back to the unimaginable grace and love that God shows us undeservedly.  Perhaps that description sounds a bit morbid and unappealing, but I find the raw truth of Lent to be refreshing in a world that brushes over and hides imperfection.

Despite my love of the sobering ritual of Lent though, the last two years Lent has felt like too much of a burden to bear.  Being in a pandemic, wading through political divisions, and our country’s institutional racism being exposed felt like too much.  We have been lonely, scared, angry, and, at times, lost.  Both of the last two Lent’s have felt like the “Lentiest Lents we have ever Lented.”  And as your clergy, and as a fellow disciple of Christ, I felt like asking us to waltz into the dance of Lent was just all too much. 

But this year feels different.  I would not say we are on the other side of this pandemic, and I would certainly not say we are back to “normal” – though I am not sure we will ever go back to the old normal.  Instead, I rather feel like we are standing on a board, balanced on a fulcrum.  We are not still climbing our way over this pandemic, and we are also not coming down from the apex of this pandemic.  Instead, we are balancing a foot on each side of the board – steady, but using every muscle in our body to keep balance, wanting to breathe a sigh of relief being at the peak, but not yet able to relax on solid ground.

That is why I am so very grateful for our text from Matthew this Ash Wednesday.  In years past, I always found this text rather sanctimonious.  Here we are at a service where we will spread ashes on our forehead – a very public sign of our faith – listening to a text telling us not to be pious before others, not to give alms in a showy way, and not to pray so as to draw attention to our holiness.  The contradiction between written word and physical act have never felt more at odds than on Ash Wednesday.

But I think I had Matthew’s gospel all wrong before this year.  This text is not really about shaming self-righteous behavior.  This text is about honesty, vulnerability, and humility.  If we are showy with our piety, alms giving, prayer, and fasting, our discipleship becomes about dishonesty.  Instead, Matthew is simply asking us to be real:  real with others, real with ourselves, real with God. 

That is the invitation this Lent.  Not to take on some pious Biblical study (though we will offer that this year on Sunday mornings), not to brag about Lenten disciplines (though we will encourage you into a little light competition this year), and not to commit to something that is so unreachable that you quit within the first two weeks.  Instead, this Lent is about honestly claiming the hurt of these last two years:  of confessing our isolation and the ways that isolation has hurt (perhaps by finding one of the planned opportunities for connection), of facing the mental health strain this pandemic has created and seeking companions on the journey (whether in an upcoming support group or through a new Stephen Minister), of confessing that we are not fine (and coming to church to find those who are also not fine).  Those Lenten disciplines will give us some stability on that wobbly board of pandemic life and may give us the assurance of the presence of God in the midst of life we need to come down the peak of this pandemic.

However you enter this Lent, whatever practices you take up or give up, however you engage in the offerings of formation this Lent, the Church invites you this year to be honest:  be honest in the struggle, be honest in the failings, be honest in the hope.  Your being real this year may just allow someone to experience the realness of Jesus in their own lives.  And we could all use a little more Jesus this year.  Amen.

Sermon – Jeremiah 31.31-34, L5, YB, March 21, 2021

Tags

abundant, comfort, covenant, exile, faith, God, hope, Jeremiah, Jesus, Lent, love, lovingkindness, pandemic, ruin, Sermon

I do not know about you, but I entered Lent this year already done.  We talked about this reality five weeks ago, back on Ash Wednesday, when I told you that it was okay if you did not give up something this Lent – because we have already given up so much in the last year.  We have already fasted what feels like twenty Lents during this pandemic.  And then this week happened.  We started out with the words of the Vatican, declaring that although our LGBTQ brothers and sisters were still to be loved and welcomed in Church, their “sinfulness” would not be blessed within the covenant of marriage by the Roman Catholic Church.  I cannot tell you the pain and suffering those words created this week for so many who live in faithful, loving relationships and marriages.  Then, just a few days ago, a man in Atlanta murdered people of Asian descent, sparking off conversations about the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans since this pandemic began.  Our own Sacred Ground circle, the group studying the institution of racism in our country – not just towards blacks, but towards indigenous Americans, Latinos, and Asians – just finished its ten weeks of work; and yet within the same week we are talking about racism yet again.  And then this week, as administered vaccines slowly rise in James City County, I see people becoming lax about masking and social distancing, some folks in public spaces barely covering their faces.  Even the test positivity rate – the one whose decrease has allowed us to enact regathering plans – is creeping slowly toward the numbers that will shut us back down again. 

That is why I found myself gravitating to Jeremiah this week.  Part of the attraction is the good news of the text, but a larger part of my attraction is empathizing with the Israelites.  Jeremiah writes in a time of desperation for the people of God. The Babylonians have razed the temple and carried King Zedekiah off in chains.  Effectively, the Babylonians have “destroyed the twin symbols of God’s covenantal fidelity.”[i]  Sometimes we talk about the exile so much that I think we forget the heart-wrenching experience of exile.  Being taken from homes and forced to live in a foreign land is certainly awful enough.  But the things that were taken – the land of promise, the temple for God’s dwelling, the king offered for comfort to God’s people – are all taken, leaving not just lives in ruin, but faith in question. 

But today, in the midst of the physical, emotional, and spiritual devastation, Jeremiah says God will make a new covenant.  God knows the people cannot stop breaking the old covenant, and so God promises to “forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”  Instead of making the people responsible for the maintenance of the covenant, God goes a step further and writes the law in their hearts, embodies God’s way within the people.  The words of Jeremiah in the section called “the Book of Comfort,”[ii] and this new covenant by God, show a God whose abundance knows no limits.  God offers this new covenant to a people who surely do not deserve another covenant.  God has offered prophets and sages, has called the people to repentance, has threatened and cajoled, and yet still the people cannot keep the basic tenants of the covenant established in those ten commandments.  But instead of abandoning the people to exile, God offers reconciliation and restoration yet again.  And because God knows we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves, God basically says, “Here.  Let me help you.  Let me write these laws in your hearts so that you do not have to achieve your way into favor with me, but you will simply live faithfully, living the covenant with your bodies and minds.”  And when even that does not seem to work, God sends God’s only son.  God never gives up on us or our relationship with God.  Even all these years after Christ’s resurrection, God is still finding new ways to make our covenant work.  

That is where I find hope this week.  Despite how broken we may feel because of this pandemic, despite how our nation seems incapable of not harming one another due to the color of our skin, despite the ways we seek to limit God’s love and abundance, God is relentless with God’s lovingkindness.  In Jeremiah’s text, when the Israelites have hit rock bottom, God turns not to vengeance or even a notion of just desserts.  God picks up the covenant of love, not relying on our hard work to be faithful, but declaring how God will simply put God’s law within us, will write God’s law of love on our hearts, will be our God and we will be God’s people.  In essence, nothing we can do will drive God from us.  And that, my friends, is good news indeed.  God sees us in all our fullness – light and shadow alike – and loves us anyway.  In this continued time of strain and strife, in this long night of COVID, God gives us good news.  As one scholar affirms, “God will bring newness out of destruction.  God will bring hope where there is no hope.  God will bring life out of death.  God will make a way where there is no way.”[iii]  Thanks be to God!

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[i] Richard Floyd, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 122.

[ii] Jon L. Berquist, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 123.

[iii] Floyd, 124.

Sermon – John 3.14-21, Numbers 21.4-9, L4, YB, March 14, 2021

Tags

belief, choice, cross, glory, God, grace, Israel, Jesus, Lent, light, Moses, salvation, Sermon, serpent, sin, transform

Our scripture lessons today offer two contrasts:  a story from the Hebrew Scriptures which might be unfamiliar to you or at least may seem wildly strange, and a story from John’s gospel that is so familiar, you can probably quote a portion of the text if I simply tell you the citation, “John 3.16.”  What is strange about this combination is the unknown, uncomfortable story is a window into the overly familiar, commonplace story.  If we have any hope of understanding either of them, we need to dive into both.

At the point where we join the story from Numbers, God has been infinitely patient with God’s people.  Some might argue too patient.  God has saved God’s people time and again, wresting them from brutal slavery, miraculously helping them flee through the Sea of Reeds, helping sweeten bitter drinking water when they murmured, granting them manna when they complained of being hungry, giving them water out of a rock when they grumbled about being thirsty, offering them birds to eat when they whined of manna-fatigue.  Grace and patience abound with God.  Until this day.  The Israelites throw yet another fit, and God snaps.  This time, God sends poisonous serpents among the people, and many of them die.  When the people beg for help to Moses, God instructs Moses to put a bronze serpent on a pole; if people gaze upon the serpent, they will live.  For a God who asks the people have no idols or gods before God, a serpent on a pole is, quite frankly, just weird.

Meanwhile, we have a super familiar text from John.  “For God so love the world that he gave his only Son.”  We love this verse because the verse reminds of our abundant, loving, graceful God.  Of course, we sometimes gloss over the rest of the troublesome parts of this text.  The rest talks about how Jesus saves the world – as long as the world believes.  Here is where the questions start to pile up for us.  Do we really believe that some people are condemned?  Is God’s love conditional?  What happens if we doubt?  Does that count as not believing?  Can eternal life be given and taken away based on the seesaw of my behavior?  The trouble is if we focus on God’s grace, we can make salvation seem arbitrary, with no essential place for human response.  But if we focus on human faith, we may be in danger of making salvation a human accomplishment, restricting God’s initiative universally.[i]  The only thing that seems to be clear is that God gives us a choice.  When we commit evil deeds, when we deny God through our behavior, when we linger in the darkness, we are making a choice.  And the text tells us today that the consequence of that choice is condemnation.

The answer to so much in these texts seems to lie in verse fourteen of John.  Jesus says, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  As scholar Debie Thomas writes, “In the Old Testament story, God requires the Israelites to look up.  To gaze without flinching at the monstrous thing their sin has conjured.  It’s the thing they have wrought, the thing they fear most, the thing that will surely kill them if God in God’s mercy doesn’t intervene and transform the instrument of pain and death into an instrument of healing and life.  In order to be saved, the people have to confront the serpent — they have to look hard at what harms, poisons, breaks, and kills them.”[ii]  The same seems to happen with Jesus on a cross.  Thomas goes on to say, “In the cross, we are forced to see what our refusal to love, our indifference to suffering, our craving for violence, our resistance to change, our hatred of difference, our addiction to judgment, and our fear of the Other must wreak.  When the Son of Man is lifted up, we see with chilling and desperate clarity our need for a God who will take our most horrific instruments of death, and transform them, at great cost, for the purposes of resurrection.”[iii]

The truth is, I am not sure either of these texts answer some of our basic questions, especially around those of belief.  But tying them together today, we do find an invitation – to change our gaze away from the judgment of others, the wondering about who is in and out, the questions about God’s retribution, and gaze on the cross – the body that reminds us of the goodness of God in spite of our sinfulness, that reminds us of God’s grace in spite of our lack of deserving, that reminds us of God’s unconditional love despite our inability to keep failing.  Our invitation is to take seriously the words of that old hymn, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace.”  As we continue on the path of Lent toward the cross, today’s texts remind us of where we are going and why.  Our invitation is to look up at the horrible, wonderful truth of what Jesus does in the cross, and stand in the light of his glory and grace.  Amen.

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[i] Joseph D. Small, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 118.

[ii] Debie Thomas, “Looking Up,” March 7, 2021, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2944-looking-up, on March 12, 2021. 

[iii] Thomas.

On Glimpses of Togetherness…

Tags

absent, community, ecumenical, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Lent, pandemic, present, worship

Photo credit: Jennifer Andrews-Weckerly; reuse with permission only

This evening, we are gathering with our local ecumenical brothers and sisters in worship.  These Lenten gatherings happen every year, usually preceded by a simple supper before worshiping together.  One of the eight churches hosts and a preacher from another church offers the sermon.  The freewill offering supports a local nonprofit.  The evenings allow us to see the broader movement of Christ in our community, remind ourselves of the wideness of God’s mercy, and inspire a sense of community and fellowship.

Of course, in the midst of a pandemic, things look a little different.  Instead of seeing each other’s worship spaces, we are getting to see each other’s virtual worship spaces (Zoom, Facebook, YouTube, etc.).  Instead of seeing faces over a meal, we are feasting strictly on the Word of God.  In some ways, we could see the gatherings as “less than,” lacking all the things we love about community.  But for me, it has been a tremendous blessing to see how we are all in this together – all finding our own ways through technology, all seeking to be closer to Christ in the midst of this chaotic time.  Tonight, I am “preaching,” though technically, I prerecorded my sermon last week.  Our time of recording – with just three of us in the room, and two others on Zoom – was a tender invitation into the space where their community has been making it work for months. 

If you do not have plans tonight, or for the next several Wednesdays through Holy Week, consider yourself invited to virtual worship with the Upper James City County Ministerium.  On a basic level, it will give you a chance to pray, worship, and hear a good word each Wednesday.  On a deeper level, it may help you get out of your comfort zone with an unfamiliar style of worship or a theologically different perspective on scripture.  But on an even deeper level, it will remind you of how widely we are all connected during this strange, seemingly disconnected time.  It is my hope that you experience a glimpse into the magnitude of how the Holy Spirit is doing some incredible work during this time that can often feel absent of God.  You are invited to come and see a different perspective!

On Being Apart While Together…

Tags

alone, apart, Ash Wednesday, beautiful, dichotomy, experiment, God, Holy Spirit, Lent, lonely, pandemic, separated, together

Photo credit: https://www.indiatvnews.com/lifestyle/news-living-apart-together-the-new-relationship-trend-in-town-for-older-adults-380624

As a priest, especially a priest in a pandemic, you do not always know how the things you plan are going to go.  Most of the liturgical things we do are about 90 degrees off from what we “normally” do, and we just keep hoping they capture the spirit of the original liturgies.  I am blessed to serve an awesome congregation whose DNA is wired to be creative, playful, and experimental, so I always feel like we are in this together.  But I still find myself holding my breath a bit each time we try something unusual.

Ash Wednesday was no different.  We did our due diligence, made ample opportunity for parishioners and neighbors to get ashes for home use, and we figured out how to synchronize our ashes through livestreaming.  What I did not anticipate was what it would feel like to put ashes on my own head.  Even when I was a solo clergy person, I always had a parishioner put ashes on me after I put ashes on them.  But putting ashes on my own head felt very solitary – suddenly I was very aware of how separated we all are from one another – and how lonely that sometimes feels.

I pondered that reality for a few days before I remembered something else from Ash Wednesday.  We decided in the pandemic to still offer Ashes to Go – a drive through experience at our location.  As we distributed containers of ash, we gave people three options – “ash” themselves as we pray with them, take the ashes home and say a set of prayers we gave them, or take them home and watch our livestream and “ash” with us.  One family drove through and I gave the mom the three options.  She decided I should go ahead and pray as she put ashes on the foreheads of her two preschool children.  As I watched her work – this mom whose story I could all too easily imagine – the stress of parenting for almost a year in a pandemic, making hard decisions about childcare, juggling work, children, and family, trying to precariously hold it together.  Here she was, taking on the work of the spiritual nourishment of her kids too. 

And that is when I realized the truth.  We are very separated, often alone, and sometimes lonely in this pandemic.  But we are all feeling those things together.  When we gather online together, we are together in our apart-ness.  When we swing by the property for drive-through experiences, we are acknowledging our togetherness in our apart-ness.  When things remind us of our apart-ness, we are collectively reminded together.  It is a beautiful, awful dichotomy, only made better by the fact that we are, in fact, together in this.  This Lent, I invite you to pause to look around, and observe the small, sometimes tiny, reminders that we are in this together.  Even in our apart-ness, we are with each other in Spirit.  And the Spirit is enough to hold us together while apart until we can be physically together some day.

Sermon – Mark 6:1-6, 16-21, Isaiah 58:1-12, AW, YB, February 17, 2021

Tags

Ash Wednesday, ashes, church, fasting, God, holy, invitation, Lent, mirror, pandemic, Sermon, spiritual practices, struggle

I have always thought the Ash Wednesday liturgy offers a strange contrast.  We engage in the very visible sign of having ashes spread across our foreheads.  And yet, our gospel lesson this day speaks very clearly of not showing your piety publicly.  But this year, the contrast of Ash Wednesday feels even more pointed.  Typically on this day, we talk about giving things up for Lent, fasting, and entering into a season of contemplation about not just our mortality, but the sinfulness that separates us from God.  But we have spent the last eleven months fasting – fasting from social gatherings, fasting from touch and uncovered faces, even fasting from receiving the sacred meal.  And for a large portion of those months, we have been in deep contemplation about the exponentially rising death all around us, the brokenness of our common life, the sin of oppression and racism.  The last thing I want to hear from the church today is how I need to give up more.

I think that is why I love the text from Isaiah this year so much.  God offers a mirror to God’s people.  On first glance, God’s people are certainly doing the things that are expected – in fact, the “things” that are often of Lent.  They are fasting and lying in sackcloth and ashes.  They are doing the work of penitence.  But the acts are not the problem – the motivation of the acts are the problem.  They are doing acts of contrition as sort of an exchange:  fasting so that God will give them favor; Sure, their behavior may end in the oppression of others, but they are doing the manual action called for in this moment. 

But God is having nothing of hollow spiritual practices.  If those practices are not leading to the loosening of the bonds of injustice, or the undoing of the thongs of the yoke, or the freeing of the oppressed, they are meaningless.  If the people of God are not sharing their bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor into their homes, covering the naked, and caring for their own kin, then fasting is little more than act in futility, an action done without reflection, intention, or love of neighbor. 

So what do the words of Isaiah have to do with living in month eleven of a pandemic?  I am going to say something that might be a little controversial, but here you go:  the church is not asking you to fast this Lent.  Now, in a few moments, I am going to say these very words, “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, …by…fasting, and self-denial…”  But you have already fasted for a whole year.  You have already been in a season of self-denial.  The ashes you will impose on your head later are not a reminder that you are dust and to dust you shall return.  You know that reality all too well now.  Instead, we are going to take a cue from Isaiah tonight.  You have already done the manual acts of Lent.  Now your invitation is the “so that” part of the action.  Our work this Lent is to reflect upon what has been a most difficult year and to ponder together what this past year of fasting is inviting us into.  How has this season of fasting, this season of struggle, this season of brutality transformed our sense of purpose and identity – a people focused on God’s work loosening the bonds of injustice, freeing the oppressed, and sharing our bread?  How has the sobering nature of death, grittily rubbed onto our foreheads tonight, changing our resolve to lean into God, lean into this Christian community, lean into the work of sharing God’s love with those who do not know that love?

The rest of the invitation I will read in a moment says this, “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer…and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”  You have done the rituals of fasting and self-denial long enough.  As we look forward to these next forty days together, our work is to spend time with God, scripture, and one another and answer the question, “So what?”  What are we going to do now?  What are we going to claim and what are we going to let go?  How is the grit of ash this year not the sensation of defeat, but of invitation.  I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent.  Amen.

On Keeping Rituals Anyway…

Tags

Ash Wednesday, community, dust, God, journey, Lent, normalcy, pandemic, ritual, together

Photo credit: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/03/06/ash-wednesday-2019-wearing-ashes-marks-beginning-lent/3064920002/

Today is Ash Wednesday.  It is the day we gather to kick off the beginning of Lent.  The main marker of this day are the ashes rubbed on our foreheads in the shape of a cross.  This ritual action is so powerful that churches typically offer multiple services in their buildings and they hang out in train stations, street corners, or parking lots so that people can grab their ashes on the go. 

But this year Ash Wednesday is happening in a surreal setting.  Reminding us we are dust and to dust we shall return seems a little superfluous when death is all around us from this pandemic.  Beginning a season of fasting seems like overkill when we have been doing nothing but fasting for eleven months – fasting from a way of life we once knew.  Asking us to give us something for Lent seems tone deaf when we have been giving up things for almost a year.  And with large communities having lost power for several days, churches still on lock down, and best practices prohibiting us from actually touching ashes to others’ foreheads, the whole idea of this day seems like too much.

So why are we even bothering with Ash Wednesday this year?  A couple of reasons.  One of the base reasons is we need to keep the rituals of life to help us feel some semblance of normalcy – some reminder of the things that have been meaning-giving in our lives.  Two, we need reminders that God is present in the midst of all this mayhem.  Some of us have never felt God’s absence, some of us have felt the abandonment of God in this time, and some of us have just felt so depleted that God feels distant – not absent, but also not vividly present. 

I don’t know how you are holding up this Ash Wednesday.  I don’t know where you are on your journey with God these days.  But what I do know is that the church is here to walk with you, comfort you, and create space for wherever you are on the journey – whether driving through,  watching online, or catching up by email, phone, or text.  We are in this together.    

Sermon – Mark 9.2-9, TRNS, YB, February 14, 2021

Tags

Calvary, disciples, Epiphany, God, Good News, Jesus, joy, Lent, Messiah, mountain, pandemic, Sermon, Son of God, tension, Transfiguration

I do not know about you, but lately, I have found myself at a weird emotional place with this pandemic.  Eleven months ago, the pandemic got so bad, our church buildings closed and our experience as church as we know was forever altered.  Then the rollercoaster began.  Cases went up and down.  Schools were in and mostly out.  Masks were optional, then required, and now even recommended to be doubled.  And then there is the death toll.  We went from a couple of thousand a week to lately as much as 25,000 a week.  The introduction of the vaccine feels like the great white hope.  And yet, just this week I learned of a dear family friend who died a rapid death from the virus.  And we know there will be more death before there is life again.

I think that is why I am struggling this year to find the Transfiguration to be a source of joy.  As I read the familiar words this week, I wanted to be mesmerized – by the dazzling white of Jesus’ clothes, the appearance of none other than the law and the prophets:  Moses and Elijah.   Even God speaks words of revelation to the disciples.  Despite all the wonder and awe on this last of epiphanies in the season of Epiphany, I find myself unable to rally in this epiphanic moment.

The good news is the tension I have been feeling this week might not just be a case of my own emotional journey through this pandemic.  The tension we feel today is intentional on Mark’s part.  If you can remember all the way back in Advent, when we read the very first words of Mark, we read, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” Mark tells us right away who Jesus is:  Jesus is the Christ, and Jesus is the Son of God.[i]  First, Mark tells us Jesus is the Christ:  the Messiah, the person the people of God had been awaiting, the victorious redeemer of the people, the mighty restorer of the kingdom of God.  Since that day in December when we heard this brief introduction by Mark, we have been celebrating the Messiah who was born.  Even today, as Jesus’ clothes turn dazzling white, and Elijah and Moses appear, we are filled with anticipation:  this is what we have been waiting for – Jesus the Messiah!!

And yet, somehow in the birth stories, and the epiphanies, and the dramatic healing stories, we forget the other half of Mark’s introduction:  The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  You see, just as Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, Jesus is equally something else:  the Son of God.  Now the Son of God is not a title of honor so much as a reminder of what will happen to Jesus.  The Son of God is destined to lay down his life for the people of God.  Jesus is the suffering servant we hear about in Isaiah – the one who makes the ultimate sacrifice so that new life might come.

So what does any of this have to do with the Transfiguration?  Pretty much everything.  You see, in this victorious Messiah-like last epiphany moment before we head into Lent, the temptation is for us to linger on the mountain, to stay with the Jesus who makes us feel good, who makes us feel powerful, who makes us feel victorious, who dazzles us with shiny clothes.  That euphoric feeling is not unlike the feelings stirred up by the hope of vaccines – a hope so strong that some governors in our country have lifted pandemic restrictions all together – no more masks, no more distancing, no more waiting.

But as we begin Lent this week, we descend this mountain and walk our way to another mountain – the mountain of Calvary that reminds us of the other truth of Jesus:  that Jesus is the Son of God, sent to redeem us through the darkness of the cross.[ii]   Even on the mountain of Transfiguration, God reminds us of this truth.  God does not shout to the disciples, “Jesus is the Messiah!!”  Instead, God whispers the gentle reminder, “This is my Son, the beloved.”  Even God knows we will want to linger on the goodness of who Jesus is – the brilliance of a Messiah.  But as Mark tells us from the beginning:  Jesus is both the Christ and the Son of God.

This week we will begin the long journey of Lent.  We will reflect on our relationship with Jesus, our failings and faults, and our gifts and goodness.  The work will feel hard and tedious at times, especially clouded by this unrelenting pandemic, and we may prefer to hold on to the Messiah on today’s mountain.  But as we walk from today’s mountain to Good Friday’s mountain, we also hold in tension with Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Son of God.  In our weakness, we find a savior who is also weak.  In our dark days, we find a savior mired in darkness.  In our despairing, we find a savior lost in despair too.  Jesus’ identity as the Son of God gives us as much comfort as Jesus’ identity as the mighty Messiah.  When we hold all of who Jesus is in our hearts, we can be more tender with all of who we are. 

I am grateful to walk the Lenten walk with you.  I am grateful to hear about your struggles and victories, your darkness and light.  I am grateful to be surrounded by a community of people – whether virtually or in person – working through valley of two mountains so that we can come through the redemption of the resurrection.  Today’s Transfiguration Sunday offers us sustenance for the valley, fuel for the work, fire for the renewal.  This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus the Christ, the son of God.  Amen.

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[i] This understanding of Jesus’ identity was presented by Thomas P. Long at a lecture on February 9, 2018.

[ii] The idea of framing Lent between two mountains come from Rolf Jacobson, in the Sermon Brainwave podcast, “#768: Transfiguration of Our Lord (B) – February 14, 2021,” February 7, 2021 as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/768-transfiguration-of-our-lord-b-feb-14-2021 on February 10, 2021.