Marked by self-giving love

Preached the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year C), June 1, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by the Reverend Samuel Torvend.

Acts 16:16-34
Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21
John 17:20-26
Psalm 97

The New Jerusalem, mural by Adam Kossowski

I rarely think about the fact that my parents had to have sexy time in order for me to enter the world. When I mention this in class, my university students begin to look nervous, their faces expressing this question: “Is he going to tell us more than we ever wanted to know about him?” But my point, as I make clear, is this: I did not create myself. That’s a newsflash for some of my students. I am not the mythic “self-made man” or “self-made person.” No: a community of two brought me – and I dare say – brought most of you into existence. And at the moment of my birth we became a community of three: a very natural, biological, relational trinity.

And yet by age 14, I knew that I had three options open to me once I graduated from high school: get a job; join the military; or seek admission to college. It was also clear to me that though my parents loved me, I was to leave home: “Go out into the world by yourself. Off you go.” Does it ring a bell? I was surprised to learn that my cousins in Norway returned to their family compound after school and military service, there to live in close proximity to their parents and grandparents. 

How different is the American tendency to exalt the individual: “Leave home and make it on your own in the world.” Perhaps it should not surprise us, then, that the majority of Americans, over 60%, report the debilitating effects of loneliness, what the nation’s former surgeon general referred to as an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. We are so accustomed to entering adult life by ourselves that it seems quite normal. But, then, who acknowledges the terrible price to be paid in emotional, physical, and spiritual health? 

I ask my students to reflect on the many persons – most of whom they will never meet – who made it possible for them to be present in class. You know, the laborers who built the dam that creates the hydroelectric power that makes possible the lighting, heating, cooling, and computer use we take for granted. Or the architects, construction workers, electricians, and plumbers who design and build our houses, apartment buildings, and churches. Or the farmers we will never meet who planted, tended, and harvested what becomes our food, our daily bread. I mean if you think about it for any length of time, we are hardly independent agents but rather a people who live in an interdependent world, a world that includes the trees we see around us. Why, one acre of forest absorbs six tons of carbon dioxide and produces four tons of pure oxygen that we and many other creatures breath in. 

And so we encounter this tension in our lives: we live in a secular culture that repeatedly sends us the message that “you and you alone matter” and, at the same time, we live in a spiritual culture that prizes the bonds of community and the importance, the absolute importance of relationships. In today’s gospel, Jesus makes this intercession concerning his disciples: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” As these words were being recorded in the Gospel of John, the editor of the fourth gospel was well aware of the fact that Christians were prone to tribalism: to claiming that their one experience or one understanding of the faith, of God, of ethics was the one and only way – the very definition of  fundamentalism, be it conservative or liberal. Why, then, would anyone want to participate in a spiritual culture, a spiritual community, that promotes divisions rooted in ethnicity, gender, economic class, or ideology? Thus the intercession of Jesus is an aspirational prayer for you and me: “may they also be in us,” – may they be – a prayer that asks you and me for a good measure of intellectual and spiritual humility; a prayer that pleads for the one thing our world desperately needs and is seemingly incapable of creating and nurturing: a community of relationships marked by self-giving love. 

During his presentation before the ordination of our new bishop this past September, Michael Curry, the former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church said this: “After I was elected to this office, I looked for research on how Americans perceive Christians. What I found was disturbing. While the vast majority of Christians think of themselves as loving or compassionate, more than half of the non-Christians surveyed found Christians, both conservative and liberal, to be judgmental and arrogant. Indeed,” he continued, “when young adults were asked if they saw Christians as loving, the majority were surprised that the word ‘loving’ would be associated with Christians.” 

 But of course that word “love” can mean many things. When it is used in English translations of the New Testament what we don’t see or hear is the original Greek word agape: love as an action, action serves the wellbeing of someone else, that nourishes relationship with others. 

Truth be told, we live in a time in which such love is in short supply as aid to people caught in poverty in other countries is ended; as food is denied to hungry children by the federal government; as medical assistance to those in need is tossed out the window; as protections for wetlands, water, air, and soil are rescinded. What did Jesus say? “May they become one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them.” Who, then, are we called to be in this chaotic time? Why nothing less than a living cell of health and vitality in the body politic; that yeast which can leaven, enliven the lives of our friends on the street; that love which gives itself away for the good of another, why even a stranger.  

And so I wonder: will our eating and drinking of the Body and Blood of the One who poured out his life for others nourish in you and me the pulse of his love and so lead others to give thanks for our commitment to their wellbeing?

Ascension Day

Preached Ascension Day (Year C), May 29, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by the Reverend Samuel Torvend.

Acts 1:1-11
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53
Psalm 47

In 1529, the German reformer, Martin Luther, met the Swiss reformer, Ulrich Zwingli, in the city of Marburg in order to discuss how Christ is present in the Holy Eucharist, the Holy Communion. Zwingli cited this confession in the Creed: “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” Of course, this portion of the Creed was inspired by todays’ gospel reading. Given that the risen Christ is seated with the Father in heaven, so argued Zwingli, he could not possibly be present in any real way in the eucharistic gifts of bread and wine. What this feast day acknowledges, he continued, is Christ’s physical absence from the earth and its many forms of life. 

Luther was dismayed by this interpretation and called out Zwingli for being a poor student of the Bible even though Luther knew that Zwingli was quite learned. But that was not enough: he also accused Zwingli of a childish literalism. “Seated at God’s right hand in heaven above us?” asked Luther with astonishment. “Why, you naïve priest,” he continued, “God is spirit. God has no right hand, no right hand. God is not seated on a throne in the highest heavens for we know that the right hand is a reference to God’s presence throughout the universe and God’s power to be wherever God wants to be: in the smallest acorn as well as the most humble house servant. Christ is not distant from us, for Christ was raised into the Father’s presence throughout the universe.”

Luther thus claimed that the risen Christ is really, truly, deeply present in, with, and under the bread and wine of the Eucharist, offering himself to anyone who is hungry and thirsty for his presence in their lives. Thus we might say that this feast of the Ascension is not about taking a trip into outer space but just the opposite: Christ’s ascension from one local – a hillside – is his ascension into our world. We might speak of this mystery as his descent into the creation with all its wild diversity; his descension, if you will, into you and me. 

And yet in a time of sickness or loss, or in the midst of the chaos that has gripped our country over the past few months, it might be difficult to discern that presence should we experience bewilderment, anxiety, or fear. So frequently we can live between the promise of the divine presence and the downright cussedness of life. In such moments or stretches of time, I have found these words of the Anglo-Catholic poet, W.H. Auden, to be both challenge and consolation: 

“He is the Way. Follow Him through the land of Unlikeness. He is the Truth. Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety. He is the Life. Love Him in the World of the Flesh.”

In the midst of anxiety, bewilderment, or fear, suggests Auden, Christ is present – not as escape but as companion. For this is the truth of who he is: our ever-present friend and advocate. Thus, the poet invites us to find Christ in the world of the flesh, our flesh, in the face of the person next to you, in the ordinary bread and wine that reveal his life-giving presence; in the world of matter, of materiality, of which he is the creator. Come, then, dear friends, to his table and let bread fragment and sip of wine nourish your soul with the pulse of his love. 

Help is coming soon

Preached on the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year C), May 25, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by the Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 14:23-29

The Dove – Come Holy Spirit, by Philip Mantofa

All my life, I have needed help. There are all the obvious, universal examples. When I was an infant, just like you, I needed help with everything, and would quickly have died without it.

But there were particular moments over the years when I needed help, and help did not come. When I was in seventh grade, I needed help with my attention problems, even just the basic help of someone in authority who would tell my parents that attention was the issue, and that this professional helper had a clear solution. That authority figure could have been my friend and ally. They could have eased my deep loneliness while helping me function better in school. Instead, I just struggled through it alone.

I wonder if you have felt lonesome and confused at some point in your life, and if you sensed that you didn’t have the help you needed.

In ninth grade I was overwhelmed, it’s fair to say traumatized, by my family’s move to a major city, and I didn’t have enough help with my depression and anxiety. At the time, my mother was going through a similar rough adjustment. She didn’t have enough help, either.

I wonder if you have felt anxious or depressed at some point in your life, and if you sensed that you didn’t have the help you needed.

In my sophomore year in college I needed help coming out as gay. But I had precious little help. One particular pastor was a champion helper! But I came out to my parents all by myself, and I had no idea how to handle their complicated first reactions. And then, for years afterward, I didn’t have help learning the ropes of being a gay man in his twenties. 

I wonder if you have had an identity crisis at some point in your life, and if you sensed that you didn’t have the help you needed.

When a person doesn’t have help, they do the best they can, but they are likely to make mistakes. They are likely to say and do things they later regret. These days, when I recall a particularly upsetting or embarrassing event from my life, I’ll try to take a good, deep breath, and then I’ll say to myself — often out loud! — “You just needed help when that happened. You just didn’t have help.” This is a form of self-compassion. I encourage you to try it. I mean it.

Today we celebrate the Good News that all of us, individually but also — more powerfully – all of us together are going to get a lot more help. The help is coming in the form of an Advocate, who in Greek is called the Paraclete. An advocate is someone who speaks up for us: the word ‘advocate’ is related to “vocal,” and also “vocation.” The Holy Spirit, the Paraclete — she advocates for us. She speaks on our behalf. She is coming to help us.

But of course the Paraclete is already here, and has been here for all of the uncounted eons that there has been a here, here. The Holy Spirit brooded over the waters when the Holy Three brought order from chaos. The Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. The Holy Spirit has always moved through the entire created universe. We wait for more help to come, but we affirm that the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Helper, has always blown around us and between us like the wind, the very Breath of God. We affirm that the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Helper, has always provoked us and driven us, the very Fire of God that blazes a path of liberation for those in bondage — liberation for the Israelites fleeing ancient Egypt, liberation for the American slaves on the Underground Railroad, liberation for all people today who are in bondage in all its forms, crying out for freedom.

‘Already and not yet’ — that’s how we say it. The Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Helper, has already been here, has always been here; but we wait for the ‘not yet’. We wait for even more help to come in our uncharted future.

I grasp for an example, to bring it home, into this room, and I am delighted to find one almost immediately, an example of two members of St. Paul’s. Both of these persons would be mortified if I named them now, so I will honor their shared preference for modest discretion. Let’s call them Faith Leader 1 and Faith Leader 2. Faith Leader 1 volunteers diligently for the parish in many ways. Recently, Faith Leader 2 spoke up — by speaking up, this person became an advocate — and offered their help with a major project at the heart of the St. Paul’s mission. This help now relieves Faith Leader 1 of as many as eight hours of work each week. 

Truly I tell you, this is nothing less than a visitation of the Holy Spirit, who surrounds these faith leaders, draws them together in collaboration, brings sorely needed help to one of them, and fills the other with power and purpose. 

Again, it’s already and not yet. Already the Spirit has been here; already the Spirit abides here now. Faith Leader 1 has done a great deal, and they have done everything by the Spirit’s power. But there was a gap, an absence, a ‘not yet’: Faith Leader 1 didn’t have enough help. And so the Spirit brought more help. The Spirit blew in. The Spirit fired up. 

We rehearse all of this in the rhythms of our Sunday prayers. We take seven Sundays out of our year — seven out of fifty-two, just about one seventh of the year, a Sabbath Day of the year — and we devote these Sundays to joyful contemplation not only of Resurrection, but also the descent of the Spirit, the arrival of the Advocate, the Good News that more help is coming.

To aid our prayers, we open the Holy Book to a chapter before Jesus dies, the long conversation when he says goodbye to his followers. Jesus gives them a lengthy, oh so lengthy, goodbye speech. There’s a lot to unpack in that speech. But today, it’s enough that we hear this message: Jesus has departed from our immediate sight, but he remains with us, he remains with all creation, as the Ascended One; and — pay close attention to this part! — and, Jesus is sending us more help.

Dear friends in Christ, we sorely need this help. We need someone like Lydia to come into this room and be a helper for us. We just heard about Lydia in the Acts of the Apostles. Lydia, like Tabitha, is one of the ancient women lifted up by Luke the Evangelist. (Luke loved recording the names and accomplishments of women in that time: this almost never happens in ancient literature! I believe this is yet another action inspired by the Paraclete, who in this instance helped Luke proclaim the Good News about Lydia.) From the perspective of the Jesus followers, Lydia is a foreigner. They — and we — don’t spend too much time with her. She is baptized, and she joins the People of the Way.

But then Lydia does something intriguing, something remarkable, something inspired by the Paraclete: she “urges” Paul and his companions to stay in her household; she “urges” them to accept her hospitality. Let me dip into the Greek for just a moment (stay with me, I promise it’s interesting!): the Greek word for Lydia “urging” them to stay with her is parekalesen. That is, the word is the same as paraclete. That is, Lydia is an advocate. She is filled with the Holy Spirit. She is a helper. She has come to help.

Lydia makes it plain for us, for you and me. Where is the Holy Spirit in this frantic age? She blows through you, she fires you up, she rushes between and around all of us, and the Holy Spirit sends us into the embrace of our neighbor. The Holy Spirit inspires us to urge our neighbor to stay with us. We advocate to and for our neighbor, urging them to join us in this community of the Paraclete.

For here is where the Spirit of God broods over the chaos. Here is where the Spirit of God heals our aching hearts. Here is where the Spirit of God drives us into the wilderness places of the world. Here is where the Spirit of God rushes to the aid of those in need.

Here is where help comes.

Friends in Christ, I need help. And so do you. We may all be doing the best we can, but we need help. And so we rejoice to hear the risen Jesus say this to us today:

“The Advocate, [the Helper,] the Holy Spirit, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.”

God’s Magic-Making

Preached on the Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year C), May 18, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Dr. Mark Lloyd Taylor.

Acts 11:1-18
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35
Psalm 148

Make All Things New, by James Janknegt

The book is called Make Magic – by Brad Meltzer, New York Times bestselling author of a dozen thrillers, non-fiction books investigating alleged conspiracies, like those around the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, as well as a series of children’s books on “How Ordinary People Change the World.” Make Magic is based on Meltzer’s commencement speech at his son’s graduation from the University of Michigan. The first proper graduation many students had had since middle school because of COVID. Although Meltzer’s son was disappointed when he learned his dad was going to be the commencement speaker: “YOU? Not Tom Brady? There’s so many people they can pick.”

Make Magic is a cute little book. It has the usual white sheets of paper with black letters on them; but also lots of dark blue pages with white letters or bright orange ones. Many in huge font sizes and just a few words on a page. If I held it up, you could probably read some of the book from out there in the pews, or up in the choir loft. For sure, the orange front and back inside covers would stand out.

I was drawn in by the subtitle of Make Magic: “The book of inspiration you didn’t know you needed.” But I’d also push back a bit. You see, Make Magic is one of four or five books I bought these past few months, so desperate have I been for inspiration of any sort. And for me at least, Meltzer’s book lives up to both its subtitle and its title.

Here’s the premise. According to Brad Meltzer, there are only four types of tricks used by professional magicians:

1. You make something appear.

2. You make something disappear.

3. You make two things switch places.

Finally, 4) you change one thing into something else.

And here’s the graduation-speech-appropriate application and inspiration the book offers. Like magic:

You need to make the best version of you appear.

Make your fear disappear – but not because fear is bad. Use your fear. Harness it. Don’t attack your critics, prove them wrong.

Switch places with someone else. Put yourself in their shoes. Switch places and feel empathy – especially today when cruelty and venom towards others has become a sport in our culture. If you really want to shock the world, unleash your kindness.

And the hardest trick of all – changing one thing into something else. Transformation. Never stop changing, learning; and never think you know it all. Instead, see yourself in a hall of mirrors – with endless possibilities.

Those are Meltzer’s four ways to make magic: Make the best version of yourself appear. Make your fear disappear by harnessing it. Switch places with other people to find empathy. And never stop transforming.

+++

There’s magic like this going on in all our scripture readings this morning. Things appear and disappear in the book of Revelation. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away….And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (21:1-2). Things disappear and appear before the eyes of John the seer – a human being like us, writing to a beleaguered community of Jesus followers. But God was the magician. It was God making magic. “See, the home of God is with mortals,” proclaims a loud voice from the heavenly throne; and “See, I am making all things new.…I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (3, 5-6).

From the gospel of John – in words spoken at the last supper, before his crucifixion – Jesus tells those gathered around the table with him that he will disappear: “Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; [but] where I am going you cannot come” (13:33). Then he promises to re-appear, in a new way; one in which he and his followers seem to switch places, somehow; even that his followers are transformed into Jesus: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (34-35).

Above all, hear and take to heart the magic, the inspiration, of our reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Peter has been out on the road – away from the earliest mission base of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem. He’s begun switching places, literally, by visiting little circles of believers in and around what we would call the Gaza strip; encouraging them and being encouraged by them. Peter, the Jewish fisherman from Galilee, ends up in the household of a Roman centurion named Cornelius and shares a meal, breaks bread, with the Gentiles gathered there. What we heard in our reading this morning was Peter’s defense of that stop on his tour, when, back in Jerusalem, some of his fellow Jewish-Christian apostles criticize his choices and actions. “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” (11:2)

Why? It was God working magic. Things appear and appear and appear over and over again. “I was in the city of Joppa praying,” Peter reports, “and in a trance I saw a vision” (5). The original Greek actually reads: in ecstasy – standing outside of himself, beyond himself – already switching places in prayer, a vision appears to Peter. Three degrees of separation from what he would have considered the old, the safe, the straight and narrow. What appeared in Peter’s vision was something like a sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners. It came close to Peter and he looked closely at it. The sheet was full of four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. All unclean. Forbidden. And yet Peter was commanded to kill and eat them. This happened three times and then everything disappeared again into heaven.

At that very moment, three men sent by Cornelius the Roman centurion from Caesarea – a city named after the Roman emperor – appeared at the door of the house where Peter was staying. Because – and so the magic spreads – an angel had appeared to Cornelius saying, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved” (13-14).

Peter’s initial response to the magic appearing before his eyes was to stay put. To remain standing firmly where he always had been. “By no means, Lord;” Peter says when told to feed upon the creatures of his vision, “for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth” (8). But then the magic of switching places comes fully into play. The voice from heaven answers: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (9). And so, at the door of the house, but still safely inside, God’s Spirit invites Peter to go with Cornelius’ men “and not to make a distinction between them and us” (12). Step out. Cross that threshold of difference; of us versus them. And so Peter makes his unexpected stop in Caesarea – accompanied by six of his fellow Jesus followers. They enter Cornelius’ unclean, Gentile house. As soon as Peter begins to speak, “the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning” (15). Jew and Gentile alike. Roman centurion and Galilean fisherman. Cornelius’ whole household: male and female and otherwise. Slave and free. And Peter delivers his closing argument: “If then God gave them” – those I once considered unclean, different from me and other – “if God gave them the same gift that God gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” (17) Hinder God’s magic of switching places. Of empathy. Of reconciliation and inclusion.

This morning’s reading also marks a further step, no, a giant leap forward, in Peter’s transformation. Peter, who at first was so eager to follow Jesus. Impetuous. Quick to speak and quick to act, even when he did not really understand what he was doing or saying. The Peter who claimed he would go to death with Jesus, but then three times denied he even knew him. The seeds of Peter’s transformation were planted five weeks ago – in our hearing – on Palm Sunday when Jesus turned and looked at Peter across the courtyard (Luke 22:54-62). Looked at him with mercy, and grace, and a path back to friendship, as Father Stephen said in his sermon. Transformation sprouted as Peter stooped and looked into Jesus’ tomb at dawn that first Easter Sunday and found it empty (24:12). Transformation blossomed as he recognized the stranger on the shore as Jesus, dove headlong into the sea – once again leaving nets and boat behind; shared the breakfast Jesus had prepared; wrestled with that threefold question about love; and finally heard Jesus say puzzling words about how, later, someone else would fasten a belt around Peter and take him where he did not wish to go (John 21:4-19). Transformation finally bearing ripe fruit when Peter entered the house of Cornelius and found God’s Holy Spirit as active there as we will hear it was in the upper room on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4). And, our tradition tells us, when Peter was taken to Rome to die a martyr’s death. For the hardest magic trick is changing one thing into something else.

+++

Now I wonder what needs to appear before our eyes? In our relationships? Our places of work and service and community? Here at St. Paul’s? In neighborhood and city and country? Our global social, political, and economic structures?

What needs to disappear?

With whom do we need to switch places in order to find empathy?

And – hardest of all – how do we change into something, into someone, else?

Here’s the little bit I can say by way of inspiration. When we gather around this table to share the meal Jesus still prepares for us, one of our priests – Samuel or Catherine, Mary Jane or Stephen – will say on our behalf words like: presenting to you from your creation, this bread and this wine. We pray you, gracious God, to send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts that they may be the Sacrament of the Body of Christ and his Blood of the new Covenant. But then they will always go on and pray something else, something like: Grant that we who share these gifts may be filled with the Holy Spirit and live as Christ’s Body in the world. Or: Breathe your Spirit over the whole earth and make us your new creation, the Body of Christ given for the world you have made.

But be careful what you ask for. If we are transformed into Christ’s own body, then we become his hands to heal the sick, the wounded, and the abused. Dangerous! Christ’s feet to go places we otherwise wouldn’t go. Dangerous!! Christ’s mouth to speak inclusion and justice and peace. Dangerous!!! But then who are we to hinder God’s magic-making?

Resources

Bard Meltzer, Make Magic (William Morrow, 2025).

Some of the other books I have purchased recently, seeking inspiration, have been: Steven Charleston, We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope (Broadleaf Books, 2023); Elizabeth Banks Cox, Reading Van Gogh: An Amateur’s Search for God (Mercer University Press, 2024); and Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (Riverhead Books, 2005).

The lines I quote from our Eucharistic prayers can be found in: The Book of Common Prayer, 369, and Enriching Our Worship, 1:59, 62.

Tabitha understood the assignment

Preached on the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Year C), May 11, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

Old Yaffo

Yafo is one of the oldest cities in the world, an ancient port on the Mediterranean coast. Nowadays, Old Yafo is considered part of the larger city of Tel Aviv-Yafo. Yafo has a significant Arab population and has historically been an encouraging example of peaceful co-existence.

‘Yafo’ is the name in romanized Hebrew. Another pronunciation is ‘Jaffa’. When we hear today the story of Tabitha, one of our forebears in faith, Jaffa — Tabitha’s hometown — is translated into English as ‘Joppa’. The Israelites received the cedars of Lebanon at this port, for use in building their temples. 

We also find ourselves in Joppa when we meet Jonah, that mercurial, reluctant prophet who tried to run from God and wound up inside the belly of the great fish. Jonah runs to Joppa and books passage on a boat bound for Tarshish, a city in modern-day Spain — that is, somewhere at the very edge of Jonah’s known world. God intercepts Jonah long before he makes it to Spain, as God does with all of us. We can’t escape the reach of God’s piercing but redemptive grace, no matter how desperately we run.

I have been to Joppa. When I was there, I visited the Shimon Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, south of Old Yafo. The Peres Center stands at the edge of the sea, built to honor the memory of 1994 Nobel laureate Shimon Peres, the eighth prime minister and ninth president of Israel. His memory is particularly worthy of our attention these days. Like every one of us, Peres was not perfect, but in the 1990s he emerged as an advocate for peace, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.  

Whatever your thoughts about imperfect politicians and their complicated human-rights records, if you go to Yafo, to Joppa, I encourage you to look at the sea. The Peres Center has a room with sweeping views. The waves break peacefully over the sand, rhythmically moving beneath dazzling azure skies. The waves just keep coming, and you can marvel at the fact that they have done this for eons — that these waves came ashore when Jesus lived a bit inland.

Joppa is one of our pilgrimage sites, one of our holy places.

When I was at the Peres Center, I was with a tour group that paired Christian clergy with Jewish rabbis. I bunked with my friend Seth Goldstein, the Rabbi at Temple Beth Hatfiloh in Olympia. Our tour group heard from Palestinian and Israeli activists who fought disillusionment and worked hard to build dialogue and understanding. 

Joppa, a port city: a place of arrival and departure. Joppa, a human village: a place where people dwell and work, live and love, eat and give birth, grow old and die. Joppa, just up the coast north of Gaza, one of the most anguished and traumatized places in this anguished and traumatized world. Joppa, the location of Jonah’s personal crisis, and the mission base for Tabitha the skillful artisan.

We are currently dwelling in a far younger city, though the waves have been crashing ashore here for eons, too. I invite you to settle yourself, breathe, and become aware that you say your prayers just a little bit inland from another great sea. Like Jonah, like Tabitha, we are here only briefly, but we are here. And we can make choices here, choices that carry great consequences.

I suggest that we pay our respects to the prophet Jonah, but choose to follow Tabitha’s path instead. Poor Jonah inspires me greatly: I follow his story with interest, and I sometimes find myself alongside him in that claustrophobic fish belly. I even have tattooed on my left arm Jonah’s liberation from the grave of his own making. But given the choice, I would rather not be remembered for my resistance to grace, for my orneriness and self-centered rejection of God’s call. I would rather be remembered as Tabitha is remembered. I would rather that my friends remembered me with tender grief and fierce love.

For we are told that when Tabitha died, they “washed her:” this intimate detail is preserved. Tabitha’s body was sacred to the memory of her community. They took tender care of her and prepared her body for a dignified burial.

Then they held up her works of art, her tunics and other clothing. Tabitha probably created garments like the one I am wearing right now: carefully crafted, lovingly woven, flush with vivid color, garments that underscored the dignity of every body that wore them. If she was who I think she was, Tabitha probably thought about who would be wearing each garment, weaving prayers for the person into each stitch, each fold, each hem. 

And so we learn Tabitha’s lesson: if you find yourself in a human community at the edge of a sea, reach out your hands in labor for that community. If you find yourself at a port where people come and go, stay there, dwell there, serve there. Our faith often inspires much grander ambitions than the simple life and witness of Tabitha, but I really think she understood the assignment.

Christians down the ages all too easily have fallen for grandiose and perverse visions of the faith: that we can convert the masses to our Way, that we can govern nations by the light of our faith, that we are history’s winners. And so we watch in dismay as the Gospel is distorted to support nationalism and xenophobia, racism and sexism, the erasure of trans persons, the separation of families, a “bully on the playground” approach to foreign affairs. All of this is the opposite of the Christian Gospel. Those who draw on our faith to espouse these values reveal that they have not received, let alone understood, the Good News of the Risen Christ at all.

No, the Good News is revealed by a weaver of clothing whose death inspired grief, storytelling, and tearful embraces. If Tabitha’s daily labor led to the liberation of the oppressed; if her tender death scene was recorded because her community brought peace and justice into the world — peace and justice arriving, like the cedars of Lebanon, via the port of Joppa — then it all began with the weaving of Tabitha’s tunics. Tabitha understood the assignment.

But she is not alone. This past week the world watched as nearly one and a half billion people welcomed their new spritual leader. Soon after Robert Cardinal Prevost (often called Father Bob) chose to be called Pope Leo the Fourteenth, Sister Helen Prejean wrote this on social media: “I’m very happy about our new Pope Leo!,” she gushed. “As soon as I heard the name Leo, I knew he’d be strong on social justice. Pope Leo XIII started the social justice movement in the Catholic Church by standing on the side of laborers and their right to belong to unions. I believe he’ll continue Pope Francis’ spirit of championing the rights of immigrants and poor people. And, dear to my heart, work zealously to abolish the death penalty worldwide.”

Sister Helen’s excitement is infectious, and though I will probably disagree with Leo the Fourteenth on many important topics, including the goodness in God’s sight of my own marriage, I pray with confidence that Father Bob will try to keep the main thing the main thing. Are you a person of faith? If so, “standing on the side of laborers and their right to belong to unions” is a good way to express that faith.

The Gospel teaches us nothing about how to conquer a country, how to secure our wealth, how to win a cultural conflict, how to win an election, or even how to win friends. The Gospel simply teaches us to learn from an ancient textile worker that the mission begins with ordinary work such as weaving clothing. We change the world by working together. That’s the assignment. That’s how we preach Christ Crucified. That’s how we proclaim the Resurrection.

Tabitha probably knew all of this at least partly because Jesus himself often drew upon the imagery of sheep and shepherds to teach his followers who he is, what he does, and where he wants to lead them. In the ancient world, there could hardly be a more humble and menial metaphor than that of sheep hearing their shepherd’s voice. I like to think that my dogs know my voice, that they know how deeply I love them, that they know how vital and central they are to me. But sheep and their shepherd — this is even more workaday, more humbling, more humiliating than the mild image of an upper-middle-class Seattleite who loves his dogs. 

Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God incarnate in human flesh, the One who has come into the world, the one who trampled death by death and to those in the tombs bestowed life: he comes among us as a field worker on the night shift, mucking out stalls, driving flocks up and down the hills, counting wayward livestock, picking out the ticks embedded in their rough skin. His hands are filthy. He likely can’t live independently. There is no plumbing, no electric light. This is the One who teaches Tabitha, and teaches us, how to live.

But each day, each week, we have a choice. Here we are, not in Joppa but Seattle, yet still in the same house as Tabitha, the same predicament as Jonah. The waves of the sea are crashing over the shoreline. Here we are. What choice do we make, here in our city by the sea? We could bolt: get ourselves on board a boat heading out of here, duck the task God sets us in Holy Baptism, choose fear and our own small selves over the messy ministries of the Good Shepherd and his grungy flock.

Or we could stay, and serve. We could unroll bolts of fabric and begin our labor that puts clothes on the backs of our companions. It is not glamorous work, but we would proclaim Good News of great joy to a world crying out for it.

Here we are together in Joppa. What should we choose to do?

We have no fish

Preached on the Third Sunday of Easter (Year C), May 4, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Acts 9:1-6
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19

The Resurrection appearance in John 21 is my favorite Gospel passage. In 2021, I had the icon tattooed on my right arm.

Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?”

They answered him, “No.”

We have been fishing all night long, and we have no fish.

I expect everyone here has known this feeling of exhausted futility. Many of us feel defeated because of all that is going wrong in the world. We feel powerless to do anything about it. We have been fishing all night long, and we have no fish.

But we can feel like that for other reasons. Some of us are waiting for a diagnostic report about a health scare. Others of us have gotten the report back already, and the treatments have started — excruciating, enervating treatments. One of our members says it this way: when she recovers from chemo, she feels “puny.” Puny: small, little, diminished. We have been fishing all night long, and we have no fish.

Still others of us feel puny because we made a big mistake, or just did the wrong thing. Occasionally someone meets with me for confession and absolution (one person did this just last week), and the deep, wrenching feelings gush out. The pain pulses: Like Peter fishing through the night, ruminating on his denials, we feel sorry, but we also feel strung out. We have been fishing all night long, and we have no fish.

But these terrible, vulnerable places in our lives are the precise places where the risen Jesus appears to us. He is strange, mysterious, even unnerving. He knows our inner selves. But he draws near to us with compassion in difficult moments of our lives. He draws near to us with mercy and grace, with healing and challenge.

All of the resurrection stories confirm this. The Risen Stranger approaches his friends on the seashore precisely when they are lost in their gray, early-morning despair. The Risen Challenger approaches Paul when Paul is a violent persecutor, traveling to Damascus. The Risen One overwhelms, even traumatizes Paul, forcing him to be dependent on others — dependent on the very people he persecuted! They lead Paul by the hand into his new life. This dreadful encounter reveals Paul’s desperate vulnerability, his dreadful weaknesses, his many mistakes. The appearance of the Risen Challenger is painful, even devastating. But Paul is transformed. He rises to a new life.

The risen Jesus appears to many others who are lost, vulnerable, guilty, or grieving. He approaches Mary Magdalene — a faithful, savvy disciple to be sure, and the first to realize that she had seen the risen Lord — but he approaches Mary from her blind side: lost in her grief, she doesn’t recognize him at first because he is not at all what or who she expected him to be. And the risen Jesus appears to Cleopas and their evening companion as they walk the road to Emmaus. They are out of ideas and out of hope, exhausted by the massive disappointment and trauma of the crucifixion. That’s when the Risen One appears.

And so it is with us. The risen Jesus approaches us precisely when we throw up our hands in weary exasperation about all that is going wrong in the world. The risen Jesus approaches us precisely when we are terrified by our own mortality, coping with both physical and emotional pain — when we are feeling “puny.” The risen Jesus approaches us precisely when we are lamenting our failures, when we know that we messed up, when we don’t know how to make things right.

The Risen Stranger comes to us in our worst moments, and when he appears, he asks, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” Somehow, he knew. Somehow, he knows. He knows we have no fish, even though we’ve been fishing all night.

He knows we have been giving in to helplessness when there are so many things we can do to mend the world, if only in this little corner of that world. He knows we are frightened of our frailty and mortality. He knows what we did, and what we failed to do. It’s no use to hide the truth from him, from one another, from ourselves.

He knows.

So it works like this: where in your life are you weakest, most vulnerable, most afraid, most frustrated, most defeated? Go there. Focus there. Then, take a deep, cleansing breath. It is there, right there, in the terrible places of our lives, where the risen Jesus draws close to us. It is there, right there, where the risen Jesus confronts us.

And then the resurrection breaks into our dreadful contemplations, into our sleepless nights, into our desperate gray days. Jesus tells his friends to fling their nets in the other direction, and suddenly their boat is groaning under the weight of a wondrous catch of fish. Then he invites them to shore, for breakfast, and they are transformed into his apostles. In my reading, he pairs the hot breakfast with strong, steaming coffee. They awaken from their miserable ruminations. They shake their heads clear of despair. They rise to new life, abundant life, resurrected life.

This happens here, in this community of faith. Many, many of us are gathering and networking to build our skills as advocates for those who are under threat from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many, many of us are gathering routinely to pray for those who are sick and organize our visits to them. Many, many of us are listening to our children and young people, hearing their worries, learning their insights, joining their cause.

But the resurrection is about much more than all that’s going well here at St. Paul’s. The resurrection is not just a metaphor or image for the hope we feel when our community is taking care of people and cultivating, however slowly, authentic hope for the future. The resurrection is about that, but it is about more than that.

We don’t just encounter the risen Christ in our flurry of ministry activities. We encounter the risen Christ here, at this Table, in our prayers of thanksgiving at this Table, in the breaking of bread at this Table, in the drinking of the cup at this Table. We just need to understand that idea, that truth, that Good News, more deeply.

One of our great contemporary Anglican writers can help us. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says that we meet the risen Christ here at this Table when — and only when — we are what Williams calls “a community that actively seeks to live in reconciliation.”

When we are a community that actively seeks to live in reconciliation, this Eucharistic Table is our breakfast table by the seashore; this Eucharistic Table is our crisis point on the way to Damascus; this Eucharistic Table is our vision of Mary Magdalene’s Rabbouni in the graveyard garden; this Eucharistic Table is our evening encounter with the Risen Christ on Emmaus Road.

But the good archbishop says it better. Yes, the Eucharistic meal becomes for us an encounter with the risen Christ “when [we are] a community that actively seeks to live in reconciliation.” Yes. But this reconciliation is not merely a quick kiss-and-make-up session after a quarrel. 

This reconciliation — the reconciliation we experience when we encounter the risen Christ, the reconciliation that reveals to us, here in this Eucharistic meal, not only resurrection but the Risen One himself — this reconciliation is nothing less than this: Quoting Rowan Williams, “...[T]he risen Jesus is present where [people] turn to their victims and receive back their lost hearts.”

“...[T]he risen Jesus is present where [people] turn to their victims and receive back their lost hearts.”

We have lost our hearts in this deathly world of human struggle. Now, we may know that we are vulnerable and fallible; we may know that all human beings are prone to error; but we may not necessarily think or feel that we have “lost our hearts,” or worse, that we have “victims” we need to turn toward to receive back our lost hearts. If I have a victim, then I am… well, then I am an offender. I am guilty of offenses. I am offensive. That’s a bitter pill to swallow, and it doesn’t easily make sense as part of a message of Easter Good News. 

But let’s face it: we do have victims, each of us, and all of us. We have taken what does not belong to us, including this very land we stand on, and pray on. We enjoy privileges that most of the world can only dream of. You or I may be innocent of many things: I have not taken a life; I do not consciously steal; I habitually tell the truth. But we all have victims. 

So we come to this Table to face our victims. We turn toward them with courage we can only receive from the risen Christ. And when we do this, then it is repaired; the wound is closed; the patient begins to recover; life resurrects.

There is nothing more valuable, dear friends in Christ, nothing more significant, nothing more desperately desired by our exhausted spirits, than this reconciliation, this restoration, this turning toward our victims, and this receiving back our lost hearts. 

When we turn toward one another in painful reconciliation; when we turn toward the world with forthright honesty, bracing courage, and breathtaking vulnerability; when we acknowledge our terrible mortality and choose to live fully and courageously in this reconciled community… When we do all of these brave things, then, when the Risen Stranger asks us, “Children, do you have any fish?”, then we can reply, with astonishment and gladness,

“Yes.”

___________________________

Work cited:
Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd Ltd., 2014 edition), 101-102.

Belief as Imagination

Preached on the Second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.

Acts 5:27-32
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31
Psalm 118:14-29

Go On, Saint Thomas, by Jack Baumgartner

Jesus says to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe, but believe what, exactly? In Thomas’ case it seems to be belief that Jesus is resurrected, so that Jesus can be seen, close enough to touch. For so many in all the centuries since, this is sticking point. Historians agree that Jesus the person existed, and that he was executed. Opinions vary on whether he was resurrected. Arguments against Christianity often enough focus on the resurrection.

I think it is not helpful to focus too narrowly on whether the resurrection happened or not. In fact I affirm my belief in the resurrection, both Jesus’, and ours. But for me, resurrection is not that interesting unless it is paired with what it signifies about Jesus. It signifies two related things. First, I stand with Thomas here when he says, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus is God. Second, if Jesus is God, we would do well to pay very close attention to what he says and does. In other words, the resurrection of Jesus is most significant to me when it compels us to pay better attention to the life of Jesus.

See, to me, belief in the resurrection too easily becomes a stark binary: either you believe or you don’t. The switch is on or off. But my experience of belief is not like that. My experience of belief is like a rainbow, a spectrum, or a vast field of moments of clarity, and doubt, and then clarity, but different than before. Belief is not static for me; it is lived. It is breathed.

Jesus said to them… “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” I experience belief as breath, as the Holy Spirit, literally the Holy Breath of God, in me, in my heart.

The resurrection of Jesus should not be reduced to a doctrinal statement, or a talking point in a theological debate. Belief in the resurrection should not just be belief in an extraordinary miracle two thousand years ago, nor even an essentially self-centered hope in some sort of afterlife for ourselves. I think belief in the resurrection is better framed as belief in Immanuel, God with us. 

God is not the once and future king, like the legend of King Arthur who is not dead but magically sleeping only to rise again when the Britons need him most. Belief in the resurrection can be belief in the Holy Spirit at work here and now. Jesus is so alive in all of us as members of the Body of Christ that we might mistake him for a gardener now and then.

So in light of all of this, I propose reframing the idea of belief in today’s Gospel. I’m going to use a different word altogether: imagination. Let’s hear the passage again this way.

The other disciples say to Thomas, “We have seen the Lord.” But he says to them (and I paraphrase here), “Unless I see him up close, I will not imagine it.” And then when Thomas meets the resurrected Jesus, and says, “My Lord and my God,” Jesus says to him, “Has your imagination expanded because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to imagine so much more.”

Belief as imagination is not binary, but multivariate, expansive, creative, alive. Belief as imagination cannot be contained in any creed, in any orthodoxy, although those things can certainly help us focus our imagination toward our loving God.

Blessed indeed, I say, are those who have not seen a more just world and yet have come to imagine it. Blessed are those who have not seen the economic benefit of caring for the most vulnerable, and yet have come to imagine that to care for the vulnerable is to care for God. Blessed are those who have not seen the Kingdom of Heaven, and yet have come to imagine that it is indeed in-breaking here and now.

I suppose that for some, the word imagination is not more helpful than the word belief. Neither word reliably balances a checkbook, but I retort that neither does a balanced checkbook reliably convey love, or offer hope to the hopeless.

And we can get crunchy and practical too. It took imagination for scientists to prove that germs exist and then to prove that washing our hands can save lives. It took imagination to read between the lines of the Bible to hear the Holy Spirit teach our species that slavery is wrong, even though our Scriptures support it much more than not.

It takes imagination to interpret Scripture away from misogyny, homophobia, and all manner of other bigotries. Belief that is strictly binary, on or off, does not necessarily allow for a living faith. But belief as imagination does.

This is how I hear the end of the Gospel passage, when we hear that it is written so that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing we may have life in his name.

Through believing we may have life in his name. Or in my paraphrase this morning, through the use of our imagination, guided by the Holy Spirit, we may participate in a living, God-centered, faith. Further, our faith can be such that it is not a part of our lives but instead our lives are a part of our faith. Imagine, or believe in, a faith that is so in tune with God’s will, that all that we do, and all that we are, is taken up in that faith, is held in its embrace.

In the winter of 1995 there was a song that was popular for a time. Some of you may know it. It’s called “One of Us,” written by Eric Bazilian, and sung by Joan Osborne. One of the lyrics is a question that is repeated several times: “What if God was one of us?” I remember at the time being struck by what it might suggest about our culture that this was an interesting question to ask. Surely it is an article of our faith that God was one of us, Jesus.

But in my experience this article of faith is expressed the other way: one of us, Jesus, is God. Or put as a question, like the song, “What if one of us was God?”

The two questions, “what if God was one of us?,” and “what if one of us was God?” are not quite the same. There is a difference in emphasis, in direction. When we ask “what if one of us was God?” we are starting with an us, and then elevating one of us, setting that person apart. It’s a distancing.

I am prepared to affirm at any time that Jesus is God, but that only makes sense to me in the context of the prologue of John’s Gospel in which it is clear that Jesus is not elevated to Godhood in his life but rather was God in the beginning. This is why I tend to revere the Incarnation fully as much as the Resurrection, because if Jesus was God in the beginning, his God-ness is not so remarkable as his human-ness. That, for me, is the power of the question in the song, “What if God was one of us?” It’s essentially a song about the Incarnation.

The reason I am going on about this song is that the question in the song is such an effective example of belief as imagination. I’ve talked about the problems of belief that becomes static, or binary. Here is another way to put that. I have not often found belief that is all about statements, with periods at the ends of them, all that useful in real life. More useful, I have found, is belief that is made up of questions, but not just any questions – questions that inspire our imaginations – “what if” questions.

What if God was one of us? What if God so loved the cosmos that he gave his only Son? What if rainbows are a sign of God’s covenant with us? What if justice and mercy are the offerings God chooses? What if when we pray to the Holy Spirit at this table, the bread and wine were to be for us the body and blood of Jesus, spiritual food that brings us together in an eternal, loving communion with God and each other? What if God was not just one of us, but deep within the hearts of all of us?

Blessed are those who have not seen these things, and yet still imagine them, and order their lives accordingly.

Do not hold on to me

Preached on Easter Day, April 20, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
John 20:1-18

Do Not Hold On To Me, by He Qi. Used with permission. Find more images at https://www.heqiart.com.

Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me.”

There are so many Easters that I want to hold on to, forever. I want to hold on to that Holy Saturday night in the early nineties when I first experienced a Great Easter Vigil. I was thrilled by a wise, long-bearded elder in that community proclaiming the reading about God putting new flesh on the dry bones, the reading where God says, “I will open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.” I want to hold on to the memory of that Minneapolis congregation holding aloft their new paschal candle and placing it atop a huge mountain of flowers, a triumph of color that seared my soul with gladness.

Oh, but I am still holding on to older Easters. For several years, I was an excited kid in a dark theater on Easter morning. Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, we kids were choristers at Memorial Auditorium in Worthington, Minnesota, singing for the sunrise service our church held there. Why there, and not at the church itself? Because our pastor was a painter, and he had created a huge mural of the resurrection garden, and they rigged the theater lights to slowly come up on the mural. In my memory they also piped in birdsong — a bit much, but why not? And there were so many, so many, so many pungent Easter lilies.

I want to hold on to each Easter lily.

I want to hold on to the people who celebrated Easter with me over all these decades, many of them (of course) long dead now, the people who taught me about Easter, the people who taught me how to keep this glorious, triumphant springtime holiday, always hard-earned, whether we live on the snow-driven prairie of southwest Minnesota or this rain-drenched coast of western Washington. I don’t want springtime to yield to summer, or Eastertide to yield to “ordinary time.” I want to stay here. It’s nice here.

But our companion in holding on to Easter joy, our patron saint of Easter Good News, our patron saint of bear hugs, Mary Magdalene — she makes an even stronger case for holding on, for bear-hugging for dear life, for holding on to Jesus. Easter is personal for Mary. Jesus is personal for Mary. She calls him “Rabbouni,” not “Rabbi.” Rabbouni doesn’t just mean ‘teacher.’ Rabbouni means ‘teacher-I-adore.’ Mary wants to hold on to her teacher-I-adore, to reach up and around him and hold him tight, to never let him go. Oh, I get that. I know that. I feel it. Do you? I remember my beloved dead, of course… What would I give, what would I give up, for just five minutes of holding on to my parents, my uncle, so many people who right now are beyond my reach?!

But Mary teaches me that this desire to hold on to Jesus is even more personal than that. Much earlier in the story that led to Mary trying to hug her Rabbouni, Jesus calls a blind man by name, and the blind man recognizes the voice of Jesus, and gains the ability to see. For the first time in his life, the blind man is the center of attention, the protagonist. His story of gaining sight — it is all about him. The Good Shepherd knows him, not just him-and-everybody-else. He calls him by name. Have you ever felt known like that?

A bit further on in the story, Jesus calls Lazarus by name, and Lazarus comes out of his tomb, regaining life, regaining abundant life. “Lazarus, come out!” Jesus calls. Not, “Hey, you there, come out!” Not even, “Hey, brother of Martha and Mary, come out!” The Good Shepherd knows Lazarus, not just Lazarus-and-his-sisters. Have you ever felt known like that?

We preach community ethics here in church, as well we should: that we’re all in this together, that when we break the one bread into countless pieces, everybody has enough to eat, and everybody becomes one people, one Body. True, true. And yet, the Easter Good News is personal to you. It is about you, about you alone. 

It is for you alone to say what Easter means, what Easter is, what Easter does. We baptize on Easter, because what better day to baptize can there possibly be? In Baptism we die and rise with Christ; we plunge down into the dark tomb and breach up into life like a humpback. But it is for the baptized person alone to say what Easter means, what Easter is, what Easter does. Today, the risen Jesus calls Isabel by name. Today Isabel is baptized in the name of the Holy Three. I was baptized years ago, just like many of you here. And so we all share in baptism, we have a shared baptismal identity, and we make baptismal promises together. But today, this Easter Day, today is when the Good Shepherd calls Isabel by name. 

It may take Isabel a number of years to work it all out, but only Isabel can truly tell us what this Easter Day means, what this Easter Day is, what this Easter day does. She will tell this to us as her years unfold, and may God grant her five score of them. I pray that Isabel will have a century’s worth of Easter Days to preach the Good News of Resurrection to us — the Good News according to Isabel.

And so we must let go of this Easter Day. We must not hold on to it, lest Isabel not have her own special, personal, unique access to the Risen One. Mary Magdalene rushes Jesus, she presses upon him, she grasps him — in my reading, she seizes his wrists, then his shoulders, and then the great moment of embrace, their two beating hearts drawing astonishingly, thrillingly close, and then she tries to hold on. 

But no: there is this great heartache in every joyous Easter Day. No, Mary, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” What a strange and jarring thing to say. We are not to hold on to Jesus, even after he calls us by name, because if we do, Isabel won’t have her chance. If we hold Jesus close forever, the next baptized person can’t be named and embraced.

Many of you don’t know this, but we’ve already had a full Easter Day here. We were up before dawn for the Great Easter Vigil, and we baptized Alexander. The Risen One called Alexander by name, and he recognized his Rabbouni. It was splendid. I wept with joy. Oh, how I want to hold on to that Easter. It was just a few hours ago! But Alexander has already let go, so that another Easter can dawn, this time for Isabel. 

Today is the Easter Day when Isabel hears the Risen Stranger call her by name. Today is the Easter Day when Isabel recognizes her Rabbouni. But then she must not hold on to him. She must let go, so that he can ascend to the Father.

And what does “ascend to the Father” mean? I will tell you. When Jesus says, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father,” he means that the power of Resurrection continues to rise up and move out. Jesus calls me by name, and I recognize my Rabbouni. Then I let go. Then he calls you by name, and you recognize your Rabbouni. Then you let go. He has called Alexander by name, and Alexander recognized his Rabbouni, and let go. In a few minutes the Risen Stranger will say, “Isabel!” and she will recognize her Rabbouni. But then yet another person will find themself in this garden, and Easter will be all about them.

On and on this will go, eternally, until all the earth is God’s Easter garden. This is our great hope, our great Good News. This is what we know. And once again, Mary Magdalene — the Apostle to the Apostles, the patron saint of Mama Bears — once again Mary Magdalene is our teacher, our exemplar. She readily obeys Jesus when he tells her to let go, and she realizes that she must let go for not one but two reasons. First, she must let go so that the Good Shepherd is free to call the next person by name. But second, she must let go so that she herself will be free to go to the others and tell them what she saw, and who she saw.

This is our mission, our purpose. This is what we will do, as we go out from here, as we wrench ourselves away from this Easter garden to find those who are outside the garden, still struggling with all that is wrong and violent in the world. Adam and Eve were thrown out of the first garden in the painful moment when we human beings first became aware of ourselves, became aware of the complicated and mortal world around us. But this time, Mary Magdalene leads us out of the garden voluntarily, to tell the others what we have seen.

I will now tell you what I have seen. 

I have seen the Lord. I have seen the teacher-I-adore. He called me by my name. He showed me that there is a garden here on earth, and it is getting bigger. Life is rising up here, and moving outward. The brute violence and wretched cruelty that we see all around us, even the awful sadnesses of our personal losses that break our hearts so badly — none of that has the last word. All of it is being overcome. The victory is beginning here, here in this garden. The healing, the resurrection — it all begins when we eat together, and make room for Isabel, and teach her our ways. The healing, the resurrection — it all begins when we learn each other’s names, just like the Good Shepherd knows each one of ours. The healing, the resurrection — it all begins when we share the peace of the Risen Lord with one another, a peace that often is hard-won, because it can only happen when we practice honest confession and brave forgiveness. The healing, the resurrection — it all begins here, in this garden.

I have seen all of this. It is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in my eyes.

Why do You Look for the Living Among the Dead?

Preached on at The Great Vigil of Easter, April 20, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Dr. Mark Lloyd Taylor.

Romans 6:3-11
Luke 24:1-12

Empty Tomb, by Gary Smith

Why do you look for the living among the dead? That’s the question our gospel reading poses this morning. One of many questions asked across the twenty-four chapters of Luke’s version of the Jesus story. Some are rhetorical questions that don’t require an answer. Others aren’t really questions at all but accusations or veiled threats. Jesus asks his followers questions. People in need ask Jesus questions, begging for help. The demons ask him apprehensive questions sensing that the end of their tyrannical reign is near. Religious and political authorities throw questions at Jesus – interrogating him; trying to trap him or trip him up; manufacturing evidence against him.

This morning’s question is a real question. Not a trick or a rebuke masquerading as a question. It reminds me of a pair of questions asked at the beginning of Luke’s gospel when the angel Gabriel appears and makes a pair of startling announcements: to Zechariah that his wife Elizabeth – who was barren – would give birth to a son and name him John; and to Mary – a young woman engaged to a man named Joseph – that she, too, would conceive in her womb and bear a son to be named Jesus. In astonishment, Zechariah asks the angel, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” And Mary, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:18, 34)

Why do you look for the living among the dead? Startling to be sure, but different from the stories of Zechariah and Mary. Announcement and question get reversed, as do the roles of question-er and the question-ed. On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had accompanied Jesus from Galilee – Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women – come to the tomb. They find the stone rolled away, but when they go in, they are perplexed not to find the body of Jesus. Suddenly, two men in dazzling clothes stand beside them. Not angels, perhaps; but men. Not in white robes – exactly – but in clothes that dazzle, that shine like a star or flash like lightning. The women are terrified and bow their faces to the ground, to the earthen floor of the tomb. The two men stand beside the women, not in front of or above them. Beside them in accompaniment? Companionship? The men bring news – but unlike with Zechariah and Mary and Gabriel, the men ask the women an astonishing question, not the other way around. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” And only then do they make their announcement: “He is not here, but has risen” (Luke 24:5).

This is not yet the story of a vision or an appearance of the risen Christ. We’ll hear such stories later this morning at our second mass of Easter and over the next few Sundays in this Easter season. This morning, at early dawn, the risen Christ is present only in absence, the absence of his dead body. Present only in the question: Why do you look for the living among the dead? A question that acknowledges the women’s astonishment, but also offers them an invitation. Look up, not down. Look ahead, not behind. Look again. Keep looking. But look elsewhere for Jesus, not among the dead. An invitation to transformation. As unexpected as a bolt of lightning. As dazzling as a star. For what is impossible for humans is possible with God.

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Why do you look for the living among the dead?, the men in dazzling clothes ask the perplexed and terrified women. Because it’s the one and only place they knew to look for Jesus. Their crucified Lord. They had seen him taken into custody and abducted from the garden. Mocked. Abused. Paraded through the streets of the city. Dehumanized. Publicly executed. They had paid careful attention to where the tomb in which he was laid was located. Now that the sabbath had ended, they were prepared to provide Jesus proper rites of burial and make up for the rush job of two days earlier. They brought spices to anoint his body. Where else would they look but in his tomb?

Now, I do not believe that this morning’s story with this morning’s question denies that the dead have their place. We remember the dead – those we love, but see no longer. We cherish them. We observe burial rites of our own. We commend the dead to God and lay them to rest in the earth. No! This morning’s question is not: Why do you honor the dead by making space for them, by taking time to mourn and celebrate them? Instead, it’s the question: why do you look for the living among the dead? As if they were dead?

Women from Galilee: Look up, not down. Look ahead, not behind. Don’t stay here in this tomb, between these narrow, stony walls. Move out into the light of a dawning new day. Jesus is not here. He is risen. Look elsewhere. Your search continues. This is not the end of the story. Just the beginning. A rite of initiation. A kind of baptism. But now you know where not to look for the living – don’t look among the dead.

The question posed to the women inside the empty tomb is asked of us this morning as well. Why do we look for the living among the dead? Well, because there is just so much death and dying around us these days. So many life-threatening situations and health-diminishing conditions. Death-dealing social, political, and economic structures and choices and actions. Massive death and death in miniature. It’s everywhere: in the news and on all our devices and even in the most causal of our conversations.

Just from my experience this past week: Ukrainian children and their parents killed by Russian bombs walking to church on Palm Sunday. School shootings in Texas and Florida. Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. military – whatever you thought of that war – now with their temporary protected status in our country revoked and destined to be sent back into the clutches of the Taliban and their regime. Still, and over and over and over again, the images of all those men – gang members or ordinary husbands and fathers – heads shaved, along with all human dignity; shackled; forced to bend over and look only at the ground in front of their feet; guns at their heads, hands and forearms on their necks; shuffling along on their own way of the cross, maybe never to escape from those cages. But also our beloved companions here at St. Paul’s undergoing cancer treatments or in assisted living facilities. Even a day-long, nerve-wracking wait for the automatic deposit of one’s Social Security benefits to appear and with it resources to live on for another month. Government itself twisting the law. Strangling the law.

To sum it all up, on Thursday, after listening to a couple of hours of bad news on NPR, my wife Debra spontaneously composed this variation on Carole King’s song “It’s Too Late.”

Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time /
There’s something wrong here, there can be no denying
America is changing and maybe we’ve just stopped trying /
And it’s too late baby, now, it’s too late
Though we really did try to save it /
Democracy has died and we can’t hide /
And we just can’t fake it
Oh-h-h no-o-o no!

Where else can we look except among the dead?

But! But the words of the Apostle Paul also need to ring in our ears this morning. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of God, so we too might walk in newness of life. Our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. The death Christ died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:3-4, 6, 10-11). Don’t look for the living among the dead. The new among the old. Freedom among enslavement. No! Look up, not down. Look ahead, not behind. We die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with Jesus.

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We have been asked many other questions this Easter morning. Alexander Norman Andrew – the newest-born member of the body of Christ – and all the rest of us, no matter how long it’s been since the day we were born and named or the day we were born anew and named again, sacramentally. Questions like: Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God? Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God? Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God? Different words, but it’s still the question put to Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women. Why do you look for the living among the dead? And the questions just before we accompanied Alexander to the baptismal font. A tomb of sorts, yes; but more so a womb of new life. The active verbs in those last six questions transform everything – turning us to Jesus Christ as our Savior, so that we might follow and obey him as our Lord. Up, not down. Ahead, not behind. Will you continue, we were asked? Persevere? Proclaim? Seek and serve and love? Strive and respect? Cherish, protect, and restore? We will with God’s help. We will look for the risen Christ among the living.

A little later, when we are sent out from this place in mission to a dying world, Alexander, in his dazzling clothes – brighter than any star, flashing like lightning – will lead us. He will bear the cross of Jesus, now raised high as a sign of victory over sin and death in all their many forms. Inviting us – astonishingly – to walk in newness of life.

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Resource:

Carole King, “It’s Too Late,” Tapestry (Ode Records, 1977).

You are a blessing

Preached on Good Friday, April 18, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Samuel Torvend.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22

Crucifixion III, © 2013 by John August Swanson Studio, used with permission

In the fourth century, a Spanish nun named Egeria traveled to Israel and recorded her presence at the Good Friday liturgy in Jerusalem. In the church built over the sites of Jesus’s death and resurrection, Egeria joined thousands of Christians in venerating the Cross. She notes that the people bow before the cross and then kiss its wood. Some prostrate themselves before it while others touch it gently, first with their foreheads and then with their eyes. All this is done barefoot as a sign of the people’s solidarity with the Lord Jesus who was barefoot in his suffering. “By the looks on their faces,” she writes, “the people lament that the Lord Christ suffered so greatly, so greatly out of love for each of us.”

If anything, the cross is the sign of innocent suffering at the hands of unjust and merciless forces. It is the tangible, touchable sign of the One who, during his public life, welcomed and loved social outcasts, healed those thought to be contagious with disease, ate meals and thus shared life with well-known sinners, called out religious hypocrisy, and rejected retribution, forgiving his critics. For all this, he was arrested, tried on trumped up charges, and put to death by a colonizing power that believed empathy for those who suffer in life was a character defect. 

At the same time, Egeria reminds us that the cross was and is formed from the wood of a tree and that to venerate, to bow before, to kiss, to place one’s forehead on the cross is to touch the tree of life, the tree of healing for our woe. Of this wondrous tree, the Hungarian author, Pesceli Imre, wrote this: 

“See how its branches reach to us in welcome; hear what [its] voice says, ‘Come to me, you weary! Give me your sickness, give me all your sorrow. I will give [you] blessing.’”

Dear friends, what we do in this liturgy – offering our reverence for a cross – must seem odd in the eyes of the world. Why, asks the skeptical observer, would you bow, kiss, or touch this mute wood? And yet, and yet we know that the One who was crucified and raised to life is with us, inviting us to bring any suffering of body, mind, or spirit, inviting us to bring any sickness or sorrow, inviting us with open hearts and minds to receive forgiveness, healing, and blessing from the life-giving tree and in the reception of his life-giving Body and Blood. 

The only question is this: Will our encounter with the wood of the cross inspire within us a greater empathy for our neighbors, for friends and strangers alike, and lead them to say of us: “You are a blessing”? 

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

Preached on Maundy Thursday (Year C), April 17, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Psalm 116:1, 10-17

I would like to read you a story. Would you like that?

The story, written by Barbara M. Joosse, is called “Mama, Do You Love Me?”. It is set in an Alaskan First Nations community. It’s a conversation between a mother and child. Let’s begin.

“Mama, do you love me?” “Yes I do, Dear One.” “How much?”

“I love you more than the raven loves his treasure, more than the dog loves his tail, more than the whale loves his spout.”

“How long?” “I’ll love you until the umiak flies into the darkness, till the stars turn to fish in the sky, and the puffin howls at the moon.”

“Mama, what if I carried our eggs — our ptarmigan eggs! — and I tried to be careful, and I tried to walk slowly, but I fell and the eggs broke?” “Then I would be sorry. But still, I would love you.”

“What if I put salmon in your parka, ermine in your mittens, and lemmings in your mukluks?” “Then I would be angry.”

“What if I threw water at our lamp?” “Then, Dear One, I would be very angry. But still, I would love you.”

“What if I ran away?” “Then I would be worried.” “What if I stayed away and sang with the wolves and slept in a cave?” “Then, Dear One, I would be very sad. But still, I would love you.”

“What if I turned into a musk-ox?” “Then I would be surprised.” “What if I turned into a walrus?” “Then I would be surprised and a little scared.”

“What if I turned into a polar bear, and I was the meanest bear you ever saw and I had sharp, shiny teeth, and I chased you into your tent and you cried?”

“Then I would be very surprised and very scared. But still, inside the bear, you would be you, and I would love you.”

“I will love you, forever and for always, because you are my Dear One.”¹

Jesus commands us to love one another. This is a serious commandment indeed. Loving one another asks everything of us. We talk in our psychologically-minded age about “attachment theory,” a clinical, tinny way of describing a devastating, life-altering, heart-searing emotional bond. 

When we hear tonight that Jesus “loved his own who were in the world,” and that he “loved them to the end,” we hear about an emotional bond that actually kills Jesus. Loving his friends until the end meant that he gave up his life for them, for all of them, including the ones who turned into musk-oxen and walruses and polar bears. He loved the ones who broke the community’s ptarmigan eggs. But he didn’t just love the klutzes, or the mischievous members of the movement.

He loved the ones who stuffed smelly fish into his coat and boots, the ones who threw water on his lamp, the ones who ran away — the ones who ran away and stayed away. And that love is terrible. It is disturbingly painful. 

When Jesus tells us to love one another, he is commanding us to stay, to live here, to work things out, to face one another and talk to one another and both ask for and offer forgiveness to one another. 

I think my mother knew this when she would remind us kids of this new commandment. We would be quarreling, and when it got heated she would say — she would sometimes snap — “Love one another!” In one particularly dramatic moment, I told my mother I didn’t need to work things out with one of my sisters, and I didn’t want to. “She is your sister,” my mother replied. “You will love her.” It was non-negotiable.

The love commandment has blossomed in my imagination. It has shaped how I understand the world, and world history. When I learned that Abraham Lincoln deliberately called the Confederates “rebels” and denied the legal existence of the Confederacy, I thought of my mother: Lincoln did not recognize secession from the Union as a thing that actually exists. There is no such thing as secession. We will stay together. We will be one union. It is non-negotiable.

That’s why, a few years ago, I was moved but not surprised when another sister of mine reached out to me for reconciliation. We had fought much more bitterly than I could have imagined back in the days when our mother snapped “Love one another!” at us. Our rift persisted for many, many months. But finally my sister asked for reconciliation. She owned her part in the story. She wanted to work it out, to talk, to embrace. This remains one of the most powerful experiences of my life. There is no estrangement. We will stay together. We will be one family. It is non-negotiable.

This can be harder to do at church. Better said, this is easier to avoid at church. We can come here for the aesthetic glories of liturgy and music, and not challenge each other in costly love. We can come here for the pleasant connections of friends at coffee hour, and not challenge ourselves to go deeper, to meet and get to know those we don’t know, to “go there” with a concern, a complaint, a grievance, a sorrow.

Just the other week I was in a meeting and I had to consciously compel myself to be vulnerable, to be open and honest, and in this case, to apologize for something. It’s painful. It’s often much easier to gloss it over, to avoid it, to just give it time, to just give up. But my mother was right: she learned the New Commandment well. There is no estrangement. We will stay together. We will be one community. It is non-negotiable. Even if one of us runs away and stays away and sings with the wolves and sleeps in a cave. Even then, our companion will still be one of us. We will be very sad, but that person will always be one of us.

But here’s something interesting about the New Commandment: it’s not new at all. “Love one another” has been around since the days of the Torah, the days of the ancient Hebrews. It’s not new. But there is something new that Jesus does with the commandment. He calls it new because he teaches the commandment for the first time after he has washed the awful feet of his friends. That’s the new part. Washing their feet: this was a disgusting task in their time and place. Their feet were stained with manure, smelly from heavy labor, from walking dusty and muddy roads. 

And that’s the new thing my sister did, some years ago when she sought reconciliation with me. She loved me enough to reconcile with me even though my actions had been, well, smelly. Neither of us had been our best selves. But this is the New Commandment: we love one another even when our feet stink — even when the problem between us is terrible, wretched, repugnant. We work on it. We make it work. We love one another.

This is why I always, always think about Judas Iscariot at this time of year. When Jesus gave the New Commandment, Judas was in the room. The other disciples were there, too, and with the notable exception of the women, the other guys were just about to run away. Even though they came back, they betrayed him. Jesus gives the New Commandment to a breaking and broken community, not an ideal one, not one where everyone’s feet smell just fine. And then he gets up and goes to his death, because that is what needs to happen for him to love his own until the end.

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. He loved them even though they said to him — even though we may say to him — “What if I turned into a polar bear, and I was the meanest bear you ever saw and I had sharp, shiny teeth, and I chased you into your tent and you cried?”

When we say that to Jesus, he says this back to us: “Then I would be very surprised and very scared. But still, inside the bear, you would be you, and I would love you.”

_____________________________
 ¹ Barbara M. Joossee, Mama, Do You Love Me?, Chronicle Books, 1998.

Look to the crocus

Preached on Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion (Year C), April 13, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 22:14-23:56

Saint Peter, by Oleg Shurkus.

Peter was following at a distance. When they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. Then a servant-girl, seeing him in the firelight, stared at him and said, “This man also was with him.”

I have spent a lot of time around the campfire with Simon Peter. This is one of the most compelling moments for me across all four Gospels: poor Peter sitting outside on a chilly spring night, where someone had gotten a fire going. We in Seattle can relate. In the springtime around here, it still gets quite chilly at night. But Peter of course has more than the outside temperature causing him to tremble.

I wonder if you also have found yourself around that dying campfire, at one point or another in your life.

We huddle in vain for warmth as the embers glow. We reflect ruefully on joys departed, on irreparable mistakes, on how, maybe even just days ago, everything was looking up, but now all seems to lie in ruins. And we are not just victims. We are, one way or another, complicit in the crisis.

But there are some consolations. If we are lighting Peter’s campfire here in Seattle at this time of year, then we might find a crocus or two at our feet, here or there in the courtyard. While we stare anxiously into the dying fire, the crocuses push their way up, little cups of dew, colorful flashes of tender mercy, even in the sad reflected glow of our contemplations.

But Peter and I, Peter and all of us — we can’t get any privacy out here in this courtyard, dotted with crocuses. The servant-girl is staring at Peter. Not breaking her gaze, she calls out, “This man was also with Jesus.” Another bystander gives Peter the once-over and determines that he is Galilean — Peter is country, not town. It’s like when Andrew and I were in Paris years ago, and the Parisians could instantly tell that I was an American. They would take one look at me and begin speaking English, presumably because they couldn’t bear to hear me murder their beautiful language. They would look at me. The servant girl stared at Peter.

Peter and I, Peter and all of us — we can’t get any privacy.

But that is how it is out here, out here in the courtyard of public ministry. Whenever we gather as a faith community, we are on view. People can see us. They can see what we do, and what we don’t do. They can see how we spend money, how we treat vulnerable people, how we fill the hours. 

For two years now, contractors have been on site here, working on our roof, on our entrances, on our furnaces, on a dozen other things that need fixing. Every once in a while we get a cost break from one of the contractors, a free section of fencing, free items left over from other building jobs, or free plumbing or electrical work. When we ask why they’re being generous, they say, “We see how you walk your talk in this neighborhood.”

That’s flattering, and I am proud of those here who lead us in our powerful urban mission. And yet I also know that people can see our shadows, too. They can see that we are not very racially diverse. They can see that the way we pray demands fluency in English. They can sometimes see when we don’t get along all that well, or when we let each other down, or let our neighbor down.

And of course we can see one another. A newcomer can see whether the longtimers here really want to welcome them. A teenager can see that, too. So can an elder who feels disregarded, patronized, pushed aside. Public ministry is just that — public. When we practice our faith in community, we are seen.

And that brings me to one more person who sees Peter huddling next to me by the fading campfire. “The Lord turned and looked at Peter,” we hear today. That’s it — just a look. Not a stare, like the glaring servant-girl, but an intense look all the same. The Lord says not a mumblin’ word, but that look speaks whole sermons. That look is plenty devastating for Peter, because that look communicates immediately that Jesus knows what Peter did. The courtyard, it turns out, is just steps from where Jesus is being held, from where Jesus dwells. Jesus is close to our courtyard. He knows. He sees. Peter is being watched.

We are being watched.

But I have Good News.

When Jesus looked at his friend in that courtyard, yes, he knew. But he also looked at him with mercy. His terrible gaze devastated Peter, but it also began the repair of their friendship, almost immediately after Peter had broken it. And that is what being Christian is like, too. We are looked at, known, seen. But we are also offered mercy, and grace, and a path back to friendship. And we learn how to offer that to one another. Our courtyard is sad and desolate, full of shadows, our fire collapsing into cold ash. But the crocuses keep pushing up.

Gathered around this dying campfire in the springtime, huddling together for warmth as our Lord turns to look at us, his eyes filled with awareness of our true selves, but also filled with mercy — gathered here together, I hope we can see the crocuses. I will close with a poem by Marion McReady, a poem about crocuses:

Eyelids are the final petals closing on this life.
When I die, place crocuses on my eyes—they will guide me.

I kneel down next to the crocuses, touch them gingerly as if they were puppies
with pin teeth jumping excitedly in the firth breeze.

At last the snow has left us, cleaned the earth for crocuses
luxurious as silky hair or oiled skin.

Don’t be fooled—crocuses are as wild as a fairground wheel
spinning out of control. The crocuses were coughed up out of the ground;

they are scattered around tree trunks like residue from a terrible accident.
They are purple tears hand-sewn to the earth.

We are all survivors in this life, but none more so than the crocus
embedded in the grass like a microchip gathering the history of the world.

Crocuses are submarines moving silently through green waves.
The crocuses seem to be melting among snowdrops like ice cream

with the wet look of a frog; their orange tongue-pistils barely visible.
Crocuses are satellites in the grass watching us, they know us

better than we know ourselves. Look to the crocus.
Do not stand on the purple crocus, it will remember your footprint;

like elephants—they never forget. The crocus beckons like homemade liqueur—
each one a glassful of sunlight. The crocus is a soft word in my ear;

the crocus is my best self. I carry them around in my head like a song.
I want to crawl inside of their purple armor—dwell in the honeyed saffron

filaments at their center. Thank God when the final curtain falls
it is made of crocuses.

Preparation for Burial

Preached on the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 6, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.

Isaiah 43:16-21
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
Psalm 126

Portrait of the Woman with the Alabaster Jar, by Benedict Edet

The story in today’s Gospel was so important to early Christians that a version of it shows up in all four Gospels. The Matthew and Mark versions are almost identical. In both of those Gospels, Jesus is at dinner, in the house of Simon the leper in Bethany, and an unnamed woman comes to Jesus with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, or perfume. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is at dinner in the house of “one of the Pharisees.” Luke alone identifies the woman as “a sinner,” which becomes an important aspect of that version because the judgment of the woman by the Pharisee is contrasted with Jesus’ compassion and forgiveness.

In fact, in all four Gospels, the woman is judged harshly by others, whether she is unnamed, an unnamed “sinner,” or Mary, the sister of Martha and the recently resurrected Lazarus. In Luke, the Pharisee judges her. In Mark, “some who were there” judge her. In Matthew, it’s “the disciples,” and in John, it’s Judas Iscariot.

One of the reasons I am talking about all four Gospel accounts today, is that this common theme of harsh judgement can inform how we look at the character of Judas in today’s Gospel. This is because if we only look at the version in John, we could be tempted to distance ourselves from Judas too quickly. In John we read that Judas “was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.”

It could be too easy to decide that Judas’ bad behavior in judging the woman is connected to him being a thief, so that if any of us don’t identify as thieves, then maybe we can decide that we would never judge that woman the way Judas does, because surely we are not as bad as Judas. We’re not thieves, hopefully, and even more importantly, we would never dream of being the person who would betray Jesus to death. And since we hope not to be that person, we are probably unlikely to behave as Judas does at this dinner.

The fallacy here is that in the other three Gospels, the same harsh judgement comes from people other than Judas. Pharisees are often depicted in a negative light in the Gospels, so maybe we could claim not to be like the Pharisee in Luke’s Gospel. Even in Mark’s Gospel perhaps we could claim that we would not be like some of the people who judged the woman, but instead the other people who presumably did not. But it’s when we get to Matthew’s Gospel that we have no-where else to hide, because in that version, it’s “the disciples.” Whenever those words are used, “the disciples,” it’s pretty clear that it’s us.

So, back to John’s Gospel. I think we are all invited to ask ourselves if we might be inclined, in our worse moments, to join Judas in his judgment of this woman. Now, my confession to you today is that it is easy for me to imagine that I am like Judas in this story. That is because, at least in the Matthew, Mark, and John versions, the harsh judgement is about money, and how best to spend it.

I think by now if you’ve listened to a few of my sermons, or talked at length with me about Christian ministry, you’ll know that I am passionate about economic justice. And so every time I hear this story, in the Matthew, Mark, or John versions, I tend to stand, at first anyway, with Matthew’s “disciples,” with Mark’s “some who were there,” and with John’s Judas.

I am sorry to say that it has always been too easy for me to judge other people, especially if it has to do with money. And the log in my own eye is that I have spent money in my life on things that could have been sold, or never purchased in the first place, so that I could give more money to, as Judas puts it, “the poor.” And yet, I all too often go on judging, and harshly.

I also have sympathy for Judas here, and the judgmental people in Matthew and Mark. We could say that these people are good students of Jesus, hearing clearly from Jesus that we should sell what we have and give the money to the poor. I want to raise my hand in the middle of this Gospel and say, uh, Teacher, from a Christian economic standpoint, isn’t Judas kind of right?

And this is one of the many, many times I am so thankful for the patience of our Teacher. Because I think Jesus is pretty patient with what I might call a mono-focus that we can bring to his teaching. It is so easy, for me at least, to pick out one sentence, or even a phrase, and decide, “Aha! This is it! Now I know what to do.”

With one exception, I’m going to make a big claim here, that with Jesus’ teaching, there is always more to consider, especially context, and the relationships involved. The one exception, I think, is the commandment to love God and love neighbor, because that teaching brings context and relationship to all the rest.

In other words, this Gospel is not about the money. I want it to be about the money, because then I get to be self-righteous and judgmental, or at best, I get to feel like I’m doing something to make our economic systems more just. But what Jesus is trying to teach Judas, and me, here, is to ask the question: “what is the relationship cost, the cost to love, of my judgment?”

Let’s pry our eyes off the money for just a moment, and think about the context, and the relationships here. Just one chapter previous in the Gospel of John, we hear that Lazarus is deathly ill. Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus. The message is this: “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” Jesus does not go. Let that sink in for a moment. These are Jesus’ friends, and he does not go to them. It could feel to them like a slap in the face, as if to say, I don’t love Lazarus, or I don’t love him enough to go to him while he is deathly ill. We know that Jesus is going to go, and that he will resurrect Lazarus, but in the moment, Mary and Martha don’t know that.

Then when Jesus does go, Lazarus has already died. Martha comes out to him, and she, that champion of authentically and honestly speaking her mind, says to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” She tempers this assertion immediately, saying, “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” That is a very faithful thing to say, but I like to think that the sting of that first sentence hangs in the air. “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died." And then Mary comes and says exactly the same thing! “Lord, if you had not been here, my brother would not have died.”

I am with these sisters. There have been times in my life, when I have lost a loved one in what we might call an untimely way, that I have cried out in my heart, “Lord, if you had been here, my loved one would not have died!” I mean it as a lament, and maybe also as an accusation. I can be angry. This is why I am with Martha and Mary here, a companion with them in their lament, and, I think, in their anger.

So, all that has just occurred. Then, the impossible happens. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. But John’s Gospel does not tell us how Mary and Martha responded to this miracle, at least not right away. The narrative directly goes to what other people thought.

It goes right into politics, with the chief priests and the Pharisees calling a meeting of the council to plan to put Jesus to death. Today’s Gospel passage then follows that bit of politics, so that this dinner is our first glimpse into what it it’s like in the house of Martha, Mary and Lazarus after the miracle.

I invite you to think about someone you have loved and lost. What if they were resurrected today, and you could have dinner them tonight, and not only that, but He who raised your loved one, was also at dinner with you. Imagine it, tonight, in this very city, you dine with a lost loved one, and Jesus.

And then let’s add this, that you just know in your heart, somehow the Holy Spirit just tells you, so that you know down to your bones, that Jesus is only with you for a little while longer. This meal tonight could well be the last time you see Jesus. How do you think you would honor Jesus at that meal tonight?

I personally don’t have a pound of costly perfume, but I think if I did, oh I’d bring that out. I’d use all of it. I wouldn’t care how much it cost. And I think I would be on my knees, at Jesus’ feet if he would let me, maybe wishing I had longer hair.

And it is all of this context, all of these relationships, between Martha and Mary and Lazarus and Jesus, that Judas misses. He misses it entirely. In his self-righteous mono-focus on this one thing, economics, he has missed the point of all of it. The point of giving money way isn’t about economics; it’s about repairing relationships in our communities.

We could all be in exactly the same economic situation, we could solve poverty worldwide, and that would not necessarily mean that we were in loving relationship with each other. It would just mean that we had solved a math problem, a distribution problem, a political problem. Jesus teaches us to be in loving relationship with each other.

And speaking of loving, look at how compassionate, and patient, Jesus is with Judas. And this is true in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark too. Jesus doesn’t tell Judas to leave, he doesn’t shame him, he simply patiently defends the woman anointing him. He teaches Judas, the disciples, and us, gently. And when I am like Judas in my self-righteous judgment, I pray that Jesus may extend a fraction of this gentle and compassionate patience to me.

Jesus tells Judas that Mary bought the perfume so that she might keep it for the day of Jesus’ burial. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the death of Jesus, just days away for Mary and Martha and Lazarus and Judas in this story, and just days away for us, is not just the death of Jesus, but the death of a perspective about him.

When Jesus dies, the dreams of a military rebellion led by him dies. When Jesus dies, the perspective that he is here to serve only our needs as we perceive them dies. When Jesus dies, the perspective that he is just one more radical economic philosopher dies. What is raised at Easter for Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and us, is a perspective about Jesus that includes the human but is now enfolded into the cosmic Christ.

So when Mary prepares Jesus for burial by anointing him with the perfume, the fragrance of which fills the house, she is also preparing her own strictly human-scale perspective for burial. That is Lenten work for all of us. We are all called to bury our smaller, self-centered perspectives so that we may be raised up in the joy of God’s perspective of us and each other.

This is not to shame the smaller perspective. No, we are to honor the human perspectives, made in God’s image, the way Mary honors Jesus. It’s just that that’s not the whole story.

The raising of Lazarus is a great story all its own. The dinner afterward could be a perfect end to this great story. But Mary knows, as we do, that all the tragedies and triumphs, and miracles, in our lives, are part of a much bigger story, God’s story.

This week, we prepare for Palm Sunday and Holy Week beyond it. These are days when we bring our collective focus to Jesus, and to the Passion he is about to endure, out of the great compassion, patience, and love that he has for us. How are you preparing for the burial of Jesus, and of any self-centered perspectives that may need to die to be raised up into God’s perspective?

This is a good time to prepare for burial as Mary does. And to notice, and honor, how your neighbor might be preparing for burial alongside you. Let us take a moment to notice, and give thanks to God, for how the fragrance of all our preparations fill this house.

The parable of the resentful older son

Preached on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 30, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The Prodigal Son, by Miki De Goodaboom

“There was a man who had two sons.”

The father and his older son have all kinds of time to talk. They could talk before dawn, when the rooftop gardens are cool and they’re both in a reflective mood. They could connect in the hot afternoon, with the working farm up and running, people in and out of the complex, workers toiling up and down the dusty fields. Everyone is exhausted in the evening, but surely the father and his son could walk together, after dinner?

But they do not. Perhaps the older son has slowly taken on the burden of running the family operation. Maybe the servants answer to him, not the distracted and uncharacteristically quiet father, who gazes ever outward, his mind many miles away. The exhausted son may feel too strung out to even imagine a risky conversation with his father. And the preoccupied father may not even be aware of the spiraling silence between them. He is watching the road to the farm. He is focusing on someone else.

The servants, in turn, are probably worried about the broken family. If so, that would make a lot of sense: this family is their whole world. Its choices shape their future. Without this landowning family, the servants could fall out of society, outside the protections of a patron, a lord. The father is not just a CEO of a company. He shapes their identity; he creates all the security and structure they know; he extends their lifespans. But if the servants worried, they’d never say so. Best to just keep to daily tasks, and wait and see how everything turns out. Everyone is anxious in the wake of the disastrous actions of the younger son, who selfishly damaged the community’s wealth, honor, and security. But no one wants to talk about that.

Meanwhile, the surrounding community is watching. There is a gossip economy in the village, and so it caused a scandal when the younger son took so much of the family fortune and vanished. The family suffered an embarrassing, devastating setback. At minimum this gave the villagers a few exciting evenings of idle talk. But, so long as the younger son stays gone — so long as he stays dead — the gossip will fade, and the family will recover their honor.

The older son could just confront his father and ask him what’s going on. But — well, you know what that’s like, don’t you? You want to raise a concern with someone you love, with someone you depend on, but then that concern will be out there; it will be known, which means you’re in less control. “What is the matter with you?!” the son could ask his taciturn father. “What, or who, are you looking for?”

Or perhaps he could ask a more pointed question: “You’re not looking for that son of yours, are you?” (“That son of yours” — the older son may feel powerless and frustrated, but he still enjoys the power to deny his wayward sibling the dignity of the title, “my brother.”) Challenging questions thunder in the mind of the older son, but he dare not ask them. What if his father answered? What if it led to a fight, or a rejection? Things are tense and scary, but they could get even worse.

This is all so much more complicated and wretched than the grim, pathetic existence of the younger son. The younger son is in a bad way, to be sure. He’s starving. He stinks with body odor and livestock manure and the underside of life in the rough. But then he hits bottom, has a moment of clarity, and finally yields to his better self, who proposes a reasonable, workable solution: Just go home and face the music. What does he have to lose? What’s the worst outcome? He’d go home and be rejected by his father. Hey, maybe he could score a meal before being thrown back out. Or he could get a job on the farm, a humiliation to be sure, but a better deal than his current squalor.

No, the younger son is suffering, but he’s not in as much peril as the older son. The younger son even has a long-shot chance of receiving forgiveness and restoration. If he can get his act together after that, he could rebuild his life.

It’s the older son who, stable as his life may be, languishes in complicated, miserable frustration. He can’t look forward to a dramatic, powerful reconciliation with his father, because technically they are not estranged, even if they feel like strangers to one another. The older son is furious at the younger son, who compromised everyone’s future and spent some of what rightfully was coming to the eldest heir. But the younger son is gone, so that fury just rages, with no resolution. The older son suffers deeply.

And this, I assert, this is where we come in. I have a sense that many — maybe most — of us are closer to the older son in our life situations and temperaments. We may have younger-son stories in our pasts, but I suspect that church-goers are, very broadly speaking, well-behaved, reasonably ethical people prone to thorny, upsetting interpersonal conflicts. You should speak for yourself! But I’ll wager that most of us, in our spiritual lives here at church, and in our personal lives elsewhere — most of us correspond quite often with the older son in the story.

The older son is a decent person — a rule-follower — living in a scary, chaotic time, with a growing, uneasy feeling that he is going to have to take risks, to stick his neck out, to say or do frightening things if he wants to get what he needs, what the whole community needs. I believe this older son speaks to many of us today. 

Have you ducked hard questions with those you love? Do you follow the rules while letting little resentments fester? Do you prefer to bide your time, avoiding a confrontation until you can stand it no longer and you burst out with anger? Are you like the Pharisees who first heard this parable and wished life in community were just a lot more simple, with the good guys on the inside and the bad guys on the outside? I’m fairly sure it’s not just me. 

Looking beyond the stress and pressure of interpersonal relationships, there are a few conversations about national and world issues that we here at church have not had together. After October 7, 2023, I wanted to have a facilitated, careful conversation about Gaza and Israel here at St. Paul’s (or at least I thought I wanted that). But I sensed quickly that almost no one (myself included) really wanted to go there. It is so fraught, so difficult. We could find many points of agreement, but discussions like that are risky. It’s easier to stay on the farm, keep doing our work, and protect our relationships by carefully avoiding dangerous topics.

Later on today, after coffee hour, Liz and Becky, two of our lay leaders, are facilitating a discussion about community resistance and response during a time of unlawful immigration raids. It’s so easy to shrink from discussions like this, to curl up in anxiety. But I hope we can rise to the challenge. I hope we can go there.

These are the risky, dangerous conversations that God calls us to have. They are central to our baptismal identity. When we are baptized, we promise that we will do all kinds of things: break bread and pray together, resist evil and repent, proclaim the Good News, seek and serve Christ in all persons, strive for justice and peace, safeguard the earth and seas and all creatures. All of that sounds stirring and more than a little heartwarming.

But it is also scary. Resist evil, you say? Sometimes evil takes the form of cowardice that encourages us to run and hide, even from one another. Sometimes the Good News of Resurrection is very bad news for people (including us) who, like that anguished older son, enjoy privileges, wealth, and control. Sometimes the covenantal obligation to “seek and serve Christ in all persons” challenges us to seek and serve people who harm us, people we find repulsive, people like the younger son.

And “Strive for justice and peace?” Well that’s daunting. Injustice and war are awful, but they can feel paradoxically more reassuring. When we are surrounded by injustice and war, at least we know who the enemies are, and we can convince ourselves that we are fine, that we’re the good guys, that the dread foe is eternally outside of us, not us. And as for creation justice, in Baptism we are supposed to do a lot more than recycle plastic. We are supposed to ask hard questions, dreadful questions, about our complicity with the ‘uncreation’ of the earth.

And so I bid your prayers for all of the “older sons,” here and everywhere. May God soothe our anxious hearts and restore our fainting spirits and heal our bitter resentments. And for all our struggles, I assure you that there is Good News here, for both sons, for their father, for their servants, for their village, and for all of us.

After wasting so many hours on the farm alongside his father, the older son blurts out the truth. He goes there. He reveals his powerful resentment. He spits out a snide reference to “that son of” his father’s. He fights to control the angry lump in his throat as he laments his perceived (and, give him some credit, his real) mistreatment. He confronts the most important person in his family with the truth, the hard truth. In doing this, he is our companion, our exemplar. In doing this, he teaches us how to build this community of faith, together, even if our hearts are not always in the right place. He isn’t attractive or big-hearted in this vexing encounter with his father, but he is also not cowardly. He is being brave.

And then, look what happens. After the outburst, the older son’s father immediately turns to him, all attention on him now, and not on his brother. (And maybe, after his father looks directly into his eyes with potent love and acceptance, maybe then this poor, exhausted older son might welcome his brother back into his heart.) His father immediately turns to him and says,

“Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

Repentance is Resistance

Preached on the Third Sunday in Lent (Year C), March 23, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.

Exodus 3:1-15
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
Psalm 63:1-8

Fig Tree In The Wind, by Jill Steenhuis

Today’s Gospel is a heavy one, and we’re going to get into it this morning. Because it is a heavy one, and we are in times of heaviness, I’m going to start us off with the Good News. We’ll come back to this Good News at the end, but I want you to have this Good News now, to hold on to in your hearts, as we proceed.

The Good News is that God is merciful, and patient, with us. Everyone got that? God is merciful and patient. All right.

In today’s Gospel Jesus addresses two common questions about suffering: what causes some kinds of suffering, and what can we do about it?

First: causation. “some [people] told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you… Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them--do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you…’”

Jesus’ response is clearly addressing a common idea that disasters happen to people because of something bad they did. This idea shows up again in the ninth chapter of John, when Jesus encounters “a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned…’” (John 9:2-3) Both in the Gospel of John, and here in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus definitively rejects the idea that being blind from birth, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time when a building falls down, is due to someone sinning. God does not work that way.

It is worth restating this each year, because the idea Jesus is rejecting is alive and well today. For instance, it is all too common to hear that this or that natural disaster is caused by the sins of some group, whether it’s homosexuality supposedly causing hurricanes in Florida, or the entertainment industry supposedly causing wildfires in Los Angeles. This is a kind of scapegoating, and it is divisive, and cruel. Scapegoating tends to fall hardest on the most vulnerable among us, and Jesus shuts down that whole line of thinking.

The hard truth is that sometimes bad, and sad, things happen. That is the way of the world, and if we want to complain about it, we ought to take it up with God, and leave each other alone, especially those who are suffering, or have lost loved ones.

Speaking of each other, this brings us to the second question: what can we do about these kinds of suffering? Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel offers us an indirect answer. Regarding both the Galileans and the victims of the falling tower, he says, “unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

Does this teaching surprise you? It does me. The conversation is about suffering, and Jesus, who is so often all about relief of suffering, goes in a different direction this time. He calls us to repentance. Honestly, this is a hard teaching for me. I hear in this exchange people coming to Jesus with a clear case of cruelty, in this case executed by Pilate.

I hear an unspoken question: what are we going to do in response to this cruelty? What can we do? How can we resist? And maybe a little bit of: when does the revolution start, Jesus? Is this incident of the Galileans the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Is this the moment when we stand together and say to Rome, no more?

Jesus does not declare the revolution begun, at least not in the way people hope or expect. I think he does, however, address resistance. Repentance is resistance. At first glance, this seems to be a complication of the question of causation. On the one hand, we hear clearly that sin did not cause those deaths, but on the other hand if we want to avoid perishing as they did, we must repent, which seems to imply some causal relationship between sin and suffering in this case. 

The way through this paradox that I see is by remembering that this passage is the context of other teachings about the need for repentance before final judgement. Jesus seems to be playing a bit with time and scale here. He is using instances of suffering to remind us that what we do matters, and because we are mortal, we have limited time to repent, and do better.

Remember, an important meaning of repentance is to turn toward God, to turn away from sin and back toward the good. It is a matter of focus, and intention, as much as it can also be about compunction, feeling sorry, for what we have done.

So in the midst of disaster, calamity, and the kind of cruelty that Pilate exhibited, and that can be found in our world today, the foundation of our resistance to this cruelty is repentance. Repentance is resistance. I do believe that resistance can, and should, include other things, like speaking up, exercising rights to vote, making astute economic choices, and so on. But today’s Gospel teaches us that the start of all of that resistance is properly repentance. Repentance will help us keep all our other actions of resistance truer to God’s will.

In response to cruelty of the sort caused by Pilate, we are to respond with repentance, that is, turning toward God. And with Jesus, this never just means an interior, individual state of mind; it does mean that, and also, it means following Jesus’ example in caring for the people around us, with a preferential option for the most vulnerable.

The very good news is that this parish already works hard at this. So I want to talk about a different aspect of the work: scapegoating. I already mentioned the kind of scapegoating with which we are familiar: scapegoating of the vulnerable, including blaming victims for their suffering. Now I want to address the scapegoating of villains. You heard that right. Scapegoating of villains is also wrong.

Hopefully my choice of words is already a clue. As soon as I, or you, or even more dangerously, a “we” you and I create, decide that another person is a “villain,” it is the work a moment to decide that that person is unredeemable, and is no longer capable of repentance. We have decided then that God will see our repentance and forgive, but will not forgive this other person.

I am bringing this up because this line of thinking is always a danger for well-meaning people who feel passionately about social justice. I know that there are people in this parish, who, like me, look around at the suffering in this world, in this neighborhood, and ache in our hearts, and I can feel, and maybe some of you can too, a righteous fury. I want to help relieve suffering, yes, and I try to. But I also want to address the root causes of the suffering, I want to find out who is responsible, and seek justice.

Often enough, it is possible to find someone, or some group, that has made a cruel choice that has led to suffering of other people. Right now, in our political moment, it is the fashion for some people in power to showcase their cruelty. This is a dangerous moment for all of us, spiritually.

This is because it can be easy to blame all suffering on these cruel politicians. That can turn into a kind of scapegoating by the self-righteous, like me, of those I decide are unredeemable villains.

Make no mistake: some people in power in this country are making decisions that are causing great suffering, and unless we change course, much more suffering seems likely to follow. This is wrong. All of us can gather our courage and resist such cruelty. But in doing so, we cannot lose sight of our part in aiding and abetting structures of oppression that have made such heights of cruelty possible.

Women have been treated unequally in all areas of society long before this current political moment. People of color have suffered, and died, for centuries on this continent long before this year. Queer people of all kinds have feared for their safety for, well, millennia. Repentance is resistance.

Unless I miss my mark, I think the people of this parish have also worked to further the cause of justice long before this year. I urge us to draw on that history, and the examples of courageous people before us, stretching back many generations, as we strive for justice, without losing sight of our own collective complicity in structures of oppression.

The sad truth is that the cruelties on display in our government today are not really new. They build on cruelties that are baked into our systems. All these folks are doing is heightening, and bringing to the surface, the skeletons in our collective closet, moldering there since at least the founding of this country.

So no scapegoating is to be done by the followers of Jesus, either of victims, or of so-called villains. Our faith, and today’s Gospel, calls all of us to hold ourselves accountable, to relieve suffering when we can, and to be very careful not to assume God’s place in assigning a final judgement on anyone.

Which brings us back to the Good News. God’s judgement happens in God’s time. To presume that we know for sure the full arc of any person’s life, of any person’s journey in God’s embrace, is blasphemy. We don’t have infinite time, but God does. Our work, in the limited time we have, is to repent, to turn, every day, toward God, and Christ in each other.

After Jesus talks about the victims of Pilate and the Tower of Siloam, he tells a parable about a vintner, a gardener, and a fig tree. As with many parables, Jesus doesn’t tell us who is who in this story. But for the purposes of this sermon, I propose we see ourselves as the fig tree. We have limited time, in the story, “one more year,” to bear fruit. The fruit is our human expression, to the best of our ability, of God’s mercy and patience.

I invite you to pray with me now, that God may extend to us, that mercy and patience, and through the Holy Spirit inspire us to learn how to extend that same mercy and patience to each other, to all of God’s creatures, even, and maybe especially, to those we deem least likely to deserve it. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Who do you really care about?

Preached on the Second Sunday in Lent (Year C), March 16, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35

All of the people I really, truly care about could fit into this room.

Maybe that sounds like a dreadful thing to say. Among billions of people around the globe, I care about one or two hundred, that’s it?! But — it’s true, and no offense, I suspect it’s true about all of us. The people each of us really, truly cares about could probably fit into this room.

Of course I care about the people of Ukraine and Russia, Gaza and Israel, Sudan and South Sudan, Taiwan and China. I care about our unsheltered neighbors, and people in peril across our nation. I care about countless refugees, so many of them children, who groan under the heel of massive injustice and inequity. I care about animals incarcerated in factory farms, too. I care about ocean creatures plagued by toxins and plastics. I do care.

But who do I really, truly care about? Can any of us honestly answer this question? If you look up “Dunbar’s Number,” an anthropologist will tell you that we typically only care about a couple hundred people because evolution selected for humans who built village-sized kinship networks to survive. Robin Dunbar says the number of manageable primary relationships for most of us is about 150… roughly the seating capacity of this room.

When we form these primary relationships, we are working on the first, most basic level of moral development: our need to overcome the problem of “Me versus Us.” “Me” is important – I am important. Infants and young children have to gain consciousness of their own selves, simply to survive. There’s even a theory of moral egoism, which says that acting in one’s own self-interest is the morally right thing to do.

But “Us” is important, too. “Us” brings us into the wider moral arena. We are individuals, but to thrive, to escape narcissism and nihilism, to finally be happy, we need to join, and we need to help take care of, an “Us.” 

This Lent we are meeting on Wednesday evenings to talk about “Me versus Us” in the context of – or by the light of – Christian ethics. And to make that dry-sounding topic more interesting, I’ve chosen to show clips of the sitcom called “The Good Place,” starring Kristen Bell and Ted Danson. It’s a high-concept show with dizzying plot twists, following a woman named Eleanor who dies and goes to the “Good Place” – a version of heaven. Eleanor soon discovers that there was some sort of terrible cosmic accounting error, and she’s not supposed to be there.

As our beloved antihero Eleanor adapts to the awkward dilemma of accidentally gate-crashing heaven, she decides to learn about ethics. She figures that if she can clean up her act, maybe she can earn a legitimate place in paradise. Maybe she can actually belong.

(Sidebar: note well that this is not a Christian vision of heaven. We Christians know that none of us can earn a ticket to heaven, even if we tried. We also know that we don’t go to heaven as much as heaven comes down to us, a gracious gift of the risen Christ.)

But back to “The Good Place.” In one episode, Eleanor is bitterly disappointed to learn that a social group she joined was disbanding. Their time together had reached its end, and everyone was about to go their separate ways. Eleanor is startled by this loss, and raises a big fuss. She angrily ruins a celebratory cake and stomps out. 

One of the people in the group, Simone, notices Eleanor sulking behind a tree. They get to talking. Eleanor begs Simone to help her understand why she freaked out, why she lashed out. “Can you tell me why I did that in there?” Eleanor pleads. Simone replies, “I mostly do clinical research in neuroscience. I don't really specialize in temper tantrums. Maybe you need a child psychologist. Or a binky.” Eleanor says, “That's a solid burn. I deserved it, I did. But please, can you help me? Why did I do that?” Simone sighs, and then she says, “Okay, here's my guess.

“As humans evolved, the first big problem we had to overcome was ‘me versus us.’ Learning to sacrifice a little individual freedom for the benefit of a group. You know, like sharing food and resources so we don't starve or get eaten by tigers, things like that… The next problem to overcome was ‘us versus them,’ trying to see other groups different from ours as equals. That one, we're still struggling with. That's why we have racism, and nationalism… What's interesting about you is, I don't think you ever got past the ‘me versus us’ stage. I mean, have you ever been part of a group that you really cared about?... [This] is basically the first group that became part of your self-identity. And now that's breaking up, you're feeling this new kind of loss, and you're scared of going back to being alone…”

So: if Simone is right, there are two categories we need to master, to develop into moral, ethical human beings (and if developing into moral, ethical human beings isn’t the point of church, I don’t know what is). The two categories of moral development are “Me versus Us,” and “Us versus Them.” And Simone’s definitely right that “Us versus Them” has mostly been a disaster for the human race.

Now let’s go back to this room, which as I said can probably fit Dunbar’s Number, the 150 or so people I really, truly care about. In this room, we work on “Me versus Us” quite a lot. We walk down to that pool of water, where we wash (or is it drown?) new members into the one Body of the risen Christ. We come up to this Table, where the one bread is broken into many pieces, reminding us that we are many but also one. Church helps lots of people work on “Me versus Us.”

But what about “Us versus Them”? Church is supposed to work on that, too, but our record in that category is much less impressive. Crusades and holy wars, schisms and excommunications, white supremacy and cultural genocide… for many bloody centuries, Christians have badly misunderstood our own tradition, or maybe never understood it in the first place.

Jesus never stops talking about “Us versus Them.” He works on it all the time. He startles the establishment by sitting down next to people who have no hope of entering the Temple — they’ll never get into the Good Place — because they have a disqualifying physical problem, or a rap sheet, that places them firmly in the “Them” column. 

This morning, when we hear Jesus weep over the wayward, rebellious city of Jerusalem, we hear his concern about “Us versus Them.” Jerusalem is supposed to be the city on a hill, the city that gathers all the nations. God promises Abraham that he will eventually be everyone’s ancestor. When Jesus prays over Jerusalem, his chosen image of paradise is a mother hen gathering her brood of chicks. Humanity solves the “Us versus Them” problem by taking every single human person out from under the “Them” label. We are all chicks. There may be countless religions and cultures, but there is one brood.

I admire that image, and in fact I have it in my office, a gift of the leadership at Grace Church Bainbridge Island. They gave me an icon of Jesus Christ, but instead of the usual image that comes to your mind when you think of an icon of Jesus, it’s a hen with her young, and the hen is adorned with the cruciform halo of our Lord and Savior.

But Jesus is not really breaking new ground here. His hen-and-chicks image fires the imaginations of countless Christians, but Jesus knows his Bible. He knows about our ancestor Abraham. Jesus knows that these teachings have been taught before.

Today’s reading from the book of Genesis opens in the most ho-hum “here comes a Bible story” way imaginable: God says to Abram, “Do not be afraid.” What else is new? Every time we open the Holy Book, God, or one of God’s messengers, seems to be saying to someone, “Do not be afraid.” We finally may stop hearing it altogether.

But the “Do not be afraid” line is particularly important this time. When God says “Do not be afraid” this time, Abram doesn’t have all that much to be afraid of. He was wily and wealthy, hardly a wallflower or scaredy-cat. He had just rescued his nephew and secured the possessions of his extended family. He had wealth and social status to survive his lack of a child. He has demonstrated clearly his mastery of the “Me versus Us” problem. Abram knew who he really, truly cared about.

But here’s the kicker. Rabbinical interpretation of the passage says that Abram’s great fear in that moment, the fear that led God (not just some angel, but God) to say, “Do not be afraid,” was that he might have killed innocent outsiders in his successful rescue attempt of his own kin. When saving his nephew, when taking care of his own, Abram feared that he might have killed someone from outside his group of 150 beloved people.

In other words, our ancestor Abram had mastered not just “Me versus Us,” but also “Us versus Them.” He recognized the image of God in every human being, not just his own kinfolk. Every human being. Innocents and enemies. Even the people who abducted his nephew. Everyone. And this insight plagued him with fear – fear that his own righteous anger might have hurt an innocent outsider.

What would this world be like if all the descendants of Abraham lived more fully by his example? Our circles of care would expand beyond this room. Our concern for the innocent would encompass the children of other groups, of other peoples, of our enemies. We might even open our hearts in empathy for our most wicked foes, those who enrage us with their recklessness, their invasions of other countries, their heedless disregard for the sacred earth. We might lament how lost and damaged they have become, even though the image of God, twisted and distorted as it may be, continues to dwell in them. We might, well, we might long to gather them as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.

We are Abraham’s children. If we want to start expanding the number of people we care about, we should follow his lead and start with the innocents, but be quick to take seriously our own capacity to harm others when we’re protecting our families and allies, or protecting our own individual selves. Abram could have been quite selfish, but he made a better choice, a braver choice. When we cultivate true concern about our own impact on others, God is there with us to dispel our fears.

I pray that in memory of, and in honor of, our most extraordinary ancestor, God will give us eyes to see God’s own image in every single human person.

Pay attention to me!

Preached on the First Sunday in Lent (Year C), March 9, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington at the 5:00pm Mass by Kevin Montgomery.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13

Christ in the desert, by Jan Toorop

PAY ATTENTION TO ME!

Wow, do you know how good it feels to say what probably every preacher has wanted to say? Every teacher or parent has said it. Heck, I’m sure every one of us has said it or at least thought it from time to time. Sometimes, we really do have good reasons to get attention either personally or professionally. Other times, we just really crave attention, even me. I might be a huge introvert, but I actually kind of like having a bunch of people focused on me. (For limited periods of time of course.) Whether it’s here preaching or even playing George Washington in the Colonial Williamsburg play way back in second grade. Nothing wrong with that. It can be good, uplifting fun. But . . . imagine how much more attention people would pay if angels were to appear on either side of me and then lift me up. Maybe Satan was onto something there.

It’s an interesting way of saying it, “pay attention.” I recently listened to an episode of Ezra Klein’s podcast about how the primary currency today socially and politically is not money, but attention. And Satan was offering the same currency to Jesus. I can imagine how the temptations might have gone if it happened today:

Hey, Jesus, look at the world from up here. It’s a total mess, and it’s getting worse by the day. But you can do something about it. Actually, only you can fix it. I know that. You know that. But you can only do it with influence, and what gives you influence? Attention. Spectacle. Engagement. Jump. The Big Guy’ll see it. He’ll send angels to catch you. Think about how much people will notice if you’ve got some angels lowering you down to the ground. The videos will go viral. Just be sure to kick back some of that attention to me. That’s how it works. It’s the art of the deal.  

Now don’t get me wrong. Attention isn’t necessarily bad. A baby needs attention if they’re to be fed or changed or just need comforting. You can’t make social change if everyone’s ignoring you. The church has to get people to notice if we’re to spread the Good News. So did Jesus.  

But attention isn’t just for its own sake. It’s always directed to something. But what? Honestly, a lot of the time it’s directed to ourselves to feed our own egos, to cover over a sense of isolation, to make ourselves feel bigger and less insignificant. It makes us the center of our own worlds. But then who do we bow down to? That’s part of what Satan was trying to do with Jesus. “No one else is going to provide for you. If you want to survive, you’ve got to do it yourself. Surely, you know how things are supposed to be run. You have to seize the power to do that so that no one else will mess it up. Do you really expect that your ‘Heavenly’ Father has your back? Test him. He’ll send his angels, right? If he doesn’t, I can always send mine to lift you up and show everyone who’s really the boss.” 

Jesus didn’t fall for it. He rejected what Satan was offering. And later Jesus was lifted up. Not by twelve legions of angels. Not even by one angel. But by Roman soldiers on a cross. Jesus does rule the world, not through strength and force, but through weakness and love. He feeds not himself, for he’s already full of the Spirit of life. Instead, he feeds others. Not with stones turned into semi-nourishing bread but with his very self. He takes the attention we give and directs it to the most marginalized among us and then ultimately to the Source of all that is, who gives us new life through the Spirit. So this Lent, pay attention. Not to the spotlight, but to those overlooked in the shadows. Not to your own glory or the glory of the world, but to the love of the one enthroned upon the Cross. 

Pay attention. Pay attention. 

Lent is just a study carrel

Preached on the First Sunday in Lent (Year C), March 9, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13

West Elementary School, Worthington, Minnesota.

When I was a grade-schooler, I took a standardized test of some kind. I can’t remember the name. I do remember that I did poorly, because my mother was upset by the result, and approached my teacher. She suggested that I take the test again, but this time in a study carrel, free of the distractions that (my mother assumed) had brought down my original test score.

She was right. I got a good score, and peace was restored in my achievement-oriented family of origin. I was the first child in the family to present problems like this. It’s not that I wasn’t capable. It’s that I was distracted.

If I had been born in Generation Z, I would likely have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Code 314.00, Predominantly Inattentive Presentation. As a 1970s kid, I never took the ADHD test. The tests I did take reassured my parents that I was a smart kid, but mostly they mystified me, because I did not know how to integrate their encouraging results with my own lived experience. 

Meanwhile, others around me were failing tests, and some of those tests were administered by me. Back in that grade-school classroom, I remember approaching my teacher during study time and asking her what a word meant. “Why don’t you just look it up?!” she snapped. I sensed immediately that she was tired of me, my questions, my oddness. I couldn’t have imagined then what else might have been upsetting her. Had she just received a frightening diagnosis? Maybe one of her parents had received one. Maybe she fought with her husband that morning. Maybe she forgot to get coffee at the exact right time of the day – a crisis I did not experience personally until many years later.

But – she failed a test in that moment. The test was this: a child comes to you with a question, and because they’re a child, they are dependent on you to respond positively and safely. It may be good pedagogy to encourage the child to find answers on their own. Sometimes you must creatively test a child. But you should not be testy with a child. Today, like that teacher, I am an adult with a vocation that demands kindness and patience from me with children and adults alike. I deeply empathize with her momentary impatience. We all lose patience with others, usually because we’ve lost patience with ourselves. But – she did fail that little test, as I too fail such tests in the graduate course of daily life.

Most of us feel a visceral dislike of tests, of the very idea of a test. Worse, we have trauma memories tied to tests, papers, and exams. We certainly don’t want religion or church to be like a test. I have worked for several congregations who seem allergic to the basic idea that their members might be judged – tested – by God, by one another, by an ancient standard, by anything or anyone. We want to welcome people into the warm embrace of the Holy Three. We want kindness. We want the Eucharistic Table to be inviting: we believe every human person has a seat at this Table, with God’s unconditional love. (And we’re right about that!)

I want to greet everyone who comes in the door with unconditional acceptance. When a newcomer slips out the door before I have a chance to greet them, I reliably feel crestfallen. And I feel a nagging worry: did they think we were unfriendly, or judgy? Maybe they just thought we were weird. (If so, that’s a fair hit.) I try to reassure myself that the role of newcomer is by far the hardest role in parish life, and their need to find the exit is probably more about natural shyness or understandable fatigue than anything else. In all of this, I never want to test anyone, let alone hold anyone in ultimate judgment.

And yet, tests are being administered here, and they’re not just conducted by authority figures like me. For all of our fears about being warm and welcoming, the newcomers test the longtimers. If you’re new here, you’re running tests all the time, as well you should. Is this the right place for you? Did we greet you, but also give you space to breathe? Did we help you find your place in our complicated leaflets and books? Did we say or do anything useful or encouraging in this anxious, dystopian age? Did we catch and correct all the masculine pronouns for God? (Of course, if we did, another newcomer in your pew might give us a failing grade.) Did we clean the restroom? Are we really an authentic church, with a real mission? Do we make a difference? Newcomers test us. They get to tell us, in some ways more than any other subgroup, how well we are really doing.

Baptism candidates and confirmands also test us. This morning we are surrounding a half dozen or so people with prayer as they begin their Lenten journey toward Holy Baptism, Confirmation, or Reception into the Episcopal Church. I encourage everyone here to pray for each of these persons by name, throughout Lent and into Eastertide. You could even send them a card or a letter, encouraging them in their labor alongside you in this vineyard. If you don’t know them, I hope you will help us all pass this most basic, entry-level test: the test that determines whether a quorum of parishioners here care to get to know those who are stepping more deeply into our faith tradition. The frame of “tests” or “testing” can be narrow and negative, but at its best, testing helpfully deepens our spiritual awareness, sharpens our social skills, nurtures our relationships, and sends us more confidently in mission. Healthy tests keep us honest. And honesty helps us be a good community.

And of course we have the example of Jesus himself, who underwent severe testing at the beginning of his ministry, the kind of testing typical of the hero’s journey. The so-called “devil” approaches Jesus in the wilderness — the wilderness is a strict but effective study carrel for testing. The “devil” tempts Jesus with self-gratification, glorious power, and dazzling invincibility. Except the word “tempt” isn’t an accurate translation. The devil actually tests Jesus. The devil holds a yardstick up to Jesus, to take the measure of his fitness for mission and ministry.

And the word “devil” doesn’t quite work, either. ‘Devil’ is an English word descending from the Greek diabolos, like the other English word “diabolical.” But the devil isn’t a red-faced gremlin with horns and a triton. In Hebrew, the word satan means “accuser.” And in the Good News we hear today, the diabolos is more of a test proctor than a demon. We are even invited to imagine the diabolos lurking inside the mind of Jesus himself. He is that voice inside you who says, “Are you really this tough, this good, this clever, this humble?”

All that God creates is good. All created matter is inherently good. The wily serpent in the garden – she is good. The diabolos in the wilderness – he is good. Rough, confrontational, terrible! Prone to distortion and corruption, and something or someone that may have to be overcome! But good. The diabolos simply runs tests to prepare Jesus for his mission. The tests clarify and affirm his character. And this is good.

Think of it this way: the season of Lent is a study carrel where we take all kinds of tests. Lent is a small quiet space with smooth walls and soothing colors where we can concentrate, slow down, breathe, and then, well, take our tests. Some of us forgo dessert or red wine for six weeks every spring not to irritate our already-neurotic relationship with food and drink, but to carve out a solemn little study carrel in our lives so that we can take up the sober, serious, deeper concerns of our spiritual work. Others will add something to form a study carrel during these weeks – more silence, more reading, more SPiN walks, more prayer, or in my case, more intentional and careful attention to other people.

And then, when we take up these Lenten practices, we may discover that several other tests are being administered, whether we knew it or not. People we don’t like often test us. If we treat people differently based on whether we like or dislike them, we can fail both groups, just in different ways. We can fail to challenge the people we like in healthy ways; and we can fail to recognize the image of God in those we find hard to like. But ultimately we can fail to see how we’re projecting our own “stuff” onto both of them, and failing the basic human test of looking beyond our own small selves.

And of course people radically different from us test us. Sometimes they do this by their simple absence: how different and diverse is this community, really? When we look around, can we notice who is not here? We may need six weeks of altered attention and a simpler lifestyle just to gain the eyes to see that.

And finally, there is a test that God administers, the test that all of us pass or fail together. Life can often feel sad and lonely, but Lent is a group activity. We’re packed on Noah’s ark together (Noah’s ark: another study carrel!). We wander the wilderness together. And in this ark, in this school for the faithful, God takes the measure of our strengths and weaknesses. But here’s the Good News: We get a group score. And we are graded not on our performance, but on the performance of Christ himself, the Great Test Taker, the great Teacher, the great Student of truth and reconciliation who stands between us and any judgment that would close the door on our future.

This Lenten season, I hope you can see me waving at you quietly from my own little study carrel across the hall. And be of good cheer: no matter what happens (and much will happen out here in the wilderness), we are all dwelling safely under the shelter of — in the study carrel of — the Most High.

Lent is for Easter

Preached on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.

Joel 2:1-2,12-17
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Psalm 103:8-14

Aschermittwoch, by Karl Spitzweg

Lent is for Easter. Let me say that again. Lent is for Easter. Today, Ash Wednesday, and all during Lent, we are preparing for resurrection. I invite you to hold before you the joy of resurrection, and remember, each day of Lent, that this joy is the goal.

In a few minutes, we will hear a short text in the Book of Common Prayer, on page 264, called the Invitation to the Observance of a Holy Lent. That text reminds us that Lent grew out of early Christian practices of preparation for the great celebration at Easter of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. Lent is for Easter. Lent is not for itself. If you observe Lent without looking toward Easter, you may possibly experience some useful “self-examination and repentance”, as the Invitation puts it; but unless the goal is a richer, more joy-filled celebration of Easter, it will not be particularly important for our shared Christian life.

It is similar to how Paul teaches us that we can do good works in the world, and they will be good, but for them to be part of the Lord’s work, we must do these things with love. Similarly, you can improve yourself, gain valuable perspective about what’s important, but it is vital that that perspective be grounded in the story of God’s loving work in the world and in our lives.

Lent is for Easter. Lent is for Easter the way cleaning your home is for hospitality. You might clean your home for yourself. That’s good. You might clean your home because it’s therapeutic to do so, or you get good exercise doing it. That’s good too. But the best reason to clean your home is connected to our tradition all the way from Sarah and Abraham hosting their holy visitors to Peter and Paul figuring out how to break bread with non-Jewish followers of Christ. The best reason to clean your home is hospitality.

If cleaning is for hospitality the way Lent is for Easter, let’s think about whom you’re looking forward to hosting. You are hosting Christ. Now, let’s be clear. God is with you, and in you, no matter what, whether you are preparing yourself for that or not. So really, what your hosting is your own admission that you are made in the image of God, and are called to follow Christ, and let the light of Christ shine through you, in your actions, and in your prayers. So in a way, you are cleaning, preparing, to better, more fully, more purely, host the Christ-light within you.

And the cleaning to be done — it’s all the stuff inside of us that obscures our relationship with God. That’s why Lent focuses so much on admission of sins. Our sins obscure, distract from, our loving relationship with God. We are not good hosts to the Christ-light within if we do not address our sins.

But remember: Lent is for Easter. When we pay attention to our sins, including during Lent, the point is not that we are sinful, but that God is merciful and forgiving. At the same time, mercy and forgiveness only lead to restored relationship when the person who has sinned owns up to that. God is merciful, but we have our part to play too. The wonder and the gift of free will is that just as we are free to sin, we are also responsible for using our faculties for introspection, telling the truth about ourselves and our failings, and admitting when we need help from God to restore our relationships. Our freedom comes with responsibility. Cleaning is for hospitality. Freedom is for the restoration of right relationships. Lent is for Easter.

Back to cleaning. If Lent is for Easter, and cleaning is for hospitality, the cleaning should be done with the forthcoming joyful gathering in mind. This is one way to hear Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel. He says, “…whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting… But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face…” In other words, let not your fast be for itself, for show either for yourself or others. Let your Lenten fast be the cleaning, the preparation, for feasting, for hospitality, for resurrection.

Jesus says, “…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” If your treasure is being proud of your self-punishment for your sins, then your heart is not in repentance, but in pride. If your treasure is in despair because of your wretchedness before God, then your heart is in nihilism, not in the Christian faith in a merciful and loving God.

Shortly we will be invited to receive a mark of ashes. The words said during this are: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” To be dust is nothing shameful. As we hear in Genesis, “…God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.” God made the Earth, the dust, and it was good.

When we say, “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” yes, you can reasonably hear a message about your mortality. That might be a useful thought to ponder in the work of Lenten cleaning in preparation for Easter feasting. That’s good. But I hope you might hear another message too, something like this: Remember that you are part of God’s good creation, that you belong to God, that you are utterly dependent on God and God’s mercy, and that in the end, one way or another, you will return to your true self in God. Remember that “in the beginning was the Word… and without him not one thing came into being.” You only exist because Christ was in the beginning, was with God, and was God. To Christ you belong, and to Christ’s loving embrace you shall return.

In this context, then, the work of Lent is to cast off all that keeps you back from the love of Christ. This can be hard work. This can be deeply personal, and sometimes lonely work. But one of the many beauties of Lent is that the Church has set aside this time for all of us to do this work. So if during Lent you are feeling weighed down by the work, please reach out. And if you ever wonder if anyone else could possibly be as sinful as you, we only need to look to Scripture to find people who sin greatly, and to find how merciful and loving God nonetheless is, when true repentance and restoration of relationship is sought. Just think of Paul, our patron, for instance.

As always, but especially during Lent, I recommend to you the Rite of Reconciliation, found in the Book of Common Prayer, starting on page 446. Please feel free to reach out to Fr. Stephen or myself about this. If a BCP rite seems a bit much for the work you have in mind, we are available to meet with you more informally.

Remember, you are not alone. Today’s liturgy, and throughout Lent, it may sometimes seem that we are each only on own in our work. It is true that we each need to take personal responsibility for our own sins. But so much of the work of reconciliation is a communal matter. In fact, in the Rite of Reconciliation, the priest is acting on behalf of the community, and best reconciliation is that which restores our common relationship as the Body of Christ. Yes, today is about you and God, but it is also, importantly, about us and God, and us and each other.

You are for God. We are for each other, in Christ. Lent is for Easter.

"Save also the Egyptians"

Preached on the Last Sunday after Epiphany (Year C), March 2, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Exodus 34:29-35
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36
Psalm 99

Transfiguration, by Alexandr Ivanov

On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president of the United States. It was a bright cold day in Washington, D.C., with a promising blue sky stretching to eternity. My uncle Ray was there. He was thirty years old, a newspaper reporter from southwest Minnesota who made his way to the nation’s Capital to report the story. He wore overshoes and stood in the snow and cold.

Uncle Ray wrote about the experience, years later. “Golly, it was good,” he recalled. He was thrilled to be there to see the young president, but he also appreciated the old poet: Robert Frost was there, and had composed a new poem for the occasion. My uncle sensed among the excited crowd the feeling that all was well, that the bright future beckoned. Young President Kennedy represented so much. He wore no hat on his head, and his vigorous youth shone bright. He was eleven years younger than I am now.

I love my uncle, and I would love to have been there myself. I admit I am fond of mountaintop civic moments. Maybe in this cynical age you would say I’m a sucker for them. In the mountaintop story we hear today, Saint Peter comes in for criticism as a sucker like me, and once again I can relate to that flawed but enthusiastic disciple. Let’s build booths, Peter says, or tents, to house and contain this mountaintop moment. But as we heard, he did not know what he was saying.

The moment passes, and as we move down the mountain, even the memory is diminished by what happens next. Saving my uncle’s take on a notable historical event – I believe him: golly, I’m sure it was good – JFK’s inauguration hasn’t aged that well. Robert Frost, blinded by the blazing winter sun, wasn’t able to read the poem he composed for the occasion, so he recited from memory another of his poems, called “The Gift Outright.” Frost was a good poet, but “The Gift Outright” is not a good poem. It is an ode to Manifest Destiny, that long discredited, toxic idea that, on this continent, white people from northern Europe matter most. 

And of course the young president would come to grief, and leave his nation with the wretched, wrenching legacy of a misbegotten war in southeast Asia. Even my uncle, so full of hope that bright noonday, would face the hard realities of life down the mountain. He went on to be an accomplished, even celebrated newspaper editor, but like many of us he struggled in a changing industry that became increasingly hostile to older workers, to elders who remember the mountaintops of the past.

The nation had a lot to celebrate in 1961, even though we were still in the early years of the civil rights movement, and still had not embroiled ourselves in Vietnam. But now, in these early decades of the next century, we do not celebrate on mountaintops. We occasionally get up there! But celebration is not our mood. Our most remarkable recent mountaintop moment was the day last summer when a presidential candidate was transfigured in glory not by a celebration of his – or our – accomplishments, but by an assassination attempt. The candidate memorably stood up after the bullet grazed his ear, and with blood streaking his face, he shouted “Fight! Fight!”. That transfiguration on that mountain was an iconic image not of glory or virtue, but of belligerent defiance.

And perhaps some of us believe that that is just as it should be. I doubt many in this room share that person’s opinions about what should stir us to battle, but I expect some of us are eager to join a battle nonetheless. We want to fight for the rights and the dignity of immigrants. We want to shout “Fight!” on behalf of children in need of vaccinations, and for trans persons. We want to ride to war – figuratively, at the very least – for the people of Ukraine, for the people of Gaza, for the people employed by our government who receive strange emails written by the jackboots of an eccentric billionaire, emails that threaten their livelihoods.

We have lost an ancient binary, an old trope: as people of faith, we no longer contemplate the serene, glorious, sometimes terrifying mountain of transfiguration that rises majestically above the messy, war-torn, workaday valley of human life. Our species has always climbed mountains, literal mountains, in our spiritual life. The mountain entices us, and intimidates us. We find God there. We encounter God there. But now, we seem to have brought our messy, war-torn, workaday troubles all the way up the mountain. Today, even visions of transfiguration are not much more than defiant images of discord and rage.

With all of this grim reality in mind, we now clamber up Mount Tabor once again. Mount Tabor is the mountain of Transfiguration, the high hill in the Galilee region that our forebears in faith remember as the mountain where Jesus was transfigured in glory. The first Christians to hear this story would have instantly caught the historical reference: Mount Tabor is the site of a victorious battle fought by the Israelites against the Canaanites, led by the judge Deborah and the military general Barak. If Jesus is being transfigured on this mountain, well, that is auspicious. No wonder Peter wanted to capture the moment, to stay in the light, to stand with my uncle on a cold, bright morning and witness a glorious historical event. 

But no. That’s not what happens to Jesus and his followers on Mount Tabor, a mountain that has known war. Jesus is joined by Moses and Elijah, personifications of the Law and the Prophets. They become a dazzling triptych: you could imagine them gleaming like a three-panel gold-painted icon. But they do not simply stand there and shine. They do not inspire Peter in his later years to say, “Golly, it was good.”

They talk about death. Specifically, they talk about the death of Jesus. Luke the evangelist says that they speak of the exodus of Jesus, translated for us as ‘departure.’ Jesus is about to go down the mountain and make his long journey to Jerusalem, where he will be arrested, tortured, and executed. He will then rise to life, and in his rising – even if it takes the length of human history – in his rising, the powers of the world will be reversed; the poor will become rich; the lowly will be lifted up. But none of this will happen before the suffering, before the trial, before the death.

Jesus does not stand on the mountain and shout, “Fight! Fight!” Nor does he stand on the mountain and celebrate his own glory, smiling broadly as an old poet stirs our hearts with inspired (if problematic) poetic verse. Jesus speaks of exodus.

And so we also, in turn, should speak of exodus, of the Exodus, the liberation of our enslaved Israelite forebears in faith. We will speak of this very Exodus in just seven more weeks, on the other side of Lent, in the early hours of Easter morning. On that mountaintop morning seven weeks hence, we will gather in this room, in the dark, huddled around a candle shining with the light of Christ, the light that shines in darkness, the light that has shined no matter how awfully the world has roiled around it. Mount Tabor gazes across the war-torn valley at the mountain of Calvary, where there is a garden, and a tomb, and an exodus.

This is the Exodus we will proclaim on Easter morning:

As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, 'Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians'? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness." But Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still."

“The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”

That is a shard of Good News, just that sentence, that small portion of the Exodus. “You have only to keep still.” We need not frantically try to capture a fleeting moment of hope, building tabernacles to turn a wondrous experience into a museum. We need not throw up our hands in despair, either, at all that devastates and daunts us in this terrible age. And we need not rise up in belligerent defiance, yelling, “Fight! Fight!”.

Rabbi Sharon Brous offers a better way. Rabbi Brous is the founder of Ikar, a Los Angeles synagogue advocating for Palestinians and Israelis alike, for Jews across the diaspora, and for all people who seek justice and peace. She describes four problematic responses to the Exodus, to the crisis the Israelites faced at the Red Sea, to the crisis faced by anyone who stands on a war-torn mountain in a troubled time. Sharing the wisdom of her tradition, Rabbi Brous encourages us to avoid four problematic responses: do not flee from the challenge; do not capitulate to the enemy and collaborate with evil; do not return violence for violence; and do not simply roll up into a ball of anxiety, like a snail. Don’t run away; don’t capitulate; don’t respond in kind; and do not “snail.” This wisdom teaches us instead to do what we know how to do in these hard times. 

Standing on the mountain of Transfiguration with Jesus, speaking about the Exodus, we resolve to do what we know how to do. We challenge our companion Peter with empathy, understanding that to build a tent for Jesus is just a way to stay put, to stay powerless, to snail. We clasp his hand and, together, we keep still as the Lord fights for us. Sometimes the Lord fights for us by working through us, by lifting our own arms, and minds, and hearts, in courageous engagement with the world. Other times, the Lord fights for us while we stay at our posts, helping where we can, staying informed, staying alert. And still other times, we rest while we fret, we breathe, we hydrate, we wait.

Golly, it’s not good. But I assure you that we have all we need, and we have one another, during these fearful days. And I invite you to pray with me a poem composed not by Robert Frost, but by Gail Ramshaw, a Lutheran master of liturgical prayer. Here is Gail’s prayer, a prayer for Easter Vigil, a prayer for all who speak of the Exodus:

O merciful God,

Save all whom oppression drowns. Wash away injustice. With Miriam we sing to the majestic beauty of your baptismal waters. O merciful God, we implore you: This time, save also the Egyptians, in your mercy wider and deeper than all the oceans of the earth.