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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

________________________

Resource:

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

“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.

Come closer to me

Preached on the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany (Year C), February 23, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Luke 6:27-38

Joseph Embracing Benjamin, by Yoram Raanan

Then Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me."

In that sentence can be found all the wisdom of God.

Let’s begin with the brothers. Joseph’s brothers aren’t just scared. They are terrified. They are in a life-and-death crisis. Their aging father is anguished, and may die in despair because of something they did. Their people are enduring a famine. They have just found out that someone who holds their lives in his hands is the same person they sold into slavery, and nearly murdered. He could easily have them executed. But —

Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me."

In that sentence can be found all the wisdom of God.

Now let’s reflect on Joseph. Joseph isn’t just someone who has been harmed. His brothers brought him to the brink of death. Can any of us imagine having several siblings who reject us so badly that we lose our freedom, our home, our extended family, our future? This is a massive rejection, and a massive act of violence. Their crime robbed Joseph of his identity, of his humanity. And now these terrified scoundrels are utterly, desperately at his mercy. 

If you were in Joseph’s position, what would you do? What would I do? Can we answer these questions honestly? 

Jacob’s whole family is struggling to recover from an immense act of wrongdoing. To destroy a human life — even if you finally fail in the attempt — is a crime against humanity, but also a crime against nature. It is an act of un-creation, an act of world destruction. If something is unforgivable, surely it would be something like this. And how this family recovers — how they choose to proceed — will not only shape their own future. Their choices will shape the historical identity of their people. Their choices form us today.

And Joseph, looking at his brothers, appreciating their vulnerability and their panic, but also remembering the dreadful injury they inflicted on him all those years ago — Joseph makes this great and terrible choice:

Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me."

Come closer, but not to be violently cast out of this life-saving place. Come closer, but not to be scolded, incarcerated, even summarily executed for what you have done, even though that is what you deserve. Come closer for reconciliation.

Do we do this? Do we really do this? Let’s be honest. Real talk: we rarely practice such forgiveness here, forgiveness the way our patriarch Joseph models it, forgiveness the way Jesus teaches it. If we did, we would know about it. We would talk about it. We would speak of little else. If we practiced forgiveness of this kind, our community on this urban street corner would be in the news. We would draw attention to ourselves. (Attention cuts both ways, of course: Jesus practiced forgiveness like this, and look what the authorities did to him.)

Now, I feel genuine awe when I reflect on all that is going on here at this parish. I really do. What we are doing here is truly awesome. Not “Oh wow these french fries are awesome!” No, truly awesome: I am startled, I am awestruck, I am gobsmacked by the many wondrous things going on here. 

But I sense that the forgiveness Joseph models, the forgiveness Jesus describes, may still elude our understanding, and our practice.

I sometimes imagine us creating a “School of Reconciliation,” a center of action and contemplation that takes up the topic of forgiveness as the ultimate, divine, world-saving act that it is. Would you like to design a center for forgiveness?

True forgiveness, I mean. Not cheap forgiveness, which denies that the wrongdoing was as bad as all that, or worse, denies that it ever happened. None of the twelve brothers did this. How could they? The eleven were guilty as hell. They all knew this. Their terror was quite rational. If Joseph just blew it off, if he said “Hey y’all, bygones, it’s all good,” that would not soothe their quaking hearts. Joseph would still retain immense power over them, the power of the wronged against the wrongdoers. And they would retain immense power over him, the power of the wrongdoers against the wronged. They would not be reconciled. Any peace they broker with cheap forgiveness would be Kleenex-deep. No. That won’t work.

At our School of Reconciliation, we would study the harder path. The severely harder path. Let’s begin with Joseph. For Joseph to forgive his brothers, he needs to fully acknowledge to himself, and consciously claim, the truth of his trauma. And we find in this story that Joseph does just that: He weeps several times in the story, and each time his weeping is more intense.

At our School of Reconciliation, we would then consider what Joseph needs from his brothers before offering them forgiveness. First, Joseph needs to know whether his brothers are ready and able to reconcile, ready and able to hold themselves accountable for what they have done. In the closing chapters of the book of Genesis, he tests their honor by cleverly setting them up for failure in an intriguing sequence of interactions. This little novella about the brothers reads like an ancient comedy, ‘comedy’ in its deepest meaning: a story with a happy ending, but a happy ending that is hard-won, like Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Joseph frames his brothers for theft, and forces them to return home and retrieve the youngest brother, Benjamin. If they truly have reformed, then they will handle these challenges honorably, honestly, bravely. They will prove that they have changed their ways since nearly murdering him, that they have grown morally and ethically. To Joseph’s immense relief, they pass the tests, largely because the brother Judah brings his best self to the crisis, and guides them all to do the right thing.

And finally, at our School of Reconciliation, we would consider the event of the reconciliation itself: What gifts and strengths do the twelve brothers bring to the encounter? What can we learn from them to guide us in our own spiritual, reconciling work? What did Joseph have to give up, let go of, release into the universe, to prepare himself to forgive? And what did the eleven wrongdoers have to give up, let go of, release into the universe, to make themselves both worthy and ready for Joseph’s forgiveness?

Can we even imagine the pain, the struggle, the wrenching, self-mortifying work they all had to do, to achieve genuine reconciliation? Joseph has to give up the safety he enjoys as a wronged person who refuses to forgive. The brothers have to hold themselves accountable, and give up the safety of wrongdoers who do not face squarely what they have done.

So… I wonder again whether we really do this ourselves. And I sense again that if we do, we do not do it all that often. I can count on one hand the times I have done even part of this reconciliation work, both as one who has done wrong, and as one to whom wrong has been done. Just a half handful of times. And this is what I have identified as the one thing that makes me a priest! Reconciliation is my watchword; it is my jam; it is my deepest desire. Reconciliation is the one thing that gives ultimate meaning to my life. I have sat still in a chair while artists pierced my arms painfully to permanently tattoo my body with stories of reconciliation. This, just this, is what I want most.

Yet I’ve done it only a half handful of times, and I believe my story is commonplace. Forgiveness is profoundly complicated. People feel genuine, well-founded fears about it. We do not want to excuse bad behavior. We do not want to deny, to paper over, what happened. Cheap forgiveness truly is an atrocity — an atrocious act of injustice.

It was complicated, therefore, when people offered forgiveness to a white man who attended a bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, one evening in June 2015. He participated in the bible study, then stood up and opened fire, killing nine people. He was not sorry; he remains not sorry. He may simply have chosen to participate in great evil, or he may suffer from mental illness that has gravely damaged his humanity, and makes it impossible for him to participate in reconciliation.

But some of the family members of the victims offered their forgiveness nonetheless. Even while the shooter defiantly held to his evil beliefs, this is what these family members did:

The families of the victims at Mother Emanuel AME Church said to the shooter, "Come closer to us."

In that sentence can be found all the wisdom of God. But are we so sure about that? The civil rights activist Millicent Brown said that this act of quick forgiveness, this rush to rise above and respond to an act of evil by seeking pardon for the perpetrator — this is not necessarily an uncomplicated, awesome good deed. “We are the result of — and, in some ways, still operate like — a plantation,” Millicent Brown said, voicing a concern that black folks in that community are problematically eager to reassure their white neighbors that they are not a threat. At one of the funerals, AME Bishop John Bryant spoke movingly about love defeating hatred, and declared that “[the shooter] wanted to start a race war, but he came to the wrong place.” But Millicent Brown made a strong counterpoint. “Anger at this kind of mayhem is a normal and natural reaction. I am extremely resentful of what is going on in our community,” she said. 

This is wrenching, hard work. Most everyone here has been wronged. You have been injured. You know how hard it will be, how much faith you will need, how much power from God you must receive, to even begin this work, to even begin to discern whether the forgiveness you are contemplating will lead to justice, or outrageously minimize or even excuse wrongdoing.

And most everyone here is guilty of something. You have hurt someone. You know how hard it will be, how much faith you will need, how much power from God you must receive, to even begin this work, to even begin to discern whether you truly seek reconciliation, or you just want to get off the hook.

Often, often, one or the other person — or community — will be unwilling or unable to do this reconciliation work, no matter which side they’re on, whether they are one of the eleven wrongdoers, or the injured Joseph. And it’s usually hard to tell whether a person or community’s motives are pure. (Or it’s easy to tell that they aren’t.) Sometimes God simply helps us to survive trauma, even when reconciliation is not — or should not be — part of the story.

But we Christians can get better at all of this, with God’s help. And we heard some encouraging Good News today. We heard that as complicated as all of this is, God is present and powerful in these complicated, even dreadful encounters, and that some encounters will lead to just and redemptive reconciliation. Here are two life-saving, world-changing, awesome, resurrecting sentences we hear from Holy Scripture on this glad morning:

Then Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me."

And they came closer.

The article quoting Millicent Brown: https://www.npr.org/2015/07/02/419405863/charlestons-black-leaders-want-justice-as-much-as-forgiveness.

Blessed are you when people hate you

Preached on the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany (Year C), February 16, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Luke 6:17-26

Jesus preaching, by Jose Trujillo

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

Just once in my life, I would like to leap for joy. Even when I can no longer physically leap; even if the “leap” I am talking about is in my mind or my heart, I would love to leap for joy.

Have you ever done this? Really: have you ever, for any reason, literally or figuratively, leapt for joy? Well, maybe I did leap literally for joy when I was a small child. Maybe jumping on a trampoline, or jumping on the bed, counts as leaping for joy. That was great fun, but the last time I had access to a trampoline, I declined the invitation to jump. Two kids were preparing for baptism and I was over at their house, chatting with their mother in the kitchen. The kids were jumping impossibly on that trampoline, terrifying me with astonishing, gravity-defying moves. I thought they would surely crack open their heads if they put one foot even a little bit wrong. But I didn’t begrudge them their joyful leaping, even as I cowered in the kitchen. We need all the joy we can get, we humans. We collectively seem determined to destroy all the joy that erupts on the face of this old earth. Let the kids leap.

But we are all invited to leap for joy, not just the kids. It’s ironic that I took a pass on joy-leaping when I made a pastoral visit to that family: the kids were getting ready for Baptism, and in Baptism we are particularly, expressly invited to leap for joy. What a dunce I was, passing up a literal opportunity!

And speaking of kids, John the Baptizer leaps for joy inside Elizabeth’s womb. Luke the evangelist uses the same Greek verb for “leap” when telling us this prenatal story. Elizabeth cries out joyfully (in my reading, she squeals) when she hears her pregnant younger cousin Mary calling at her doorstep. Elizabeth squeals to Mary, “For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb jumped on a trampoline for joy!”

Luke is making a conscious allusion here. The leaping baby foreshadows the leaping martyrs Jesus blesses in today’s Lukan Beatitudes, the leaping members of the Jesus Movement who can hardly contain themselves. They are fit to burst with the thrilling news that… that… they are being “hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed.”

Okay, stop. Let’s go back and hear that again. Baby John the Baptizer leaps with joy at the news of his younger cousin, who is the One, the Anointed One, the One who was promised, the One who will liberate the people, bring down the mighty and lift up the lowly, devastate the stock price of Tesla and restore USAID for the hungry. Okay, I’m with them so far. Of course, both John and Jesus will be executed, and that doesn’t sound like something that would get me leaping, but sure, I see the joy in their mission, the joy in their eschatological (end of the world, fulfillment of all things) mission.

But then the martyrs get up on baby John the Baptizer’s trampoline, as it were, and join in the wild, joyous leaping. The martyrs. They were the first to hear the Good News: the first followers who were being persecuted, hunted, dragged into circuses to be devoured, nailed to crosses, beheaded by swords, hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed. “Rejoice on that day and leap for joy,” Jesus tells them. “Just like my cousin when he learned I was coming.”

We had better unpack this.

Jesus says the martyrs (and we!) will leap for joy while being “hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed” because, he says, “surely your reward is great in heaven.” (‘Heaven’… I’ll unpack heaven in a moment, too.) Our reward is great in heaven, and, says Jesus, we will leap for joy when they hate us, “for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.”

So it works like this: when we stand up for our faith; when we step forward and speak the truth; when we do what we can, where we can, in a calamitous time, no matter the consequences for us; we will take our honored places alongside the prophets who went before us. We are like Isaiah and Jeremiah, like Elijah and Nathan and Jonah and Micah. We are also like Miriam and Anna, like Moses and Simeon, like all who stood up and stood out, come what may, and said what needed to be said, and did what needed to be done. And the people who come back at us, the people who hate, exclude, revile, and defame us — they’re just like the people who raged against the prophets. This has all happened in ages past. It will happen again long after we are gone. We are leaping for joy because we are in the mighty company of the prophets. Hooray…?

I have to think about that for a while, but when I do, I can begin to see it, to understand it. There is something stirring and encouraging about joining a mighty band of prophets, an army of scholars and teachers and poets, a regiment of protesters and sanctuary providers, a squadron of singers and artists and cooks and social workers and healers and sages. Yes. That can feel good. We’re like the happy Torah followers in Psalm 1, delighting in the law of the Lord like trees planted by streams of water.

And again, don’t forget, we should leap for joy while being persecuted because our “reward is great in heaven.” Now, this may not mean exactly what you think it means. It doesn’t mean that it’s fine if we suffer now because later, after death, we will find ourselves in the Good Place, in a blissful amusement park above the clouds where we will enjoy an endless vacation together. “Heaven” isn’t that.

Heaven is the renewed community of faith on earth. Heaven is the Body of Christ flourishing right here. Heaven is allies working to liberate the oppressed, right now. While we Christians do proclaim the great news of eternal rest in the embrace of God — in our burial rite, we say faithfully that our beloved dead have gone where there is no sorrow, nor crying — while we do proclaim that, we also proclaim the Good News of heaven on earth, heaven right here.

But I suspect not many of us feel all that much like leaping for joy today, even though some things really are joyfully prophetic here, if you look carefully. We have about a half dozen people interested in Baptism or Confirmation in the next few months. We have teenage members who provoke and evangelize us with their insights, their challenges, their sorrows and their joys. We have toddlers leaping for joy in our baptismal font, showering us with the gladness of their very existence. We have elders deep in contemplation, faith leaders saying Yes to the mission, artisans and carpenters renewing our mission base, pastoral caregivers rescuing people from loneliness, deacons pulling our wagons, neighbors quietly stocking our pantry. If we installed a trampoline here, a few willing souls might jump up and leap for joy.

But it’s rough out there, and rough in here, too. “The world is falling down,” one of my friends said last week. When I talked with her about some recent personal struggles, she reflected that almost nobody is at their best these days.

Meanwhile, I found myself in an emergency room last Saturday, mainly because I’ve been over-functioning and under-hydrating, and forgot that I am finite, that my body is vulnerable, that I am not all that essential. “Our bodies don’t work all that well,” a doctor said to me at my follow-up visit. (He seemed to be in a rueful mood, which is understandable enough for a healthcare worker.) And so I have rested and hydrated over the past few days. None of us is too important to rest, and we are all exhausted. Leaping for joy sounds like a lot of effort, and it doesn’t match the mood. Read the room, Jesus.

And yet I pray that you can leap for joy, as bone-tired and anxious as you may be. I hope you can join us in all the great and lovely things happening here, and I particularly hope you can join us in discerning our role as companions of all the residents of our city, regardless of their documentation or status. We are a church, after all. We are called to welcome the stranger in our town, for we were once strangers in the land of oppression. The Episcopal Church has joined a religious-freedoms lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement in churches. We can do our part as advocates for those in peril.

Our member John Hill recently shared a reflection by Anne Lamott, a Christian prophet of our time. Here are some of her words:

[Many of us] see the future as a desert of harshness. The new land looks inhospitable. But if we stay alert, we’ll notice that the stark desert is dotted with growing things. In the pitiless heat and scarcity, we also see shrubs and conviction. 

She continues:

“Give me those far away in the desert,” Saint Augustine said, “who are thirsty and sigh for the spring of the eternal country.” I can tell you this: The resistance will be peaceful, nonviolent, colorful, multigenerational — we older people will march with you, no matter our sore feet and creaky joints. There will be beautiful old music. There will also be the usual haranguing through terrible sound systems, but oh well. Until then, this will be my fight song: left foot, right foot, breathe. [Left foot, right foot, breathe.] Help the poor however you can, plant bulbs right now in the cold rocky soil, and rest.

I can’t speak for you, but our confident, resilient march through the desert, holding on to each other, helping each other, doing what we can and doing what we know how to do… this march through the desert may — maybe not today but someday soon — it may inspire me to climb onto a trampoline and leap for joy.

God doesn't have time for that

5pm homily given the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 9 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Phelps Jones.

Isaiah 6:19-13
Luke 5:1-11
Psalm 138

I don’t know if I should be up here. I mean I’m pretty sure this is the service when I’m scheduled to give a sermon, and I’m reading off the page right now. But like Isaiah, I am unclean, I am sinful. It is an honor to be up here, but is it an honor I deserve? 

When God appeared enthroned, towering over Isaiah, when Simon Peter fell to Christ's knees, both Isaiah and Peter proclaim their inadequacy. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” - “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man”. Who hasn't felt the same? 

Well God doesn't have time for that. God set Isaiah on a mission, God set Peter on a mission, and Christ appeared on the road to Damascus to our patron Paul because it was time for Paul to get with the program. 

“Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do” Acts 9:6 

Get with the program Paul. 

Like Isaiah and Peter and Paul, you may feel unworthy of God's grace. You may feel afraid, God’s majesty is terrific, terrifying - awesome, awful. To feel unworthy may be the only reaction that can be expected when coming face-to-face with the almighty. 

God has a mission for each of us, each of you. It is understandable if you feel unworthy when confronted with God's mission. Well sorry, but today’s readings teach us that God does not have time for that. God cleansed Isaiah's lips with a hot coal because God cuts to the chase. Christ appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus because God cuts to the chase.

Christ doesn't respond to Peter's supplications, instead he cuts to the chase: now you’re catching people. 

“Get up and go” 

This is the first sermon I have had the privilege of delivering, but is not the first step in the mission God has given me. 

When Father Stephen first asked if I would serve in the altar party, I demurred. I told him that I didn't think I had earned it yet. That I didn't think that I had established myself as a member of the St. Paul's community yet. That, like Isaiah and Peter, I didn't think I was worthy. 

Our God is a God of forgiveness, we saw that in each of today's readings. He forgives out of his unending love, but you have to accept his forgiveness. You have to get up off your knees, cease your supplications, gird your loins, and accept God’s forgiveness because God has a mission for you. 

So am I worthy to stand here? Am I worthy to serve as crucifer? – I don’t know! But here I am. God called me to a mission which has brought me before you now, a mission which stretches out before me. 

That call, like the Lord, is awful. For Simon Peter, God’s mission ultimately led to his martyrdom in Rome (something here about how he still felt unworthy?). The Saint Jerome writes of Peter's death: 

“At [Nero’s] hands he (Simon Peter) received the crown of martyrdom being nailed to the cross with his head towards the ground and his feet raised on high, asserting that he was unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord.”

Unworthy to the end, at least he thought so.

Here we are, sinners, living among a nation of sinners, a new Babylon of a scale beyond all comprehension. Like Isaiah, like Peter, we feel unworthy when confronted with God’s mission. Well, sorry, God does not have time for that. 

Like it or not, you have been forgiven. Stretching out his arms on the cross, Christ gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. It doesn’t really matter what you think. You can follow Peter and prostrate yourself saying “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man”, but Christ did not go away, Christ WILL not go away. As Peter received the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, you are a child of God, and an heir to his Kingdom. 

Isaiah's sin was blotted out when his lips were touched by a glowing coal. In a few moments you will be invited to partake in holy communion. Your lips will be touched not by a glowing coal, but by the precious body of our lord. 

So when you hear the Lord saying “whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” what will you say?

Say Yes to Jesus

Preached on the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 9 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.

Isaiah 6:19-13
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11
Psalm 138

Plaque with the Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew, ca. 1160-80

Things are off balance, not all right. There is a feeling in the air of there not being enough. Whether it’s time, or space, or food, it’s not enough.

I could be referring to our world today. There is a haunted quality to many of my interactions with people today. But in fact I am referring mostly to the Gospel of Luke, right where we find ourselves this morning.

Today’s Gospel is Luke’s version of the call of Peter, and James and John. This episode follows several vignettes, all of which have this in common: a pervading sense of uncomfortability.

The first three chapters of Luke all set up Jesus’ ministry. We have the Nativity, the Presentation (last week), Jesus in the Temple as a twelve-year old, and the ministry of John the Baptist.

The ministry of Jesus begins properly in chapter four, and it’s trouble right away, and all the way down the line through to today’s Gospel. In Chapter four, Jesus is tested in the wilderness, then he goes to his hometown of Nazareth, and they become so angry with him that they try to kill him.

Then for a little while things might be looking up. He does some healing and word spreads. But, he directs people to not speak of these things, and what do they do - they talk about it, and soon many people know about it. At the very end of chapter 4, right before today’s passage, he has gone to a deserted place to be alone, but the crowds found him, and then “they wanted to prevent him from leaving them.”

Think about that for a moment. The people need Jesus so much they try to, essentially, keep him prisoner. There is such a need in the people to have Jesus with them, to possess Jesus. He’s just started his ministry, and already there is a feeling in the air that there is not enough of him. He is a miracle-worker. He exorcises demons, he heals sickness, he saves lives, and it’s not enough. The need for his healing is overwhelming.

But here is his response, in the last verses of chapter four: “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose.” He is telling them that he is not going to be able to stay and fix everything, at least not in the way they want. His physical presence in the world is going to feel, for some of these people, not enough, because he has to proclaim the good news in other places.

In the meantime, we now find ourselves at the lakeshore. As usual, there is not enough Jesus to go around. “The crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God.” The crowd is so needy, that he is forced to go into the water. Not enough space. Jesus gets into Simon’s boat.

It is here that the story takes a curious turn. Jesus has a response to there not being enough space, enough time, enough of him. He doesn’t address these things directly, but as he very often does, he addresses something parallel, or from another point of view. There is another scarcity at play here, and that is the fish. Simon reports that he and his coworkers “have worked all night but have caught nothing.” There is not enough fish.

Yet again in these first chapters of the ministry of Jesus there is not enough of something. Something’s gotta give.

Jesus’ response is to send Simon out to fish again. Simon patiently explains that there aren’t enough fish, but then he does what Jesus asks, and suddenly there are not only enough fish, but much more than enough fish. In fact there are so many fish, that the scarcity transfers. The scarcity transfers from there not being enough fish to there being not enough space in the boats or the nets. “They caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.” “And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.”

Perhaps you are like me and you are used to hearing this about the boats sinking and the nets breaking simply as colorful ways to convey plenty, and miracle. You might think that Simon’s best response in this moment is joy, and gratitude.

But I invite you this morning to consider with me how stressful this could have been. These boats and nets are precious, expensive things. They take many hundreds of hours to make, and many hundreds more to maintain. Without the boats or the nets these folks have no livelihood, and the community loses some of its source of food. It would be very bad for any of the boats to sink, or the nets to break.

Jesus’ involvement in Simon’s life here has created something of a crisis. Jesus has revealed overwhelming blessing, but Simon’s life, in the form of the boats and nets, isn’t set up to receive that blessing. Perhaps it is understandable, then, that Simon’s response to Jesus in this moment is not so much joy and gratitude as a plea for Jesus to create some distance. Suddenly there isn’t quite enough room for Simon between him and Jesus. “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

We aren’t told exactly why Simon says this. But I think we can profitably consider some possibilities. Simon could just be hoping that Jesus takes himself, his crowds, even the too much fish, and leave, go off to some other neighborhood and leave Simon and his life in peace. Or, Simon could be thinking that Jesus being here is the best thing ever, but Simon is afraid that Jesus has mistaken Simon for a holy person, someone worthy of such amazing blessings from God. This could lead Simon to be afraid that Jesus will find out that Simon is not all that holy, at least not all the time, and then turn the blessings to curses, and that’s probably the last thing Simon needs in his life right now. So maybe it’s better just to drive Jesus away, lest Simon get his hopes up that things are really going to permanently change for the better.

Either way, we are in a scene of extremes. The crowds can’t get enough of Jesus, Jesus is running out of space. There aren’t fish. Then suddenly there is an amazing amount of fish. There is a kind of breathless quality to the story here. It’s just one thing after another.

This breathlessness, this experience of one extreme thing after another, reminds me of how I often feel nowadays. Maybe you do too sometimes. When can we get a break?

I think today’s Gospel gives those of us who might feel this way some good news. The good news is found in how Simon responds to Jesus. His response is threefold, and I think we are called to follow Simon’s example here.

First, say yes to Jesus. Say yes. Jesus tells Simon to fish. Simon has already fished, all night, and caught nothing. But Jesus tells Simon to fish anyway. Simon’s response should be our response. Yes. Yes, Lord, I will do the thing you ask of me, even if I feel like I’ve already done it, or it feels silly, or maybe I’m afraid people will think less of me because I’m doing something the world considers foolish.

In Simon’s world, just as in ours, there can be very serious consequences to looking foolish, to doing something upon which conventional wisdom frowns. Simon took a risk going out again in the water to fish. Simon took a risk when he said yes to Jesus. But he said yes. Be like Simon.

Second, be prepared to change your perspective about what is important, and especially, about what you think you need. The Gospel starts today with there not being enough space, or enough Jesus to go around. Jesus offers the crowd, and us, a chance to change our perspective about what we want, and what we need. What the crowd thinks they need is miracles, or someone to tell them what to do every minute of their lives. What Jesus knows they need is a change or heart, to realize that the true miracle of healing, available to all people, all of the time, is reconciliation with each other, and with God. In the midst of extreme need, Simon gets it right when he falls to his knees and recognizes that he needs reconciliation. Simon accepted a change in perspective about what is important, about what he needs. It was never about the fish. It’s not about enough space, or time, or even which town Jesus happens to be in at any given moment. This is because we are finite creatures, living in a vast, but essentially finite creation. We run out of time because we are mortal. We can run out of space because our bodies can only do so much.

But we always have more than enough of what we really need, which is the grace of God. This does not mean that the material things aren’t important. They are. Our bodies are important, this place we set aside for worship, the bread, the wine, the table, the baptismal water – all these things are important. But they aren’t everything, on their own. They are important to the extent that they reveal to us the grace of God. Whether there are not enough fish, or more than enough fish, either way, we are called to give thanks to God for fish, to enjoy the fish, or whatever aspect of the material world has our attention at the moment, and shift our perspective to center God in our consciousness. That is how we get to the point of there being enough. There is enough body and blood of Jesus at this table to include all of us in God’s feast.

Third, and this is the most important, and is required for the other two, practice a posture of humility. Only in humility can we perceive what Jesus asks of us, so that only in humility can we say yes to Jesus. Only in humility can we be ready to change our perspective about what’s important. Humility before God prepares us to see our lives less from our point of view, and more from God’s point of view.

When Simon falls to his knees, in humility, Jesus says to him, “Do not be afraid.” I know that we all long to hear Jesus say to us, “Do not be afraid.” There is much that is uncertain, and distressing, and extreme right now in our world. Who among us does not long to hear God say to us, “Do not be afraid”?

The good news is that God is saying that to us. God is always reaching out to draw us away from a place of fear. But if we are not hearing it, it’s not because God isn’t saying it. It’s because we are not really listening the way we are called to. If we are not hearing God, it’s probably because we have work to do on our humility, on our listening skills. Not to listen for what we want to hear, but for what God is actually saying, which may surprise us.

From our vantage point, we know the story of Simon who is later called Peter. Of course he’s going to follow Jesus. But put yourselves in his position at the lakeshore for a moment. He has fallen to his knees in humility. He knows himself to be sinful, he is ready to repent, to reconcile. It would be reasonable to expect Jesus to grant that reconciliation, and then go on his way. What Jesus does, is call Simon to a new way of life. Jesus doesn’t remove all extremes from Simon’s life, but he reframes Simon’s perspective, and shows the way forward to a life that centers on Jesus.

And that is the call for all of us. We are say yes to Jesus, we are to be ready to change our perspective, and we are called, in humility, to center our lives around Jesus. If we do these things, following Simon’s example, we are sure to hear in our hearts, clear as a bell, Jesus say to us, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

This catching people business is not about getting people into church. It might involve that (I hope it does!), but it’s not a numbers game. Catching people means catching each other up in the good news, the good news of the kingdom of God. It means catching people up in joy, catching people up in the love of God that shines through you when you practice humility before God and neighbor.

Yes, Simon left his boats and his nets and followed Jesus. In our time, your call might involve leaving one thing and doing another. But often enough it’s more subtle than that. Leaving boats and nets and following Jesus can mean leaving behind our self-centered perspectives about what’s important. It can mean leaving behind attachments that distract us from the work of love and reconciliation.

So, say yes to Jesus, especially if saying yes means changing your perspective. Practice humility, seek reconciliation, and look around and wonder, are their any boats or nets to which you are particularly attached, and around which you could loosen your grip?

If we can do these things, I trust that together we will hear Jesus say to us, “Do not be afraid”; from now on you will shine with the light of the Gospel.

The Presentation of Our Lord

Preached on the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, February 2 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Samuel Torvend.

Malachi 3:1-4
Psalm 84
Hebrews 2:14-18
Luke 2:22-40

Detail of Presentation in the Temple, by John August Swanson

Let me say it is an odd cast of characters who appear in this gospel reading. Joseph and Mary, says Luke, bring their infant to the Temple where they offer a pair of turtledoves and two pigeons as an acceptable sacrifice. Well, except for this: Luke does not mention that because of their poverty, Mary and Joseph could only afford the cheapest offering of four birds. And then there is Simeon, a man who, Luke wants us to know, is a righteous and devout person, an elderly man who takes the infant in his arms and sings a song of farewell as if he were preparing for his death: “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace.” And then there is Anna, an elderly widow who praises God for the child. Luke surprisingly calls her a prophet, a title in his world usually reserved for men. 

A poor couple with an infant, an old man and an old woman. Let me say: this is not how a blockbuster film begins. But, guess what? It is our story: the story of ordinary people doing what their religion invited them to do: to dedicate this firstborn child to God, only to discover that elderly Simeon sees in this child a light – a light – that will bring life, health, and wholeness to other children and the elderly, to women and men and those of ambiguous sexual identity, to Jews and Gentiles, to the devout and to notorious sinners, to those who are determined to keep traditions intact and those who are ready to throw them out, to the savvy and hip and to the gullible and old fashioned, to the citizen whose family has been in place for hundreds of years and to the immigrant who arrived two minutes ago. Simeon sees in this child a light that will bring life, health, and wholeness ... to you and to me and to the houseless soul on the street outside this church. 

The amazing thing about light is this: that it will shine wherever it can without regard for the status or reputation or calling of those upon whom it rests and warms and enlivens. Light is wildly promiscuous, enlightening anything and everyone it touches. As elderly Simeon holds the infant in his arms, he sings, “this child is light for the world” – a lyric I need to hear, perhaps you need to hear, now more than ever at this time in which the rhetoric of retribution and punishment, of scorn and intimidation appears to be the lyric sung at the highest levels of government in our nation. 

But, then, Luke would have us look at the law which governed the presentation of a child and its mother in the Temple. For that law asks that a lamb be offered as the pleasing sacrifice to God. And so Luke will suggest later in his gospel that this child is not only light but also lamb: a lamb who will be put to death and then raised by the power of God; a lamb who will become the center of worship in the heavenly city come down to our earth, the lamb who offers mercy and peace so we chant in the eucharistic liturgy. But, then, if you think for a moment about a lamb: well, it’s one of the weakest animals in God’s diverse creation. I mean, if you’re at all familiar with the liturgy of night prayer, of compline, you know that we hear this quotation from the first letter of Peter: “Be sober, be vigilant for your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” as if the lion symbolizes the forces in this world ready to tear apart and fragment rather than heal and unite. Honest to God, why, then, a lamb? 

The biblical scholar, Barbara Rossing, in her marvelous study of the Book of Revelation suggests that Christians, that you and I, are called to embrace what she calls “lamb power.” For lamb power is the alternative to the exercise of retribution and punishment. For the power of the lamb is that power which rejects violence and embraces active non-violence in order to bring about greater life, health, and wholeness. Consider, then, Susan B. Anthony and the thousands of women in white who peacefully demonstrated for suffrage, who were pelted with rotten tomatoes and feces yet galvanized generations of women to claim the right to vote. Consider Martin Luther King, Jr., and the thousands who joined him in peaceful resistance to the devil of segregation and Jim Crow, who were beaten and brutalized yet changed the sympathies of the nation. Consider Dorothy Day, mother of the Catholic Worker Movement, and the many who joined her in peaceful resistance to the incarceration of the houseless and the hungry, a movement that continues to house and feed thousands, offering them life, health, and wholeness. For you see, the power of the lamb is nothing less than non-violent action that nurtures respect for the God-given dignity of every human being, a power inspired by the words of the adult Jesus: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9).

You see, “lamb power” is that which calls into question and subverts the tendency within each of us to strike back when insulted, ignored, or harmed. And let me say, that tendency – to strike back – is not diminishing but rather growing in our culture. Indeed, in a recent study published by the American Medical Association, researchers discovered a sharp increase in violence, maiming, killing, and catastrophic death in movies produced since 2003, the year in which the government of this nation sanctioned the invasion Iraq. “Murderous verbs,” the report says, “murderous verbs” are now far more common in films that have nothing to do with crime or war. 

And so let me say how grateful I am for this space in which we can rehearse, again and again, the language of non-violence and compassion, this space that offers us the opportunity to practice that skill which no school, no corporation, and no government teaches: the practice of self-giving love, of sacrifice for the sake of others, which is nothing less than the practice of the lamb. 

Thus, in this soaring vaulted space, the prophet Anna is with us as we sing God’s praise and as we pray for the world and its suffering. And here, too, dear friends, is elderly Simeon, as we take into our hands the wounded yet risen Christ, the light of the world, in the forms of bread and wine. For you must know, I hope you know, that God does not need any offering from us. God does not need any sacrifice except this one: our love and our labor for the neighbor in need through which the light of Christ might shine brightly. 

Amen.

"Put your sword back into its sheath."

Preached on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (transferred), January 26, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Acts 26:9-21
Psalm 67
Galatians 1:11-24
Matthew 10:16-22

‘Peter and Paul’, by Carlo Crivelli.

“Put your sword back into its sheath.”

Jesus delivers this sharp reprimand in the Good News according to John, just after his arrest. He is in trouble — big trouble. Peter, in his anxiety, in his panic, had drawn his sword and cut off the ear of a slave. John the evangelist goes to the trouble of telling us the slave’s name: Malchus. The word ‘malchus’ finds its origin in the Hebrew root melech, which means ‘king’ or ‘ruler’. Put it all together: we are meant to understand that Peter, acting in desperation, is trying to slay the powers of this world. He is trying to win a human political battle. He is returning violence for violence.

No. “Put your sword back into its sheath,” Jesus says. We do not win that way. We do not even fight that way. We do not carry weapons on our mission.

This is a hard teaching. Who among us does not want to rise up and overcome the powers of this world? Isn’t that what resistance inherently is? These powers destroy human beings, they separate human families, they foment division and war, and they seem almost intentionally to be rendering the planet uninhabitable for the human race, and countless other living species. They seem to be un-creating the world. If we could only draw a sword and cut off the ear, as it were, of the ruler of this world! If only we could score a strong win, and do that for the good side.

But look again at what happens when Peter attempts this. He harms not the king, but a slave. He damages one of the least powerful people in the detachment of soldiers. If we respond to violence with violence, we only harm those who are most vulnerable, and they are not the ones causing all this destruction. The slave Malchus is every helpless refugee, every immigrant with a target on their back, every civil servant in government trying to make life a little bit better for their fellow citizens, every person along the gender spectrum whose identity has been judged either inferior or nonexistent. 

These innocents will suffer if we retaliate. And so, when the powers come for us or for those we love, when they attack, when they destroy, we must not respond in kind. Put your sword back into its sheath.

But it is vital that we understand what, then, we can do.

I want to discover what we can do by spending some time with one of the saints, one of the big ones, one who is deeply familiar to us. Given all we know from Jesus about the problem with swords, it is curious that much of the iconography of our patron saint, Paul of Tarsus, pictures him holding not an olive branch like Blessed Noah, not a lily like Saint Joseph, not a jar of ointment like Mary of Bethany: no, Paul is holding a sword. And that sword is clearly not in its sheath. Paul brandishes it, or at the very least holds it proudly.

But there is a straightforward explanation: Paul was killed by a sword; he was beheaded; and like all martyrs, he holds or stands near the instrument of his own death. St. Stephen sometimes has stones on his icon, aloft around his head. St. Lawrence holds a flaming grill. (Legend says when they grilled him, Lawrence taunted his executioners by saying, “You can turn me over, I’m done on this side.”) St. Lucy, in her icon, presents the viewer with two eyes on a plate, because legend says her eyes were gouged out. This seems like a strange (and more than a little grotesque) form of Christian heraldry. If we Christians had coats of arms, they would boast the instruments of violence that defeated us.

But I confess I don’t want to limit our imaginations when we reflect on the sword of Saint Paul. I don’t want to domesticate or neutralize his sword. Yes, he was a nonviolent apostle who willingly went to his own death in his proclamation of a new way of being, a new realm of peace and justice, that continually is dawning on the face of this weary earth. He lived as a peacemaker and only died by the sword. But I confess: I want him to brandish the sword that claimed his life. I want Paul to take his sword out of its sheath.

But I don’t mean this literally. I don’t mean it violently. And I am being exceedingly careful here. I am not being light or funny: I do not, I will not, I will never condone violence for the sake of our faith. We are watching helplessly while violent insurrectionists are set free, and their victims, recovering from traumatic brain injuries, are forced to hire personal security services as they retreat into their homes. Worse, many of the enemies of public safety are absurdly, ridiculously taking up Christianity as their rationale. If we are following Jesus Christ, we do not behave that way. We do not take up arms as attackers, as aggressors, as warriors in pursuit of a self-righteous cause. 

And Paul, sword firmly in hand, would not do this. Paul does not do this. When Paul brandishes his sword, this dreadful weapon takes the shape of a pen: his words sound down the ages, calling people into mission, forging people into faith communities, slicing away dangerous doctrine, puncturing the power of evil, stirring and sending people into the work of evangelism — the work of proclaiming the Good News. 

Now, the word evangelism: this is something of a trigger word for many of us, so please understand me. To be an evangelist is not automatically to be a Christian conservative, let alone a hostile or even violent person of faith. It simply means that we proclaim the Good News.

And the Good News is this: Christ has trampled death by death, and to those in the grave bestowed life. Christ has trampled death by death, and to those in the grave bestowed life. Christ tramples death not by killing, but by submitting to death himself. Christ aligns himself with the victims of injustice, and gives them a future, by becoming a victim of injustice himself. Christ responds to the outrageous evil run amok in the world by drawing alongside us as we turn our faces into that storm. And when God in Jesus does this, when God in Jesus joins us in our mission, in our predicament, in our crisis, in our hour of extreme need, we all go down together. 

But then, by the power of the Risen One, we rise up. A sword is a deadly weapon, but in the hand of the risen Christ, in the hand of his apostle Paul, in the hands of all of us who gather here, supported by the prayers of Saint Paul himself, our sword pierces death itself. Our sword cuts away the brambles and the tangled vines of ignorance, indolence, and anxiety, opening up a way forward into a resurrected future.

And here is what that looks like, right here and right now.

BJ and Barbara are but two of several Neighborhood Action missioners who literally save the lives of our friends who suffer housing insecurity.

Adam and Hazel and Damian are but three of nearly two dozen youth and children who evangelize us with their insights, their enthusiasm, their critiques, their hearts that remain broken open despite all that is roiling in the world.

Laura and Laura and Laura — the three Lauras — are but three of many dozens of missioners who tend to our newcomers, sweep our sidewalks, train our servers, steward our finances, and nurture this mission base as we all, by God’s power, transform this neighborhood.

This past week, the Episcopal Church has been stirred to action by a bishop who is wise as a serpent yet innocent as a dove. The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of Washington, brandished Paul’s sword in an appeal for mercy, speaking directly to some of the human world leaders who hold countless lives in their hands. Bishop Budde rightly inspires us to enter the fray, following her example of courageous truth-telling on behalf of the last and least. This is good.

But we also can see that same courage here, today, in this room. We receive that same courage here, today, at this Table. We will not violently overthrow the powers and principalities that cause great suffering worldwide. We enter into that suffering ourselves, like sheep in the midst of wolves, and, in company with all who suffer and with all in peril, we die with Christ.

And then we rise with him. Even if it takes all of human history, we participate in the triumph of good over evil, of wisdom over ignorance, of life over death. Do you find this hard to believe? Then look again at our companions. Consider the witness of their lives: BJ and Barbara and Adam and Hazel and Damian and Laura and Laura and Laura, and so many more. We will hear about several more at our annual meeting today. Look at them and consider their witness, and then hear and heed the call of the Risen One, who appeared in dreadful splendor to Saint Paul, and steadied his hand to hold the sword of righteousness. Hear the Risen One say this to Paul, to me, to you:

“Get up and stand on your feet… I am sending you to open the eyes of the people so that they may turn from darkness to light.”

Have you had enough?

Preached on the Second Sunday after the Epiphany (Year C), January 19, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 36:5-10
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11

Wedding Miracle at Cana, by Ronald Raab

How do you know when you’ve had enough?

This is a good question for both good things and bad things. Let’s start with some day-to-day good things: How do you know when you’ve had enough ginger-molasses cookies? This seems like a light, easy example to begin a discussion of what it means to have “enough.”

But of course even ginger cookies are fraught with complications and controversy. Thousands of people out there think they know how much food is enough – for us, for you, for me. Marketers tell us our bodies need their products. Body-shamers tell us to avoid so-called “guilty pleasures” entirely. Most everyone suffers from harmful messages driven into our consciousness by our food-fixated, divisive, image-conscious popular culture. 

One of my nieces has bravely pushed against all the disordered messaging about the food she likes. She simply listens to her body about the nourishment she needs – nourishment in all its forms. Nutrition? Sure, of course. But we have evolved as a species to enjoy the pleasures of food, the delights of an abundant family dinner, the bliss of a sugar cookie with our morning coffee. And these are nourishments too. These are among the things we truly need. My niece teaches me to decide for myself whether I have had enough of these good and life-giving things.

We sadly learn early in life to ignore the cues that we had when we were born, the cues my niece has rediscovered. Babies eat when they’re hungry. It really is as simple as that. Babies can naturally tell when they’ve had enough. But later in life, knowing when you’ve had enough; knowing what really is enough; knowing what we all need to do so that all of us have enough: these are profound, complicated spiritual matters.

I often have access to plenty more than I need, a lovely abundance of cookies for my morning coffee, lots of food and drink in easy reach, and honestly, plenty of money and power, too: what truly is enough of these blessings? And if I have to share these blessings with you, does that change what truly is enough for me?

(It does.)

And how do we know when we’ve had enough of the bad things? Not all family dynamics are good. Not all workplace situations are good. Obviously, not all political structures or governments are good. When do you say, “I’ve had enough! I’m out of here!”? Substance-abuse interventions are a way of saying you’ve had enough: you, your friends, your family gather around a loved one and tell them you have had enough of their untreated substance abuse. You love them, you want what’s best for them, you’ll be there for them down the hard road of recovery — you haven’t had nearly enough of them — but you’ve had enough of the intolerable destruction and suffering.

Enough. It’s an intriguing concept. It’s hard to define. It’s a matter of discernment, of wisdom. Determining what is enough can shape (and sometimes ruin) an individual life; it can form (and sometimes deform) a community; it can bring a whole people together so that everyone is nourished, but it can also start a war.

Today we hear once again about a wedding, a famous one: the wedding at Cana, attended by Jesus and his mother. It is this wedding that has me banging on about the topic of having enough. A wedding: a lavish, splendid celebration of joy and gratitude. A wedding: a solemn, mountaintop moment when a couple deepens their commitment to each other, and the whole community is transformed. A wedding: a whole village celebrating abundance, about having more than enough, even in a year with disappointing crop yields. A wedding: a cosmic metaphor for God’s relationship with humanity.

When I was attending my own wedding, it was back in the days when I believed I had not yet had enough wine to drink. (One of my favorite ways to gently tell someone I’m an alcoholic is to say, “Oh, none for me, thanks. I’ve already had my lifetime supply.”) Back then, I didn’t think I had had my lifetime supply. I hadn’t yet had enough of both the good and the bad of alcoholic beverages.

Andrew and I chose a wine for our reception that came from the Walla Walla appellation, in southeast Washington. We had been there two or three times by then, by the fall of 2003. We would go on wine-tasting trips and marvel at the wondrous fruit drawn from that land, cultivated and crafted into wine by ingenious artisans.

We would walk into a tasting room and I would rejoice: the delightful yeasty aroma! The gleaming granite countertop! The sparkling glasses and cheerful host and colorful maps of the region! It was so much fun. It felt luxurious. Surely there was enough for everyone there — enough even for me there.

And so it was only natural that we wanted our friends and families to hold aloft glasses of robust, red Walla Walla wine to toast our union, to celebrate that momentous day when, in the words of our departed friend Susan Cherwien (who was there with us that night), we became “two souls entwined.” A grand celebration.

And this is the location, this is the spot, this is the place where God in Jesus appears and does something wondrous: right here, at my wedding party, at all wedding parties, at all celebrations that usually rely on wine, on festival drink, to proclaim and celebrate something essential. We are attending one of those celebrations right now, in this room.

A wedding is not just a bash, a happy day, a hilarious night out. Two people are changing, right before the eyes of everyone in their village, and that means life is about to rise up again in that village. More children? Often enough, yes. But other forms of life, too. For Andrew and me, we celebrated the life that was about to rise up in decades of us contributing to our communities as a new household, a new family, a new dwelling down the lane with smoke curling up from our chimney. 

But back to that one particular wedding, the one at Cana in Galilee. Jesus is actually a latecomer to the biblical idea of a wedding as a metaphor for God’s renewal of the earth, God’s reconciliation with the people, God’s abundant presence here, God’s loving, healing embrace. Long before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah sang, “The Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as [two young people are married], so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”

But what will happen if, in the middle of this celebration of newness and transformation and fulfillment, what will happen if we run out of wine?

It is this very crisis that vividly puts us on the guest list at the Cana wedding. Surely we have felt this anxiety: that we aren’t surrounded by abundant blessings, that our pantry is nearly empty, that we have run out of wine. This is how “not having enough” can start a war. There is not enough rain. We have emptied our grain silos. Our schools lack funding. Our wages aren’t rising with inflation. When the mother of Jesus says, “They have run out of wine,” every human being can relate. Even fabulously wealthy humans run out of things: they run out of good friends; they run out of good health; they run out of self-respect and serenity as they live large while others go begging.

The mother of Jesus perceives this crisis (she doesn’t miss much), and she quickly engineers a solution. She brings Jesus into the problem. Against his resistance and skipping the part where she would ask permission to take over, she tells the servants to listen to her son. In this work, she becomes something of a forerunner of the Messiah, a prophet announcing the One who is to come. There won’t be enough! So she calls upon Jesus to restore the abundance of the land. When she says, “They have run out of wine,” this is a biblical lament: this is a profound complaint, a rage prayer to God, appealing to the highest Source for salvation.

And then we, in turn, raise this lament. We pray every week for the whole world. In a few moments, after some solemn silence, we will stand together, lifted to our feet by the Good News we have just heard; we will call to our minds and hearts the Church, all nations, this community, all who suffer, and all who have died; and we will say to God, we will sing to God, we will lament to God, this urgent plea: They have run out of wine.

And then we will gather together here at this Table, and when the wine is poured, the abundant wine, the hundreds of gallons of wine Jesus creates at Cana, the wine he served on his last night with his friends, the wine of Paradise that we will all drink together, alcoholics and normal drinkers alike, on that Great Gettin’ Up Morning — when this wine is poured today, we will … take a small sip. (Or if you’re me, you won’t even do that, because a sip is too much wine for me!)

A small sip. Not a sloppy gulp, not even a quenching drink. Just a sip. And why just a sip? Well, if we sing our abundant thanks to God for God’s abundant blessings, and then gently, carefully, and gratefully taste just a sip of those blessings, then, finally, joyfully, wondrously, everyone, everyone in the whole world will have enough.

"I love you."

Preached on the First Sunday after the Epiphany, the Baptism of the Lord (Year C), January 12, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

The Baptism of Jesus Christ in the Jordan, by Jerzy Nowosielski

Ten and a half years ago, on a warm evening in Seattle, late in the evening — I know it was late because it was already dark, in June — I walked around Queen Anne Hill. This had been a sad and traumatic day for our city. This was the day when Seattle Pacific University suffered a mass shooting. 

The neighborhood was quiet, but before long I noticed the smell of fire in the air. I turned onto West Fulton Street between 8th and 9th Avenues West, and saw leaping flames. Someone’s house was on fire. But maybe it wasn’t their house — I couldn’t be sure. It might have been a shed out back. But if so, it was a big enough shed to cause an impressive, unnerving fire, with large bright flames and billowing black smoke. (I can’t even begin to imagine the size and heat of the fires in southern California that have destroyed thousands of houses, businesses, schools, and churches.)

“Oh, Seattle,” I remember thinking, I remember feeling, on that warm, weary June night. “Oh, Seattle,” I said to myself, “Oh, Seattle — rest now. You have had a terrible day.” I breathed quiet prayers for our beleaguered city, torn badly by a violent shooting, vulnerable to devastating fires, heading into another anxious summer in this era of climate catastrophe. I’m sure I was projecting, at least a little, but Seattle felt feverish, even somehow sweaty, that night, the way you feel when you just can’t rest. Your bed sheets are wrinkled and clammy, the fitted sheet keeps slipping off the corner of your mattress, the air in your room is stagnant and ten degrees too warm, you have a dull headache and you just can’t rest. (Have you been there?) “Oh, Seattle, rest now,” I chanted again.

And that was ten years ago. Thousands of mass shootings ago. Hundreds of wildfires ago. Three national elections ago. Russia had annexed Crimea that February, but was still eight years away from a full invasion of Ukraine. A month after my nocturnal walk, Israel launched an attack on Gaza in retaliation for deadly violence perpetrated by Hamas. (The more things change…)

Since that restive summer, our city has confronted several more crises, including of course the pandemic, which coincided with — and exacerbated — the housing crisis that devastated this neighborhood, the crisis that now drives and shapes our mission here.

Oh, Seattle, rest now.

But Seattle can’t seem to rest. Yet here we are, all of us, you and me, gathered in this restful, quiet, sacred space between a curving pool of water and a live-edge wooden Table. We gather here week by week, and we say our fervent prayers. Oh, Seattle, we pray. Oh, Ukraine. Oh, Gaza and Israel and Lebanon and Russia; oh, Egypt and Syria and Turkey; oh, South Sudan and Sudan and Nigeria; oh, England and Canada and Haiti and Ecuador and America. How can we help you rest?

The sacred space between a pool of water and a table. This is where we pray. If you listen carefully, the pool may remind you of a river. When you practice silence and stillness in this sanctuary, I hope you can hear the living water.

This living water evokes the curving banks and treacherous rapids of a great river, and we listen to the sound of this water in the middle of a city that rises at the edge of the Salish Sea. We say our prayers just a few miles from several rivers, especially the Cedar River and Tolt River, which serve as life-giving watersheds for all the living creatures here. These rivers carry just a tiny fraction of the precious little fresh water that supports life on this planet. (Oh, humanity: do you know that only three percent of the water on this planet is fresh, and much of it is locked away from us in glaciers and ice caps? Oh, humanity: do you know that less than one percent of the water on this planet is available for our use, for our sustenance, for our survival?)

And so we stand close to this living water, and we praise a Savior who stepped into this water, into the flowing river we call the Jordan. He submitted to the water; he acquiesced to baptism; he condescended to dwell with us in this precarious, sleep-deprived, traumatized, overheated, thirsty, restless world.

Oh, Jesus: we praise you.

As Jesus prayed in the water (take note! just like us at the edge of this pool, when he is on or near water, Jesus prays) — as Jesus prayed in the water, the heavens opened. The heavens opened. Usually when we say the heavens have opened, it’s a figure of speech that means a storm has rent the sky. Think of the heavens opening and pouring a drenching rain down upon us. (Oh, Los Angeles: may you be blessed with opening heavens!) One time while I was running around Queen Anne Hill, the heavens opened and I was soaking wet, and as I (somewhat foolishly!) ran down the hill of 10th Avenue West not far from my house, I suddenly was literally up to my waist in a flash flood of water! That’s what we usually mean when we say the heavens have opened.

But this time, at the river Jordan, when Jesus is praying, the heavens open and drench Jesus and all the people gathered around not with a downpour, but with the thunderous sound of God’s voice. Was it a thunderclap? I think we can imagine that to be so. God thunders with a voice that shakes the wilderness, and makes the oak trees writhe, and strips the forests bare. God speaks in a deafening opening of the heavens, and speaks directly to Jesus. And here is what God says:

“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Jesus is soaking wet with these passionate words. 

“You are the Beloved,” God says. “The Beloved.” The thunderclap, the devastating thunderstorm, the flash flood of God’s awful voice, speaks love to Jesus. Not condemnation or judgment; not even good tidings or joyful greetings. Just love.

God thunders down from the heavens to say “I love you.”

And this thunderclap is but an echo of another “I love you” from God, an “I love you” we heard again this morning in the reading from the prophet Isaiah. With the voice of the prophet God tells the people that God loves them. 

Love comes down. Love pours down. Love feeds the watersheds and fills the bays and lakes and rivers. Love showers us until we are soaking wet with it, and can’t help but share that same love with one another.

But this is a problematic metaphor. We live in times when we long not for beautiful metaphors, but for literal rescue, for the literal sound of God’s voice, for the prophet to mean it literally, when speaking for God, that “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”

And did you catch just now that in the prophet’s voice, not just fire but water cuts both ways? The water that supports life also drowns; the fire that warms and enlightens also destroys. In this time of deadly floods and terrifying fires, we cry out in vain for God’s literal, concrete presence and power in all of these overlapping catastrophes, begging God to give rest and safety to Seattle, to our loved ones, to our neighbors, to war-torn nations, to ruined cities, to ourselves. 

But then we remember that extraordinary person in the river Jordan, the One who stands prayerfully beneath the opening heavens and hears God speak love in a voice that splits the flames of fire and shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. This person goes on to found a community of love, the community that rises up even here, on another continent, many distant centuries and cultures away from that clutch of people at the edge of the Jordan.

And this community of love shows us, finally, how God defeats floodwaters and wildfires, even if they literally overwhelm — or even kill — us. Soon we will take a green branch and fling water over this assembly, a ritual that ‘opens the heavens’ right here in this room, showering everyone with God’s love, God’s “I love you.” And week by week this assembly learns the Way of Christ, who gave away everything, even his own life, in a flood of love for his friends. 

Are we safe from floods and earthquakes, from hurricanes and wildfires, from war and violence, from ignorance and malice? No. After all, we praise God’s Beloved One, who lived among the poor and the oppressed, who knew hunger and thirst, who was tortured at the hands of an authoritarian government, who finally died and was buried.

And yet, showered with the thunderous love that raised Jesus to life, we who are vulnerable to suffering and death are safe, we are beautifully safe, we are blessedly safe: we are safe from isolation and loneliness, we are safe from nihilism and despair, we are safe from anything that threatens in vain to break God’s loving hold on us. This love sends us powerfully back into this burning world, back to lend our aid, back to embrace and encourage the victims of disaster, back to guide our neighbors to safety, back to rebuild a better, safer, lovelier world, with God’s healing power and God’s abiding love.

In a few moments, as the drops of living water fall on you, I hope you will hear the thunderclap directly above you, that magnificent voice that says to you — to all of us — “You [all] are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”