Rejoice

Sermon, 5pm, given by Kevin Montgomery

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle

12/15/1/2024, 3rd Sunday of Advent

Five Angels Dancing Before the Sun, by Giovanni di Paolo

Rejoice in the Lord always! Again, I say rejoice! . . . But what if I don’t feel like rejoicing? How can I do that given the state of the world, of this country? I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m afraid. The world seems to be falling apart, and so am I. Who are you to tell me to rejoice. . . Well, you’re right. Who am I to tell anyone that? The last thing I want to do is to say to someone, “Don’t let it get you down. Look on the bright side of things. Cheer up.”

Anyway, where does Paul get off saying this? Well, Paul’s life wasn’t exactly sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. He’s writing this letter from prison. During his missionary journeys, he faced stonings, beatings, imprisonments, shipwrecks, and eventually execution. But all through this letter to Christians in Philippi, he says he rejoices, he gives thanks for them. Maybe he understood something a lot of us don’t. One of those things is that joy is not simply a feeling. It’s not, “Oh, I’m feeling happy today.” That’s great, but you might not be feeling happy tomorrow. Heck, in an hour you might be feeling angry, sad, afraid, all of the above. It’s more of a state of mind, a place where we can rest and find strength as we move through life.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Joy is very much tied up with thanksgiving. In Greek the words even come from the same root. Think about it. We’re thankful for the times when we experience the feelings associated with joy. And when we begin to focus on that thankfulness, we start to become more aware of it; and it even starts to change our brains. It trains the neural muscles, you might say. That’s not to say it’s always easy. There are times in life when things seem so overwhelming that it’s hard to find things to be thankful for.

That’s when I try to remember that we worship a God who’s not a general principle but one of scandalous particularity. A God who literally had skin in the game. Jesus was incarnate as a particular person, in a particular time, in a particular place. So let’s bring ourselves to the concrete, even mundane moments of life. I think back over the past few weeks and give thanks for my job, for the great team I work with, for the person who said how much she appreciated me showing her where everything was when she started on the job. I look at what’s going on here at St. Paul’s. A new roof! Work being done on plumbing and electrical systems. More accessibility on the horizon. I guess you can even give thanks for that yawning abyss out there as a sign of what’s happening and what’s to come. A couple of weeks ago, we baptized two new members into the household of God. Even in the hard times there can be joy and thanksgiving. It’ll be five years since I last celebrated Christmas with my mother. I miss her so much. We all do, but I give thanks for all the time we had. Even when things were rough, I knew I could ask Mama for prayers. Of course I’m a big believer in the communion of saints; so I still can. And I know that we’ll all see each other again in the resurrection. I heartily rejoice in that.

But Paul doesn’t just say, “Rejoice.” He says, “Rejoice in the Lord.” For what can be more reason to give thanks than the Lord Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God with us? The one who has shared not just in times of celebration but also in times of suffering. The one whose Spirit brings us consolation amid our desolations. But not only do we rejoice in the Lord. We rejoice in the Lord. We are baptized into more than just an earthly community. We are all part of the Body of Christ. Yes, Jesus is in our hearts, but more importantly, we are in his heart. The more Catholic among us might even say we are enfolded within that Sacred Heart. There we find the peace that goes beyond anything we can understand or the world can give. Amid the turning of the wheel of fortunes and loss, amid the changes and chances of this life, we can rest secure and thankful in that peaceful center. So yes, be angry, be sad, be afraid; but still rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord. Again, I say rejoice.

I wonder how hungry they are

Preached on the Third Sunday of Advent (Year C), December 15, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Canticle 9 (Isaiah 12:2-6)
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18

One of our mightiest practitioners of gentleness.

“Let your gentleness be known to everyone.”

I vividly remember something said in a class at Seattle University, back in about 2010. The professor was Dr. Jeanette Rodriguez, a member of the religion faculty who specializes in U.S. Hispanic theology, liberation theology, and women’s spirituality. Dr. Rodriguez said that persons of color in this country are angry, they have every right to be, and people with white privilege just need to understand that fact, and accept it. 

I am about to offer a reflection on the spiritual practice of gentleness, but I want to begin here, with Dr. Rodriguez, and her good words. “Gentleness” as we understand it — “gentleness” as healthy Christian communities understand it — “gentleness” is not about protecting white fragility, or what people from my home state call “Minnesota Nice.” It’s not about everyone being sweet, brushing off disagreement, and delaying justice so that we all just get along. It’s most definitely not about oppressed persons grinning and bearing it. “Gentleness” is not passive; it is not reticent. Gentleness makes no peace with evil.

If gentleness has any value in our faith community, it may be tender, but it is also fierce, sober, and faithful. Christian gentleness is grounded in a prophetic vision of who God is forming us to be, and what God is sending us to do. Gentleness in our faith community requires a strong heart. Gentleness in our faith community demands courage.

Now, having said all that, gentleness can often feel tender. But even then, we are being gentle because we fiercely appreciate how important someone is. Two examples stand out: we practice tender gentleness when we are holding a tiny infant, and we practice tender gentleness when we draw alongside someone’s deathbed. We are gentle because these human beings are priceless, they are profoundly vulnerable, and they possess immense dignity, simply by existing. We do not want to hurt people with carelessness or negligence, or just plain klutziness. We are careful; we take care. And we just instinctively know that both holding a newborn and holding the hand of the dying are gentle actions that demand us to be brave.

There are other examples of tender gentleness, but again, don’t mistake the tenderness for weakness or frailty. We practice tender gentleness when breaking bad news, and we sometimes practice tender gentleness when we say a gentle but firm “No,” carefully setting a healthy boundary.

But whether it feels tender or not, our gentleness is fierce as we pray and work here, in all the corners and along all the edges of this mission base. Our gentleness is fierce when we approach someone we have harmed, seeking reconciliation. We approach them gently in our desire to avoid doing further harm, but we direct our fierce attention inward: we brace ourselves, bravely, to hold ourselves accountable.

We practice fierce gentleness, in turn, when we work hard to forgive those who have harmed us, and we practice fierce gentleness when we decline to forgive. Yes, you heard that right: Christians are not automatically required to forgive, no matter the circumstances. Our fiercely gentle community makes room for the complexities of wrongdoing and reconciliation. Are you not ready to forgive someone? Well, that probably makes good sense. Take some time. Pray alongside us. Discern your next steps. All of this labor requires fierce gentleness, toward others (including the person who hurt you), and toward yourself.

So: we practice gentleness both tender and fierce. But I have two more ideas about gentleness on offer today: our gentleness is sober, and it is faithful. (And of course, whether it’s tender, fierce, sober, or faithful, all the ways we practice this great spiritual gift overlap one another and flow into one another, so I encourage you not to worry too much about a detailed outline. Let this reflection flow over you.)

But onward to sober gentleness. Sober gentleness is clear-headed, conscious, and self-aware. We try to be gentle in a sober way whenever we make a careful assessment of someone, particularly someone who upsets us. We re-engage our neocortexes, using reason as our guide, to level out and inform our powerful feelings. Somebody opens our common fridge, let’s say, and eats my sandwich. I identify the culprit, but rather than berate them, I encourage myself to wonder how hungry they are. 

I actually have one more example from my time at Seattle University, this time to illustrate sober gentleness. A classmate arrived one day and told us that someone stole his bicycle. Everyone expressed the requisite outrage: “Oh no! That’s terrible!”. I remember feeling a vicarious desire for revenge on my friend’s behalf. I wanted him to find the thief and exact retribution. But he just smiled and said this: “Oh, it’s okay. I really think whoever it is must have really needed it.” At first blush this seemed absurd, even disingenuous. What a goody-goody nerd, this guy! But this classmate proved to be the real thing: he authentically made a judgment about the bicycle thief that began with compassion. Whatever the actual nature of the anonymous thief, and whatever their motives, my friend released himself from the prison of bitter resentment. He did this by practicing sober gentleness.

But sometimes we have more information about another person, information that tells us that the person truly did behave badly, or behaved in a way that disappoints or discourages us. Sober gentleness helps in this situation, too. Think back to a recent time when you felt disappointed by someone you care about. Notice how your heart might be soothed, and your mind eased, if you notice that disappointment, validate it, and then carefully release it. Someone may disappoint us, but the past can’t be changed, and this is not the end of our story together. Sober gentleness.

And finally we consider faithful gentleness, which I think is what Saint Paul was truly talking about when he told the church in Philippi to “let your gentleness be known to everyone.” The gentleness we receive and cultivate when we are together in Christ is faithful. That is, it forms us in faith, it directs us toward one another in faith, it builds up this community of faith.

At our best, we practice faithful gentleness whenever we enter this parish, seeking peace but also justice in all that we say and do here. But we also practice faithful gentleness when we leave this community. And surely we are all aware that each and every one of us will, at some point, take our leave of St. Paul’s, in one way or another. We remember only a few dozen names of many hundreds of persons who launched and sustained this congregation over thirteen decades; most of them have now died, or moved on. But I believe we can feel in our bones the deep peace and courageous fellowship they gave us, by living here and then dying here, by entering and then leaving, by their sustained record of gentle mission and ministry in this place. 

And in the fleeting few years we all are here, we practice faithful gentleness whenever we correct or challenge this community. Like any human organization, our parish needs continual correction and challenge, but we strive to do this work carefully, gently, faithfully. Our curate, Father Phillip, was talking with me this week, and said something striking: he said that he appreciates how, at St. Paul’s, we work on praying together without demanding agreement. This is faithful gentleness, and it’s a particular gift of most Episcopal and Anglican congregations: we pray together without demanding agreement. Often we fail at this (myself most certainly included), but this is our faithful ambition.

And of course we must practice faithful gentleness when we are working on a tough conflict. You know the classic movie scene when our hero puts their gun down, knowing that this brave action could lead to their own death. They put their gun down because they want to resolve their differences without violence. And that requires immense courage. “Put your sword back into its sheath!” gentle Jesus sharply says to Peter, in John’s telling of the arrest in Gethsemane. We rejoice in the Lord – we are all held in the peace of Christ – and so we bravely choose something much harder and scarier than grabbing a weapon: we practice faithful gentleness.

I have used this example before, but it bears repeating: in a favorite film of mine, an angry, inebriated mother is in a heated argument with her adult daughter. She finally gets at the hard truth between them. The mother cries out: “Go ahead and say it: you think I’m an alcoholic.” The daughter pauses. Then she says, with firm tenderness and fierce gentleness, “Okay. I think you’re an alcoholic.” Faithful gentleness.

But then we don’t need Hollywood to teach us about faithful gentleness. We have that rough, surprising teacher of gentleness, John the Baptizer, to lead us by example. Now, in today’s Good News, he begins by calling everyone a “brood of vipers,” a vat of snakes. That’s not … really all that gentle! But he says this in a bracing way, in a way that leads to a strong and constructive conversation about what the people must do to prepare for the dawning of justice and peace. Once again, Father Phillip raised an insight for my instruction. He noticed that soldiers – agents of empire whose profession is inherently violent – asked John what they must do, and John said nothing at all about taking up weapons or beating the bad guys. He cautioned them against extortion, against abusing their power. Faithful gentleness.

And in all of this, in this work but also this great privilege of practicing tender, fierce, sober, and faithful gentleness, in all of this we rejoice in the Lord, no matter what happens to us. We don’t just celebrate when everything is swimming along, and then despair when everything is falling apart; no, we cultivate a gentle practice of rejoicing always, in all the changes and chances of this life.

Finally, a bittersweet note: this week, our companion Nancy Finley, child of God, died in the peace of Christ. Nancy leaves a legacy of tender, fierce, sober, and faithful gentleness. But in Nancy’s hands, this gentleness takes on a delightful intellectual grace: “She had an inquiring mind,” said our companion Mark Taylor, reflecting thoughtfully on her death. Nancy asked questions, she explored multiple faith traditions, she laughed and loved. She practiced a warm but sharp, a challenging but encouraging form of Christian gentleness. And finally, like so many countless souls, Nancy left St. Paul’s with that same gentleness, witnessing to the nearness of Christ not only in our lives and our bright beginnings, but in our deaths and our solemn endings.

With our sister Nancy and all the saints, I bid you: Rejoice always. Again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.

Advent can hold it all

Preached on the SecondSunday of Advent (Year C), December 8, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Adam Conley.

Malachi 3:1-4
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6
Canticle 16

I had the pleasure of worshiping with you, beloved people of St. Paul’s, on the First Sunday of Advent. As I watched the Livestream last week from Sewanee, much of what Fr. Stephen said in his sermon resonated with me. He acknowledged the shock, fear, and grief many of us feel at the state of our nation and the world. I know the outcome of the presidential election terrifies many in this community, if not everyone. Of course, you are not alone. Millions of people around the country don’t know how to respond to what appears to be our democracy’s tacit approval of the politics of reactionary white nationalism and populist fear-mongering. And beyond our nation’s borders, but not without our nation’s entangled involvement, war-making, death-dealing autocrats seem to be winning the day.

Fr. Stephen offered an alternative from the doom-scrolling that some of us have fallen into. He found a way to take a break from planet Earth and float in the unconcerned vastness of interstellar space. How, with the click of a button, he could enter the galaxy thanks to a few well-curated and soothingly-narrated YouTube videos. I tried this out myself. It works! Soaring into outer orbit online is an excellent way to gain perspective. Time and space have different meanings when considered from the cosmos. Absorbing the stark realism of the universe is a strangely calming tonic.

But the greatest enjoyment I took from Fr. Stephen’s Advent sermon came by way of a happy accident at a very micro level. You may recall that one of the mental health break videos he described was about an asteroid that hit the Earth 66 million years ago. The impact formed the Chicxulub Crater in what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America. When Stephen was recounting the storyof the Chicxulub Crater, my closed captioning setting thought he said, and I kid you not, “Chick-fil-A Crater.” I burst out laughing. The idea of a Chick-fil-A Crater sounds like a metaphor that has found its political moment, doesn’t it?

For years, I refused to cross the threshold of a Chick-fil-A fast food restaurant. Some time ago, Chick-fil-A stirred up controversy over its homophobic hiring policies. I considered myself part of a protest boycott, thank you very much. Same thing with Wal-Mart. I avoided shopping at Walmart as an enlightened and urbane sophisticate because I disapproved of how its business practices disrupted smaller communities, deliberately putting ma and pa shops out of business.

Guess what? My staunch political opposition to Chick-fil-A, Wal-Mart, and a few other places was challenged when I moved to rural East Tennessee. It’s not that my values changed so much, as I didn’t have the easy luxury of giving them that particular expression anymore. When I was doing my CPE hospital chaplaincy at a level-one trauma center in Chattanooga, the cafeteria boasted a Chick-fil-A franchise. When it’s down to lime jello or a spicy chicken sandwich. I am … conflicted.

What does all of this have to do with the season of Advent, you may be asking? Everything. Advent, you see, can hold it all, even if everything we hold dear seems to be slipping into a bottomless Chick-fil-A Crater. Advent is the story of Christ’s coming, in history, at the intersection of our everyday lives, and at the end of history. Advent is the promise, reality, and hope of God’s human incarnation. What can’t be held by that?

The author of Luke’s gospel animates John the Baptist’s ministry of repentance and forgiveness by borrowing proclamation language from the Prophet Isaiah. Luke casts John as Isaiah’s echo, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” And what is the prophetic message? “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill made low.”

I’m disturbed by these images at face value. As someone born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, I can’t bear the idea of a flatlined landscape. Give me the majestic heights of the Cascade and Olympic mountains right up against the glacial depths of Puget Sound. I’ll take the rich variety in dramatic terrain; I love a topography of difference. And what’s all this nonsense about making the crooked straight? I mean, look at me.

But seriously, when has uniformity been a marker of God’s creation? It’s not, never has been, and never will be. What’s no less true is that reactionary white nationalism, fear-mongering, and genocidal war have no home in God’s creation. These are the mountains and valleys that must give way for the building of the Kingdom. Injustice, violence, and oppression don’t belong to the Advent of Jesus, yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

Yet even in the toppling of mountains and filling of valleys, God is making a new thing. Yes, Isaiah’s language is a metaphor for clearing obstacles to good news, but it has a more literal natural resonance, too. Look at the Chicxulub Crater. What was once a cosmic rock’s violent and annihilating crash site is now hospitable to over four million people. It is a land of diverse ecosystems, lush forests, mangrove beaches, and barrier reefs.

Advent can hold it all.

Before I ate my first Chick-fil-A sandwich or flummoxed my first Tennessee Wal-Mart cashier with a reusable shopping bag, I had an idea that I was going to find a field ed parish – field education is part of our contextual learning requirement – that had some combination of the program budget of Saint Mark’s Cathedral and the liturgical reverence and scrappy neighborhood engagement of St. Paul’s.

Ok, I knew I would never find another St. Paul’s, but I was just about to declare my intentions at a solid Chattanooga parish when Bishop Rickel foiled my grand plans. “Not a chance, Mister,” he said, or something to that effect. “You need a very different Episcopal church experience from what you already had. Go find a small, rural, conservative parish.”

If you say so, Bishop! I’m going to trust that Advent can hold it all. I listened to Bishop Greg, and at a deeper level, I listened to the Holy Spirit. I found a small, rural parish and kept listening. My field ed parish isn’t exactly conservative. It’s quietly queer affirming in a way you have to be in some pockets of the rural south. However, the most significant gift to my ministry in recent months is my relationship with a handful of conservative folk who joined the parish over the last year.

These are incredibly kind and gracious people who have fallen in love with the Episcopal Church. They are not anything like the MAGA stereotype, and yet I know that at least two of them voted for the “other guy” for president because they asked parish leadership if they would be welcome with their political views.

The meaningful answer to this question wasn’t anything we said as parish leaders. It was the welcome they received from parishioners over weeks and months. Ultimately, two new members chose to be confirmed, and another was baptized at the bishop’s October visitation.

Two of them attended a formation series I led over four weeks in November. About ten minutes into one of the sessions, a young trans man and his mother walked in, intrigued by the “Economic Justice in the New Testament” sign we had posted near the sidewalk advertising the series. They found the church, originally, because it is listed somewhere in a directory of affirming parishes. This young man immediately began to talk about his upcoming top surgery. I was not expecting this, especially in this part of the country. I was worried our visitor might soon feel unwelcome or unsafe. At the same time, I could sense one of our new members shifting uncomfortably.

What ensued was not the most smooth conversation in the world, but it was one for which everyone made an honest effort. This, I’m certain, was accomplished by nothing less than the grace of God working through the hospitality of humans. Two longtime members did a heroic job staying curious with our new guest while injecting a little variety into the conversation. All I could think was that every parishioner at that table, old and new, was actively living into their baptism. Whatever discomfort our new conservative members felt, they chose to stay at the table and listen. No one left the conversation.

I’m telling you, Advent can hold it all.

On a troubled planet, life rises up

Preached on the First Sunday of Advent (Year C), December 1, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36

A few of our children and youth sharing with us the burdens and the blessings of existence on this wondrous and troubled planet, December 1, 2024.

Recently I’ve been taking little mental-health breaks from the traumatic news around the world by watching YouTube videos about the solar system, about stars, about the natural universe. Guided by a soothing narrator and expert astronomers, I take serene trips through outer space to, say, Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, which has only thirty to fifty million years of life left, before the tidal forces it shares with its parent planet tear it into countless pieces. Mars will one day be adorned with a new planetary ring. 

I also watched a video illustrating the formation sixty-six million years ago of the Chicxulub Crater, when an asteroid slammed into what we now call the Yucatán Peninsula, ending the era of the dinosaurs. I marvel at the speed of death and destruction that circled the globe in the minutes and hours after that catastrophe.

But maybe that’s a little on the nose, that particular video. I don’t necessarily want to imagine the world as we know it coming to a violent end. And yet even that video offers a strange sort of consolation: after all, the biosphere recovered quite well in the following eons, and here we are. Our home planet has seen a lot of ecological “reboots,” if you can call them that, over millions of years. We humans ironically may not survive the Anthropocene Era, the age of the planet we’ve named after ourselves, Earth’s most ingenious and most destructive species. But whether or not we survive our own dubious adventures, the planet itself will be fine.

Earth will be fine, I should clarify, until our sun reaches the end of its life. YouTube videos about the sun are particularly intriguing. Did you know the sun contains 99.86% of the mass of the solar system? Stop your doom-scrolling for a moment and reflect on this with me. The planets and other orbiting rocks are just flecks of dust by comparison to our home star. Yet the sun is only medium-sized compared to the countless other stars, so it won’t be large enough to go nova at the end of its life. But it will swell greatly in size, likely bumping Earth into a wider orbit, after incinerating all earthly life.

Now, why is all of this comforting?! The videos all seem to follow a common theme of death and destruction! Well, for me, these dramatic yet serene videos are sage reminders that we live in a vast mortal arena, a universe of destructive change, but also creative change that occurs across incomprehensible lengths of time. Earth will someday lose its ability to support life, but not for hundreds of millions of years. Phobos will disintegrate, but humanity likely won’t live to see that. Even the sun is mortal, but now we’re talking about five billion more years. Sol — Sol, the serene name we give our sun — Sol will enjoy a long, relaxing retirement. And new stars are born from the remnants of dead stars. Astronomical realism is oddly soothing.

And so I listen with great interest when, in the Good News according to Luke, Jesus includes in his description of the end times this intriguing detail: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars.” There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Like most human societies across history, the world of Jesus of Nazareth assumed that everything they could see, no matter how distant, was caught up in the drama of human cultures and conflicts. Red-faced Mars is the god of war; gorgeous Venus is the god of love. The sun rises at God’s command from a pavilion in the east; it does not shine in all directions, with puny Earth running in circles around it; no, the sun is just one of the great lights in Earth’s sky, placed carefully by God, for our lives, for our needs, for our days and our years.

And so it stands to reason, for the people of the first century, that if the world is coming to an end, so too will these great lights show signs of distress, signs of dismay, signs of despair. Human affairs have cosmic implications. We humans are universally important.

And Jesus then predicts the all-too-human response to the world and all the heavenly beings coming to an end: “People will faint with fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world,” he says.

In our age, even with our comparatively impressive understanding of the universe, our fears about the end of the world are hardly less intense. At Thanksgiving dinner this week, one of my friends said, “I wake up every morning with a pit in my stomach.” Father Phillip and I — and the whole Pastoral Care Ministry team — are spending time with many of you here who are trying to make sense of a world gone mad. And that’s both kinds of “mad”: the insane form of madness, and the angry form. Many of us are awakening dully to a gray, bleak landscape reminiscent of 2016 and 2017, when protesters flocked to airports to object to the Muslim Ban, and the nation was still absorbing the shock of the lethal, racist demonstration in Charlottesville. More than one of you has said to me that your country just isn’t what you thought it was.

This year has felt so apocalyptic for me that I felt palpable relief when I noticed the sun moving through its predictable course in the western sky. In high summer, the sun sets far north of The Brothers, the two most famous peaks in the Olympic mountain range. Now it sets south of Bremerton, and I had to wear a warm jacket on the day after Thanksgiving — just as I have done in past years — to hang icicle lights along our west-facing porch railings. Things are going kablooie down here, on Earth, in our human world; but the universe is still mostly the same. The sun is still mostly the same. The heavenly beings follow a billion-year-by-billion-year arc of time. So I breathe, in through the nose, out through the mouth; I relax, and my heart rate slows.

Jesus of Nazareth calls me, calls you, calls us all, into this practice of calm acceptance, this practice of stability, this practice of sober wakefulness, even if the sun goes kablooie right along with human affairs; even if an asteroid slams into our home planet; even if the moon falls apart. Even if it gets much worse, Jesus seems to be saying — even if the whole universe is coming undone — we should breathe, in through the nose, out through the mouth; we should relax; we should close our eyes, check in with our bodies, allow our heart rates to slow down.

And so we gather here, week by week, to do just that. We light candles — little suns, little explosions of light — and like our home star, we light the candles on a reliable schedule. When you arrived this morning, maybe you noticed that the candle by the baptismal font — the paschal, or Easter, candle — was burning. If you noticed, you likely thought nothing of it. (It’s just a candle…) But If you’re deeply familiar with our rhythms of Sundays and seasons, you may have wondered whether we lit it by mistake. We light the paschal candle at specific times, on particular days, and normally, the little “sun” of our paschal candle would be below the horizon, as it were, on this day, the First Sunday of Advent.

But this year, there is a sign in the sun, in the moon, in the stars! Today the paschal candle burns brightly (if off-schedule) to announce with gladness the unlikely news that we are baptizing two new Christians this morning, Salvador and Sebastián, two new leaves on the fig tree of our communal life, two new signs that the summer of God’s life-giving love is close at hand.

The paschal candle is first lit at the Great Vigil of Easter, that night brighter than any day, that night when the sky of our faith brightens with the good, glad news that “Christ has trampled death by death, and given life to those in the tombs”; that night when our most joyous song of Alleluia — ‘alleluia’ means “Praise the Lord” — rings out once again. We then light that candle through the fifty days of Eastertide, and light it again every time we baptize, and every time we bury one of our beloved dead. 

But today, outside the usual rhythm, with the little sun of our paschal candle shining like a beacon across the universe, Salvador and Sebastián will be baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ. They will join us in the troubled life of this world, life that is continually bordered by death, but life that rises up. They will share with us the burdens and the blessings of existence on this wondrous and troubled planet, this blue-green speck of grace that orbits our home star, so bright and warm, so full of years.

“Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus says, and he knows this even without the benefit of YouTube videos that trace the finite arc of even the longest-lived star. Phobos will disintegrate; great rocks will again find their way to Earth; the sun will burn itself out. But the Creator endures, Christ dawns, the Spirit descends. Our children are mortal, like all of us, but they have futures filled with promise, and today they are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.

And so today we light our lamps a bit off schedule, we stir the warm baptismal waters outside of the usual time, and we prepare the royal oil for anointing and the homemade bread for breaking, because the warm summer of God’s enduring, unending love is drawing near.

Taking care of the soil

reached on Thanksgiving Day (Year B), November 28, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Joel 2:21-27
Psalm 126
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Matthew 6:25-33

The Great St. Paul’s Abyss.

“Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!” —Joel 2:21

Our forebears in faith are not above a little healthy anthropomorphism. They ascribe human qualities to rivers and trees, who clap their hands to praise God. They ascribe human qualities — or at least animal qualities — to mountains and hills, who skip like rams and lambs. The sea roars its praises to the Lord, and the desert lifts up its voice.

And so it should not surprise us that the prophet Joel is heard talking to the soil, to the earth, to the mud beneath our feet. Joel sings consolation to the people of God in the wake of a devastating plague of locusts that ravaged the land, causing terrible starvation and despair. The people had assumed that this was God’s punishment for their wrongdoing, and so, when the land was restored, they assumed it meant that they finally had been reconciled to God.

But again, the people were not alone in their rejoicing: the prophet bids the soil to rejoice, too. “Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice!” Then Joel sings to the animals: “Do not fear, you animals of the field!” he cries, “for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield.” Only then does Joel encourage the human population to rejoice, to sing in the rain, oh, the luscious, life-saving rain!

Here at St. Paul’s, we are drawing close to our soil, quite literally. We have carved in the earth a huge abyss, a gaping chasm where our east entrances used to be. I have just a slight fear of heights, so I startle myself whenever I look out the office reception door and look down at the immense hole in the earth, dug by our excavation team. We’ve actually been in the muck and mud of our soil for a couple of years now, as we’ve worked to repair and improve our buildings and grounds. 

Now that we’re once again in the rainy season, we have to obtain the city’s permission every single time we dig, so that they can be sure we’re not going to cause a landslide. We also have to negotiate with the city every time we want or need to do something with the trees on our property, particularly the sweet-gum trees on our north side, which are ailing and dropping large branches. We tend to the people camping directly on our soil along the eastern parking strip. This is not a safe place to camp: cars have bashed into our planters and frequently threatened to injure or kill Michael, and others. (Soon we will have to move the campers off the strip, because our soil there will be disturbed by extensive work on our electrical system.)

And there is of course the kingdom of rats that flourishes in our soil, and under our office building. When the excavators dug the abyss that will, this spring, host our new, universally accessible complex of entrances, ramps, stairs, and a new elevator, they discovered rat tunnels several feet beneath the surface. Our soil may be rejoicing at the thought of a new, safer, more attractive parking lot and entrance, but the rats are decidedly not among the creatures of God who rejoice at the renewal of the land.

All of this talk of soil, of caring for soil, digging in it, managing it, tending to the humans and the vegetation living on it —- it reminds me of a story about soil and faith that I heard when standing on the Haas Promenade, in Jerusalem. I wrote about this almost a year ago, for one of our newsletters.

The story comes from Rabbi Yehiel Poupko, who lives in Chicago. He was in Jerusalem many years ago as part of an interfaith group that included the Dalai Lama. As they all stood on the Haas Promenade, which offers a magnificent view of the Mount of Olives, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and most of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Dalai Lama turned to Rabbi Poupko and asked, “What is the most important passage in your scriptures?”

Rabbi Poupko paused. “Is it the Shema?” he wondered to himself. Surely it is the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD alone.” But Rabbi Poupko quickly reconsidered and said to the Dalai Lama, “The most important passage in the Torah is in Deuteronomy 23: ‘You shall have a designated area outside the camp to which you shall go. With your tools you shall have a trowel; when you relieve yourself outside, you shall dig a hole with it and then cover up your excrement.’”

This response understandably gave the Dalai Lama pause. But Rabbi Poupko explained, in this approximate quote: “The Jewish people take care of the city. We put the drains right. We maintain the alleyways. We are physical and quotidian in our faith. Christians see Jerusalem as a spiritual home, but the Jewish people see Jerusalem as an actual city to take care of. Empires come and go, usually with great violence and destruction. Meanwhile, we take care of things. This is an expression of our faith.”

I love this story, but I want to correct Rabbi Poupko about one thing. Caring for the city, for the soil, is something we Christians, at our best, share with our Jewish cousins. (Well, in fairness, it’s more accurate to say that we received this ethic from them.) Our Muslim cousins, in turn, also share this virtue and express it in their fifth pillar, the pilgrimage. A major dimension of all the Abrahamic faiths is to take care of things. (It is a cruel irony, then, that all three religions historically have done great damage to Jerusalem, and to the Land of the Holy One.)

Now, we Christians place our hopes in life beyond death; we pursue justice and peace, globally and locally; we burn incense to accompany our prayers to the heights of heaven; yes, we do all of these grand things. But our faith is also expressed powerfully in the ordinary, daily work we do on the face of the earth to literally take care of things. 

And that is why, finally, Joel bids the soil to rejoice. The soil has been taken care of; it has been tended; it has been healed. The locusts have departed; the rains have returned. If the people believe that the earth was ravaged because God was angry at them, well, it appears God’s anger has dissipated, and all is forgiven. 

But please notice: there are really two things going on here, two things happening with the soil God made, the soil God renews, the soil God loves, the soil we humans say rejoices. First, God alone does a new thing with the soil — the soil of all the earth, including the little square of soil we steward here at St. Paul’s. But second, we also are doing a new thing with the soil. We are working it, blessing it with our labor. We are cultivating it, joining God’s creative task of drawing green and growing life from the earth. We are digging it and moving it so that everyone who walks or wheels upon it will be blessed with safety. So it’s two things: God gardens indirectly and humbly, laying down in serene quietude beneath and within and around all created matter, all the soil, all the rocks and trees, all the rivers and rainclouds, all the living cells of our own bodies. 

And we plunge our spades into the soil, digging and moving it, sometimes to plant a new flower bed, sometimes to lay to rest our beloved dead. We come here not just to pray in this sanctuary with our voices and our bodies; we also pray with our excavation equipment and tree trimmers and SPiN wagons and garden hoses and brooms and shovels and rakes. 

And for all of this we offer our thanks and praise. Thanksgiving is a complicated holiday, particularly in such hard times, when the land and the seas and the skies are all crying out in despair; when our human institutions are crumbling and our politicians dismay us with their violent and divisive words and actions; when we wonder how future generations will be able to live here as we do: We worry not just for their safety, but even for their basic ability to survive. 

But we give thanks nonetheless: we rejoice with gratitude for God’s presence and power that reverberates even in the soil beneath our feet, and fills our hearts not just with hope but with determination and resolve. We rejoice with gratitude for one another, here to help and support each other, to raise our children together, to care for our elders together, to cultivate the soil together. And we join the prophet Joel in calling upon all living creatures, and indeed all created matter, including the soil and sand and rocks; the rivers and the sound and the ocean; to rejoice. 

Rejoice, then, soil beneath our feet, soil first cultivated and cared for by the Duwamish, who are still here. Rejoice: for we’re all here, with God’s help, to lovingly care for you.

Christ reigns from the Cross

Preached on the Last Sunday after Pentecost (Christ the King, Year B), November 24, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.

2 Samuel 23:1-7
Psalm 132:1-13
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

Mary of Teck, the wife of King George the Fifth, was the Queen of the United Kingdom from 1910 to 1936. She lived just long enough to see her granddaughter accede to the throne in February 1952. Mary is portrayed by the actor Eileen Atkins in the popular Netflix drama, “The Crown.” Reclining in her bedroom, ailing from lung disease, Queen Mary teaches Queen Elizabeth the fundamentals of monarchy: what it is, what it is not, and what the young queen must do as she begins her long reign.

Elizabeth is concerned about her new role and her duties (or lack thereof) as the nation responds to a major crisis — a toxic smog that paralyzed London in December of 1952, leading to thousands of deaths. She wonders if, as sovereign, she is entitled to interfere politically to direct or contradict the elected government, which initially appears to be woefully unresponsive to the challenge. If the crisis is mishandled, isn’t she answerable to the public, just like her ministers? Shouldn’t she do something? And if she fails to act, shouldn’t she have to answer to her subjects for that failure? Queen Mary’s advice is to remain quiet, to do nothing, to simply stand stoically as an icon of divinely-ordained monarchy. Here is what this dramatic television show imagines that Queen Mary said to her granddaughter:

“Monarchy is God's sacred mission to grace and dignify the earth. To give ordinary people an ideal to strive towards, an example of nobility and duty to raise them in their wretched lives. Monarchy is a calling from God. That is why you are crowned in an abbey, not a government building. Why you are anointed, not appointed. It's an archbishop that puts the crown on your head, not a minister or public servant. Which means that you are answerable to God in your duty, not the public.”

In this imagined conversation, Mary is dry-witted and more than a little delightful. She wickedly disparages Prince Philip’s unimpressive royal pedigree, and generally comes off as someone with whom you’d love to ‘spill the tea.’ Who in human history would you want to meet, living or dead, if you could pick anyone? If this television show is anything close to accurate, I might sign up for a hilariously fun and naughty dinner with Queen Mary.

But, alas, the joke is on her. Her definition of monarchy as a sacred mission of God to benefit poor, ordinary, humble commoners falls apart when we actually take a good look at what God is really like. If the British sovereign truly is answerable to God (and, for that matter, if the American president, when taking the oath of office, asks for God’s help), they might be in for a shock. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not an impassive sovereign preening grandly above the “ordinary people” who are leading what Mary calls “wretched lives.” If human monarchs really answered to God, and if their understanding of God is Christian, then they would have to grapple with the person of Jesus Christ, whom we praise as God the Son. They would have to face the fact that Jesus comes among us not as a blue-blood monarch, but as one of Queen Mary’s common wretches.

And yet we close every liturgical year by praising Christ the King, in a feast created just a century ago to remind everyone in post-World-War-I Christendom that their true king is not the emperors they just defeated in war, not the crowned heads of Europe, and not the presidents and prime ministers of other victorious nations: their true king — our true King, the King of the whole universe — is Jesus Christ.

But Christ the King eternally eludes our understanding. He surprises us. He may also frustrate and even disappoint us. This King does not ride in the horse-drawn Gold State Coach with a proud and dry-witted queen by his side; he is a victim of state-sponsored execution. This King does not control all branches of government and shape the rule of law in his own image; he says nothing in his own defense when subjected to a sham trial. This King dominates by submitting, rises by dying. This King subverts the concept of kingship itself.

Meanwhile, a hundred years on, human history hasn’t changed much since the Roman Catholic Church dreamt up this feast. Authoritarianism is once again on the rise, worldwide, and incumbent political leaders are being voted out because they have failed to save people from economic upheaval, contagious disease, chronic warfare, cultural malaise, malevolent misinformation, and climate disasters. The people want a leader; they want a savior; they want a king.

But Christ the King won’t save the people from the perils of life on this planet; he endures those perils himself. Christ the King doesn’t take command; he comes among us as one who serves. Christ the King doesn’t behave like an inscrutable, remote British figurehead, but neither does he rush in to solve all of our problems. Christ the King is found among the ordinary people. Our Mighty Lord is an itinerant preacher, a countryside healer, a companion, a friend.

But Jesus as preacher, healer, companion, friend — that doesn’t quite describe him, either. It gets us closer, but it’s not quite right. Who is Christ the King? If he’s just a humble shepherd, I don’t think he will help us much in these hard times. He’s clearly not strutting above the clouds, crushing our enemies, putting everything right; but he’s not just our buddy. Christ the King is not our pal.

My friend Susan Cherwien (may her memory be a blessing) can help us understand Christ the King, understand him in a way that can be more useful to us, and in a way that can form us, and then send us to minister to our neighbors. If we truly understand Christ the King, we could go from here and actually make the world a little bit better. 

Susan wrote a poem about Christ the King, concluding every stanza with the image of Christ “reigning from the cross.” You can see it on your bulletin cover, and you can sing the poem a bit later in the service, at the Offertory. Christ the King reigns from the cross. But the cross is not a gleaming wall hanging or a glittering piece of jewelry. The cross is an instrument of execution. This idea might be more powerful if we imagine Christ the King reigning from a lethal-injection bed. Christ the King is found not comfortably seated in a plush throne room, but held painfully in a position of abject humiliation and defeat. Christ the King is the Lord of the universe, yet he can’t overpower a nurse in a white lab coat, preparing a lethal, heart-stopping sedative. And yet … Christ rules from that lethal-injection bed. Christ reigns from that cross.

A death-row inmate reigns as King; an executed criminal is our monarch. For this to make any sense, we have to let go of just one idea about kingship. We have to hold at least two ideas together. Christ the King does not solve all our problems or defeat all our enemies, nor does he reign as a serene head of state, holding court in a palace. But he is also not just our good friend. Christ looms over all creation, yet dwells humbly beneath everything and everyone. Both, and.

Susan Cherwien offers two pairs of contrasting, both/and images. She sings of Christ as our “heavenly foundation,” neatly joining an airy, ethereal image to an earthy, concrete one. But my favorite phrase in Susan’s poem is this: Christ the King is our “wounded intercessor.”

Wounded intercessor: this King does not sit serenely on a gilded chair, orb in hand; no, his hands are marked with the humiliation of a violent execution. And yet he intercedes for us, goes before us; he carries our own wounds, our own grief, into God’s heart. When we in turn pray for the whole world — which is something we always do whenever we proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ — we too are wounded intercessors.

We are not mighty lords or warriors able to slay the dragons of Sin and Death, yet in our wounded vulnerability we rise up, together, to stand alongside all who are wounded, all who are vulnerable, all who are cut down and defeated. We take our SPiN wagons around the neighborhood to hand out protein bars and blankets not because we are pampered bluebloods living in palaces, but because we all get hungry, we all feel cold, we all are anxious about food and health care and shelter.

The royal road of Christ the King is traveled by people who know themselves what it’s like to be hungry; to be huddling unprotected in a rainstorm; to hear the doctor say, “I have something difficult I need to tell you.” Because we know what it’s like, we can draw alongside others who are suffering. The throne room of Christ the King is filled with comfortable chairs not for the haughty Queen Mary, but for people who are on their feet all day, tending the sick and keeping vigil with the dying, people who know all along that they will one day need tending, and need their own deathbed prayers. When you intercede for the world, a few moments from now, praying for the church, the nations, this community, those who are sick, and those who have died, you can only say these prayers as one for whom we also pray. You can only pray for the world from your vulnerable place inside this world.

When we baptize, as we will do yet again next Sunday, we anoint the newly baptized with fragrant oil, a ritual borrowed from the coronation liturgy for kings and queens. But we apply the oil in the shape of the cross — we trace the shape of an instrument of execution on the foreheads of the baptized. This anointing is echoed every year, in the springtime, when we are all marked on the forehead with a cross of ashes, a reminder of mortality. Healing and illness; nourishment and hunger; shelter and homelessness; companionship and solitude; power and weakness; virtue and vice; success and failure; life and death.

Such is the Way of our King. Such is the Way of the Cross. Such is our life in the realm of our Sovereign, where we reach out to one another to share God’s Peace, embracing one another with wounded hands.

It is always the end of the world

5 pm Homily 11.17.24 given by Laurel Tallent

The Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, by Yongsung Kim

“Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” It is tempting to make our gospel message today about us. About 2024. Like Peter, James, John and Andrew, we are anxious to know when catastrophe will visit to destroy the institutions that are foundational to both our daily life and who we think we are. 

It is reasonable to assume that this message is about the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE, a recent or imminent occurrence for the author of Mark and its first readers. It is reasonable to assume that this gospel message is about us - as there are wars and rumors of wars, and all of the other things Jesus lists as but the beginning of the birth pangs. But to focus only on the disciples' anxiety, to focus only on the destruction of the second temple, or recenter Jesus’ words on us and assume we are their true recipient, undercuts the good news in this passage: The world is always ending. The kingdom of god is always imminent.

Beware! Jesus warns. Not of the wars and rumors of wars, not of the famine and earthquakes. Beware that no one leads us away, towards themselves instead of Christ. Beware of people who appropriate his identity, saying “I am He”.  As Mark tells the story, the disciples Jesus is speaking to haven’t come to understand his identity yet, the identity of Messiah that “I am He” might imply. So is this a warning only to the reader, who’s been informed of Jesus’ identity at the beginning of Mark? Is it a message to all the recipients, those sitting on the Mount of Olives, in these pews and every place and time in between, whether we understand or not?

Perhaps those who claim “I am He” will perform signs and wonders - markers that were demanded of Jesus as proof of his identity, demands that he grew to openly disdain. From Mark 8, just a few chapters before our reading: The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, asking him for a sign from heaven, to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.” Perhaps Jesus is warning us that the supply we demand will come: people with a remarkably similar message we can believe in, plus everything he doesn’t provide: wish fulfillment, definitive solutions, prophecy, confident predictions that affirm or soothe our anxieties about when and how destruction will come.

Jesus leaves no instructions to prevent the ever present end of the world, or bring it about more swiftly, or survive once it arrives. Jesus is not a solutions guy. Eternal God made flesh arrives on the scene and we, along with Peter, John, James and Andrew sit on a hillside watching the sunset and ask anxious questions. Hand-in-hand with our beloved, an endless life together stretching out before us, and we ask for a time table.

The world is always ending, so the kingdom of god is always imminent. We will always be at the cusp of “these things being accomplished”. There is no deadline, no moment of no return where our work ends. This is good news. 

It is endless work, but not constant work. Like Adam expelled from Eden, released to toil in the earth for his life.  Like my union rep, congratulating us on winning our union this fall, saying “You guys! You fought so well! This is the beginning of fighting this fight forever!”. Like God creating. We will rest, we will experience pleasure and be joyful.

The agricultural metaphors for the kingdom of God weren’t written for us, so our understanding is inherently limited. Who among us is a farm hand in Judea, and can understand the nuances these metaphors must contain? But I return to them because they describe the never ending, but always changeable nature of our labor. And they promise that we will eat and be fed as a part of the cycle. It reminds us that a purpose of our labors is to be fed and feed each other.

One I turn to often is Psalm 126 - “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them” 

There isn’t a single harvest in our lives, is there? We weep with sorrow because our efforts for liberation seem hopeless. Every sowing feels insurmountable. It is tempting to turn to work that will feel more timely or provides the thrill of easy accomplishment, work that only looks like liberation. Work that will not feed us. But when we labor in the fields of the Lord, tilling through hardened hearts and our own bigotry, when we amend or burn what oppresses us and our neighbor, we WILL harvest, and rejoice and feast together, before we return to the field to sow another tenuous planting. The world is always ending, so the kingdom of god is always imminent.

The gospel today isn’t about you. But it is ALL about you. God’s gift of a son to Hannah is all about her joy and her security. God’s gift of a son to Hannah is so much more than Hannah’s joy and security. Even now, can we fully understand the meaning of Samuel’s birth on the cosmic scale? No. But we can look at our own children, nieces and nephews and grandchildren and connect with a sliver of the joy in Samuel’s birth, even without knowing what impact our little ones will have in this always-ending world.

This is How You Lose the Time War is an epistolary novel - we do love epistolary works here don’t we - that unfolds as a series of letters between two time-traveling agents named Red and Blue, who come from existentially opposed universes. They are at war, and leave their letters in surprising places throughout time and space, as their admiration of each others’ espionage turns to a star-crossed love story. In the end, the lovers are not saved by a resolution between their universes, a final act of war or a peace treaty. Neither universe wins, but our lovers might. In the final, not entirely resolved chapter Blue writes “There’s still a war out there, of course. But this is a strategy untested… suppose that we defected. Not to each others’ sides, but to each other? Shall we build a bridge between our worlds and hold it - a space in which to be neighbors, to keep dogs, to share tea. It’ll be a long slow game. They’ll hunt us fiercer than they ever hunted each other - but somehow I don’t think you’ll mind.

In our timeline, instead of committing our labor and thoughts to a definitive end of the world, and dwelling on when the kingdom of god will finally arrive, what if we create the space that holds both these things? It is always the end of the world. The kingdom of god is so, so close. 

I wonder what part of this gospel reading feels like it’s for you. I wonder which illustration - the agricultural metaphors, or an eternal love story, bring you joy. I wonder what you will do with that joy. 

Can we all agree that children should be kept safe?

Preached on the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 28B), November 17, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

1 Samuel 1:4-20
1 Samuel 2:1-10 (Hannah’s Song, in place of the Psalm)
Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25
Mark 13:1-8

Hannah at prayer, by Wilhelm Wachtel

“This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

Since 2018, I have sustained a daily text string with three seminary friends — Sam, Claire, and Chip. Our foursome came together when we were summer chaplains commuting to Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Our bond deepened when we stopped for chocolate shakes at Arby’s on our way back to Alexandria, and then listened to “My Favorite Murder,” a true-crime comedy podcast. We are now, I think, friends for life.

Sam and Claire now have two children each: Sam is the father of Mac and Rixey; Claire is the mother of Ruth and Sophia. Chip and I are, well, “childless cat ladies,” I suppose.

This past week, the four of us texted about the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, whose episcopate was brought down by a child-abuse scandal. We are all Episcopal priests now, so naturally we have all followed this story, more or less, and have formed opinions about it. 

Our opinions align with what you’d expect: the end of a career is a tiny hardship compared to the crushing burden of trauma suffered at the hands of someone you had been led to believe was a spiritual teacher and guide. Abuse by clergy and lay faith leaders is a particularly vile form of evil. It wounds the physical body, the psychological mind, and the human spirit, all three. Welby’s resignation is a bare-minimum consequence, not because he committed the crimes, but because for eleven years he failed to do enough to effectively establish clear safeguards in church culture. He did not protect children on his watch.

Meanwhile, like most of you, I have been coping in recent days with our ongoing national political crisis in the wake of the election results. And — I have reflected on the fact that I know precious few people who approved of those results. Like most everyone in the United States, I tend to live inside an epistemic bubble, a shelter that repels information and perspectives that I don’t want. But our epistemic bubbles keep people out, too. We stay inside intellectual and informational treehouses that screen out disagreement — but also disagreeable people — at the foot of the tree.

Because I find myself in this intellectual and informational treehouse, I find myself responding to the election results with a true desire to hear what other people have to say, particularly people who voted for the other candidates, people who disagree strongly with most of my positions and beliefs, even people who consciously voted against my own full inclusion in American society. I fully understand that many of us want nothing to do with voters who seem — or simply are — hostile and dangerous to many of us, and many of the people we love. But I really, truly want to hear from them. I admit that I’m nervous about the experience, and may be asking for more than I can easily handle. But I find it genuinely unsettling that so few people in my life strongly disagree with me about anything.

But I don’t just want to become acquainted with people on the “other side”. (And while we’re at it, the notion of the “other side” is fictional: despite the red/blue binary encouraged by mass media, there really are not two sides; there are some 335 million unique Americans.) But as I was saying, I don’t just want to become acquainted with those who disagree with me. I want to find common ground.

Finding common ground: this is a good step forward in the work of connecting across differences and disagreements, but it’s not the goal. In one theory that describes how to reach beyond one’s own culture, finding common ground is called “minimization.” It’s when we look for things we have in common, things that we generally agree on, perspectives we all mostly share. We are practicing minimization when we sing the hymn, “In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.”

Again, minimization is not the goal. Ideally we will move into cross-cultural acceptance, and then multicultural adaptation, the two skill areas that are more advanced than minimization. But I believe minimization would be a tremendously helpful next step for many of us to take. And so I want to talk with people, and search for things we agree on.  Now, these are not persuasion conversations! I am not campaigning for my favorite candidate or party. I just believe that we will elect better leaders, and improve the world, if more of us can — at the very least — minimize our differences long enough to recognize and affirm shared agreement about core principles.

And here’s one core principle I hold, and one I discussed with my three seminary friends. It’s one I expect almost everyone holds. Here it is: Children should be kept safe. That’s it. When I am conscious and sober, when I am deliberately trying to lead my life the right way, everything I do is oriented toward the safety of children. Everything. 

Consider my job: rector of an Episcopal parish. Caring for children is a tent pole holding up my whole vocation here. I repeatedly encourage everyone here to do this: together, we all count our children, learn their names, befriend and support their parents, engage their imaginations, open their minds, stir their hearts, ensure their safe passage into and through our buildings, indulge their sweet teeth, advocate for their political interests, even (and especially!) read the Bible itself through the lens of children’s dignity, children’s safety, children’s centrality.

After all, this is what Jesus does.

When his friends are marveling at the great stones that form the Temple, Jesus feels called to lead them into a new enlightenment, a new understanding of their mission: this Temple, made with human hands, will be destroyed, and everything that makes their world sensible and sane will disintegrate. Jesus speaks to his friends in apocalyptic terms. But he then employs the metaphor of childbirth to teach them how to understand their frightening times. He compares their struggle to the birth of a child.

Children at the center.

But before we go further, a quick sidebar: when Jesus talks about the apocalypse, he may sound like the self-styled “prophets” in contemporary Evangelical Christianity in the United States, the pastors and faith leaders who are rejoicing in the wake of the 2024 election, saying that the results were “God’s will” for a world in great turmoil. If they actually studied the Bible, these false prophets would realize that Jesus talks about the end of the world from the rubble of the destroyed Temple, that is, from the social location where all political leaders and institutions have failed. Not just the leaders of the groups our group hates — all of them. God’s will cannot be discerned in election results, even when our favorite candidates win.

Jesus trains his followers to do the work of the Kingdom no matter what’s going on, or crashing down, in the world. Churches that openly campaign for a politician or a political party are not, by definition, Christian churches. When the disciples admire the stones of the Temple, then, they’re being distracted by human leaders, human promises, human illusions.

And so, even though most of us are understandably gravely disappointed by the election results — and this disappointment is understandable; it is even an expression of allyship with the very people Jesus embraced and healed and raised up — even though we are disappointed, when we excessively focus on political institutions and politicians, we are getting a bit off topic. I do not apologize for my political commitments, and I am a proud supporter of particular politicians; but I am also a Christian on a mission, and that identity endures no matter what happens on election night.

But — back to the main topic: Jesus intriguingly uses the metaphor of childbirth. In doing this, Jesus affirms the dignity and experience of women, which alone is surprising, for his time. But he also touches on the core principle I mentioned before, the one I texted about at length with my friends, the one that I want to use to build a bridge to political opponents: Can we all agree that “Children should be kept safe”?

That core principle shines through my reading of the words of Jesus when he’s talking about the collapsing world around him and says, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

“The birth pangs”: what a curious metaphor, especially from someone tradition tells us had no children of his own! But it’s not the only time Jesus talks about childbirth, and children. Elsewhere he describes the joy of a woman who, after giving birth, quickly forgets the depth of pain she just suffered. (Jesus didn’t know about the chemical changes in a new mother’s bloodstream, but he likely witnessed this phenomenon because, as the oldest child in his family, he probably assisted his mother when she gave birth to his siblings.)

And Jesus of course deliberately and directly centers children in his movement, to the surprise — and initial disapproval — of his followers. “Let the little children come to me,” he says. Children at the center. 

Children live at the center of the Jesus Movement. 

And this tracks with the Bible Jesus studies, the huge portion of our own Bible that we call the Old Testament. Children were a sign of God’s love for the people. Hannah prays not for the redemption of her people or nation, but for a child. And through the birth of her son Samuel, the people of God flourish again. So Jesus draws on a deep well of wisdom when he centers children in our spiritual life.

And so, even though we live in a time of deep, angry, often violent disagreement, can an overwhelming majority of us agree on this principle: “Children should be kept safe”? I believe we can. I want to talk to the “other side” people, many of whom claim to follow Jesus, just like you and me. I want to ask them about children.

If we talk to those who disagree, we could easily be frustrated, even enraged. They could get pretty mad, too. Imagine the reaction of social conservatives if I said that keeping children safe is more important to me than protecting unborn fetuses. I could wade all too easily into the abortion debate, and mansplain to my political opponents that the Bible affirms that life begins at birth. It would be all too easy to fight about abortion — to fight about lots of things — and forget the core principles we share. We’ll have to be careful, and stay focused. The time for vigorous, healthy argument will come. Right now, I want to discover whether we both agree that children should be kept safe.

And what does this have to do with the destroyed Temple, with the mission of Jesus, with the anxiety people of conscience feel in apocalyptic times?

It has everything to do with all of that! Again, Jesus centers children — and young people, and newcomers to the community — and affirms their centrality in the spiritual life we share. So what might be his response to shattered institutions and corrupt politicians? Keep the children safe. What’s his interpretation of a world falling apart? This is but the beginning of the birth pangs — that is, our catastrophic world is ground zero for God’s people to give birth to a new Kingdom, a new world, a new Way. 

Is that too ambitious for you? Maybe it sounds like a pipe dream, like impossibly making the lemonade of justice from the lemons of widespread corruption and devastation. If it seems unrealistic, fantastical, a ludicrous daydream, that’s okay. But even if you’re not ready to hold out hope for the rebirth of global justice and peace, you can join the Movement. Even if you are fighting tooth and nail just to overcome that awful, sinking feeling of despair, you can do something positive, something real, something powerful, while the world burns.

You can tend to the child closest to you. You can be with them, delight in them, learn from them, lead them, love them.

You can keep the children safe.

"Superheroes Are Everywhere, Even Inside of You!"

November 10, 2024, 5:00pm sermon, preached he Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 27B) by Mark Lloyd Taylor, Ph.D.

Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17; Mark 12:38-44

Every person’s life tells a story. Every life. And the stories a community, a people, hold on to and tell and retell shape the lives of generations to come. Sacred stories. Like the story of Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi.

Now this evening, we heard just a snippet of the end of that story. We would have heard more last Sunday if the Feast of All Saints hadn’t taken precedence over the readings for the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost. Let me fill in what John Sutherland read to us a bit.

It’s a story of two women in a deeply patriarchal culture with virtually no rights and no way to provide for themselves without male next-of-kin: fathers or husbands or sons. It’s a story of insecurity. Food insecurity. Financial insecurity. Social insecurity.

Naomi was an Israelite woman back in the time of the judges – before Israel was ruled by a king. Naomi was married and had two sons. In a time of famine, the four emigrated to the neighboring, but foreign country of Moab in order to survive. Then, Naomi’s husband died – but she still had her two sons to support her. And they eventually married Moabite women named Orpah and Ruth. But then the sons also died. Leaving Naomi and Ruth and Orpah on their own as widows – threatened with being destitute. Naomi decided to go back to her extended family in Israel and told Orpah and Ruth to return to their own families. Orpah did, but not Ruth. She clung in love to Naomi, saying: “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16).

Back in Israel, Bethlehem to be precise, Ruth – now she’s the immigrant! – takes bold and creative advantage of a little codicil in the law of Moses that prohibited Israelite farmers from harvesting their fields all the way to the edges. They were commanded to leave the corners and the windfall for foreigners, widows, and the poor to find some way to try and survive. And so Ruth followed the women of a man named Boaz to glean the grain that they had dropped or overlooked. When Boaz heard about Ruth’s care for Noami her mother-in-law, and his kinswoman, he gave Ruth additional barley for bread and invited her not just to glean the scraps left behind, but harvest as much good grain as she needed (2:1-23). And you heard the end of the story. Boaz marries Ruth, granting both widows security. And Ruth has a son, named Obed, to Naomi’s great joy.

+++

The story of Ruth and Naomi hardly feels ancient. It could have come right out of the newspapers of November 2024 and from our television and computer screens. To make that connection, I want to read you a children’s book, published five years ago, that tells the story of another woman, a woman of color, daughter of immigrant parents. Kamala Harris and her book Superheroes Are Everywhere.

[Now if you had been in the upstairs worship space at St. Paul’s the evening of November 10, you would have seen me step from behind the lectern, put a chair in front of those gathered in the pews, sit, and read the book like an elementary school teacher, showing the pictures on each page. Here, instead, I’ll just list the superheroes Kamala discovered across her lifelong search, and encourage you to find the book and read it – maybe read it to a child, or read it as a child: Her mom. Her sister Maya. Her dad. Her grandparents in India and Jamaica. Her best friend in kindergarten. Mrs. Wilson, her first-grade teacher. Her neighbor down the street, Mrs. Shelton. Aunt Lenore, Uncle Sherman, Aunt Mary, and Uncle Freddy. Her aunt Chris, who like Kamala attended Howard University; her mom the scientist, Uncle Balu the economist, Aunt Sarala the doctor, and Aunt Chinni who works with computers. Lawyers Kamala looked up to: Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley, and Charles Hamilton Houston. All the people she worked with to help kids as a lawyer and U.S. Senator; and the amazing kids themselves. Superheroes Are Everywhere, by Kamala Harris, illustrated by Mechal Renee Roe (New York: Philomel Books – an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2019).]

Kamala Harris’ children’s book concludes with what she calls “The Hero Code” (pages 27-28):

“Do you want to be a superhero?

It’s easier than you think.

The first thing to do is raise your right hand and say the words on the next page out loud.

If you want to wear a cape while you do this, you can – but you don’t have to.

I PROMISE TO:

• make people feel special

• be someone people can count on

• help people be brave

• stand up for what’s right

• be a best friend

• be a good teacher

• be kind

• explore with my friends and family

• study and work hard

• protect people who need it

• make a difference when I can

I promise to be the very best me I can be!”

+++

This evening – surrounded by the many insecurities of November 2024 – I want to add a few promises to Kamala Harris’ hero code. I hope they might be our promises, not just as individuals but as a community, as we hold on to and tell and retell the sacred story of Ruth and Naomi.

Like those two poor widows – both foreigners in their own way:

We promise to endure.

We promise to claim our God-given dignity and agency.

We promise to harvest the gleanings from around the edges of our patriarchal and racist and homophobic culture for the flourishing of all God’s children.

For, remember, Ruth was King David’s great-grandmother. Her story continues in his life. And, twenty-eight generations later, David’s story and Ruth’s story and Naomi’s story lived on in Joseph and Mary and Jesus, the Anointed One (Ruth 4:17, Matthew 1:1-17).

Pastoral Reflection in Response to the 2024 Election

Dear friends,

My heart is heavy with grief and exhaustion. But my job is to preach the Good News, the Gospel, God’s glad tidings of justice and peace. 

I'll get to that, I promise. But we can’t just jump to the cheerful things. This is a profoundly frightening time. Many, many people are in danger as a result of our national election. And of course it’s not just the election. We are facing so many overlapping crises right now. We are worried for the safety of women, persons of color, and transgender persons. We watch with outrage as warfare kills innocent people. We can’t even trust that our kids are safe from deadly violence in the classroom. And of course, through all of this, we feel traumatic anxiety about climate change and extreme weather.

I sometimes feel like I’m suffocating under heavy blankets of fear, anger, and aching sadness. And not just today, not just last evening: I’ve awakened in the wee hours quite often, for many years now, worried about all that’s happening, all that could happen.

In times when I’m feeling deeply discouraged, I think about my mother, when she was dying of cancer, holding out hope for healing, for recovery, for the tumors to go down and the illness to go into remission. I remember her saying, several times, “Maybe I’m just whistling in the graveyard.” And yes, given that she did finally die of her illness, if she was only hoping for a physical cure, this was a false hope.

But I also remember that my mother did not die in despair. I remember that she did, finally, have a more nuanced and genuinely hopeful understanding of her illness, and her grim prognosis. She understood that healing and curing are not the same thing: that one can die of an illness with serenity, with peace, and with confidence.

My mother prayed fervently for healing, and healing came to her, even though a cancer cure did not. She wasn’t “whistling in the graveyard,” a cynical term to describe false hope. She was singing in the graveyard. Yes: this I believe; this I know. 

Here’s where I start my own song in the graveyard of this troubled world: I think of our tweens and teenagers at St. Paul’s, serving as leaders in our Neighborhood Action ministry, asking intelligent questions, pointing the way to a collaborative, intergenerational community of faith. In a time and place where this may seem impossible, one of our youth has become the driver of church attendance in their household, so that they can serve yet again in our companionship ministry alongside our neighbors who seek safe shelter.

Another tween here at St. Paul’s is a lector and an actor, a curious soul with intelligent questions about God, about suffering, about the meaning of biblical parables. His smile lights up a whole room as he joins us in delightful, creative ministry. Know this truth: these young people have a community that nurtures and supports them, and makes them ready to enter, and improve, this world.

Then I think of their parents, and all parents at this parish we love. Most of these parents fight chronic exhaustion to do all they can for their kids, and at our church they find some relief — relief given to them by all the rest of us.

Then I think of our elders, full of years, discerning their shifting roles and identities as they gather here year by year to say their prayers. And then it all comes together, for me: I sing in the graveyard of our fears, the graveyard of our anger, the graveyard of our aching sadness: I sing with resurrection joy about the intergenerational community of faith God has given us. This is the source of authentic hope for me in these terrible times: God’s answer to a collapsing world is communities with people of all ages, working together, praying together, serving together, singing together.

It has always been like this. The first Christian communities lived in a shattering time of oppression and state-sanctioned violence. Most of the New Testament was written amid the ashes of Jerusalem, sacked by Rome without mercy. In the accounts and letters of our forebears, we see their worries about chaos and death. We hear their concern that Jesus wasn’t coming back as quickly as they expected, as the first and second generations were beginning to die. “Where is our hope?” I hear them saying — I hear them crying out. 

Their hope comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, and that hope comes alive in their intergenerational house churches, their fellowship, their breaking of the bread and their prayers. They eventually changed the world for the better, much better, simply by coming together and forming the world they wanted to live in. God’s answer to a collapsing world is a community of faith. And then another community of faith. And then another. And then another, until they circle the whole world.

But I need to say one more thing about our faith — about Christianity. The first Christians lived in a world where their faith was universally unknown. (It wasn’t even yet called “Christianity”!) They were a tiny sect in a backwater of the empire. But in our time, people cause great damage the world over by misappropriating Christianity for partisan political ends. They weaponize our faith, perversely using it to terrify and harass trans kids; to rationalize violence; to separate families and deport migrants; all while paying no heed to the devastation of the land, rivers, and seas. They call themselves Christians, but they ignore Jesus when he says, “Put your sword back into its sheath!” They ignore God when God reminds the people that they should welcome the stranger, for they themselves were strangers in the land of Egypt.

And so we have more than one mission. Our primary mission, given to us by God, is not to win elections, but to cultivate this intergenerational community of faith for the health of our members, and for the health of our neighbors. But a second mission is this: when we stand here, in this corner of God’s good world, and preach Christ crucified and Christ resurrected, we reveal to the world an authentic Christian community. We reveal to the world the Body of Christ as allies of all in harm’s way, as partners in action and contemplation. We reveal to the world a just and peaceful future, over and against the bitter disappointments of our stormy present. We reveal to the world the true meaning of the cross of Christ. In all we do here, together, we are evangelists: we proclaim truly Good News.

Paul, our patron, wrote more than once to the church in Corinth, in Greece. We have his writings collected in two letters. Paul is often impatient with the Corinthians, who found it all too easy to give in to the way of the world: in the world around them, the Corinthians saw injustice and inequality, and their own meal practices started to devolve. Wealthier, better connected people sat in better seats; a pecking order developed; they often lost sight of God’s mission to change and save the world, one community of justice at a time. Paul encourages them, but he also upbraids them, takes them to task. He reminds them that the mission is difficult, but it truly does transform the world. In his second letter to them, Paul writes this:

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies [2 Cor 4:7-9]. 

You and I, we’re the clay jars Paul is talking about. We are mortal. We are vulnerable mammals on a planet that, against all odds, somehow supports life. But the treasure of God’s kingdom is stored inside us, between us, among us. And so, as we move forward into the fray, into the arena, we surely are afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down; but we are not crushed, not driven to despair, not forsaken, not destroyed.

“We carry around the death of Jesus,” Paul writes. That is, we are acquainted with death; we are companions of the dying; we are friends of the refugee; we are visitors of those on death row; we are often found comforting the sick in hospitals and sharing soup with unhoused campers. We Christians are well acquainted with death. In this sense, what happened yesterday does not come to us as a surprise. So goes the world.

But we also reveal the life of Jesus. Always with God’s help, we change this old world. We take our part in making it new. Oh, dear friends, how I love you. How deeply I want to embrace all of you, encourage you, buck you up, send you out. And there will be time for that. Feel your feelings today, drink water, breathe. But let’s keep coming back, okay? Come back to help our kids grow up with authentic hope. Come back to receive the wisdom of our elders. God is with us, and God gives us extraordinary power, visible in our bodies. And this — this gathered community of saints — this is our song of alleluia in the graveyard of this troubled world. May the Holy Three bless you and keep you.

Father Stephen

Which wolf is which?

Preached on All Saints’ Sunday (Year B), November 3, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44

A portion of the Communion of Saints tapestry at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles.

“Any [fool] can burn down a barn.”

This is a line from a movie, a quarter century ago. “Any fool can burn down a barn,” says a presidential candidate in the film, “Primary Colors,” a fictional take on a national election, nineteen-nineties-style. (Elections were different back then… but also not all that different.)

I have often recalled this movie line in the past few weeks and months. We’re on the brink of another critically important national election, another civic event with countless innocent lives hanging in the balance. In this time of polarization and catastrophic warfare, it’s easy to conclude that there are two kinds of people, two ways of being, two basic human natures. You can either be a wise person who builds barns, or you can be a fool who burns the barn down.

Now, of course, I want us all to be barn builders. But it’s much more complicated than a good/bad, wise/foolish, angel/devil binary: Each of us has the capacity for both: We all know how to build things up; we all know how to burn things down. Our behaviors and choices are usually a confusing, confounding mix. There is a battle raging inside each one of us: our essential human nature, made in God’s image, wants to build things up, but our broken, self-centered, ‘shadow’ self wants to burn things down. And our spiritual lives often determine who prevails.

This basic idea has often been expressed with a different, well-known metaphor, attributed to a Native American tradition, perhaps from the Cherokee: that within each of us live two wolves, a wolf that strives to be good, compassionate, and constructive; and a wolf that encourages evil, selfishness, and violence. Who wins? That’s easy: the wolf you feed.

But before we casually (or piously) reject the life path of burning down barns (or feeding our inner evil wolves), let’s consider the upside. Indulging your inner barn burner — letting yourself be a Big Bad Wolf — this comes with a pretty attractive upside.

If you prefer burning down barns and then choose to run for public office, it’ll be your race to lose. Sixty or so hours from now, most of us will be refreshing our screens anxiously, hoping to learn who will prevail in the political sphere. I want the builders of barns to win, of course: the optimists, the conscientious ones, the morally awake ones, those who make their share of mistakes but try to learn from those mistakes, those who really want to improve the state of the world and save innocent lives, even if they don’t always succeed.

But I know that if someone tries to build things up rather than burn things down, they’ll probably be the underdog. Constructive, restorative victories are all too rare in this burning world. For one thing, the choice to build is daunting. Builders have to do serious, difficult work. They’re held to higher standards. It can be hard to inspire people to do the right thing. (Many of our forebears in the faith whom we honor today were martyred for their trouble.) And — real talk — it’s also hard to resist giving in to your inner barn burner, your inner bad wolf. Sometimes the so-called “good guys” will feed that wolf, despite their essential good nature.

We human beings generally have a much easier time cutting things down, dropping things, burning things, than we do improving things, taking care of things, building things. I’m reminded of something a friend once told me. He was quoting his grad-school professor, the microbiologist Dara Wegman-Geedey, who said, “Entropy never sleeps.” Entropy never sleeps. Over time, everything — everyone — inevitably degrades, decomposes, falls apart. (“Heaven and earth will pass away” — that’s how Jesus puts it.) Tearing down, or just letting things collapse, is always easier than building up. Falling down — entropy — is an inherent quality of the physical universe we live in.

This means, of course, that choosing the honorable path is not just hard; it’s also not reliably fun. If you’re a “burn it all down” kind of person, then you’ve got fun on your side. It’s thrilling to be a heedless iconoclast. Nobody expects you to behave well. As a barn burner, you’re free to do whatever you like, whatever the consequences. If you want to burn it all down, you’re likely looking forward to the electoral chaos coming our way.

And yet we persist: we try to be builders. We gather here to praise one particular builder: Jesus of Nazareth. Scripture tells us that Jesus was the son of a carpenter or stonemason, making him literally an expert in the building trade! Faced with the untimely death of his friend, Jesus restores life: he builds; he pushes against entropy. Lazarus comes out of the tomb. Now, admittedly, Lazarus is still wearing his burial clothing, a sign that death will still come for him (“Entropy never sleeps”), in contrast to the risen Jesus, whose burial shroud is found neatly folded, back in his empty tomb. But even though death still lurks in his future, Lazarus is raised and restored. Jesus builds him up. 

But the raising of Lazarus isn’t ultimately about the resuscitation of a corpse. It is a sign of our shared identity as members of the Body of Christ. We are builders. We practice being constructive. We choose the life-restoring path. And we have a word for those who are noteworthy in this shared effort. Now, every single human person is made in the image of God, and every single baptized Christian is a fully qualified member of Christ’s Body. And, we have a word for those among us who, well, are kind of crushing it: we call our best builders saints. 

But, with respect, I want to clarify the idea of “saints.” Let’s be careful about this. Again, there are not simply builders and burners, saints and sinners. Each one of us carries both saint and sinner within ourselves. When we revere saints, we’re simply appreciating that though they are just like everybody else, a saint summons their better self more reliably than most of us. A saint directs most of what they say or do toward God. That’s all.

In the Godly Play liturgy, our children hear a definition of prophets that might work for all the saints: a prophet is someone who “came so close to God, and God came so close to them, that they understood what God wanted them to say or do.” So: you can be a saint. You are a saint! You have power within you, power given by God, power to build. Isaiah is singing to you, to all of us, when he says that God prepares a feast on the mountain, a feast that will swallow up death forever. That mountaintop feast is not dinner at an exclusive country club.

This morning, God will add yet another saint/sinner to our number, another being who houses two wolves, another builder and a fallible human who could choose to burn it all down. His name is Malcolm James, and he is two months old today. Hidden deep inside little Malcolm is immense capacity, massive potential. And before we baptize him in the name of the Holy Three, we will take responsibility for this powerful being, at the early dawn of his life.

We will promise to raise Malcolm together, even as his parents remain at the center, building a home to feed, clothe, and nurture him. (Ian and Jenny surely are notable, praiseworthy builders of barns. Saints, that is.) Malcolm will turn to them, but also turn to all of us, and learn from all of us, about both the builder and the burner within himself. He will need our guidance about which wolf to feed. And we will meet this need by feeding Malcolm from this mountaintop Table, where God only serves food that the good wolf finds appetizing and nutritious, and the bad wolf finds poisonous and disgusting. “My flesh is food indeed,” Jesus says, but that food nourishes only our best selves.

But it's complicated, this inner battle we’re fighting, individually and together. Our duty to Malcolm James is not only joyful, but also daunting and difficult. Again I say, even in a healthy community of faith, there aren’t just good guys and bad guys, saints and sinners. It’s messy.

And this messy but joyful struggle brings me back to Tuesday’s election. I feel strong hopes and fears about what will happen, much like everyone else. But I confess this, too: In recent weeks, I have often nursed a fantasy that if my favorite candidates win, I will yell in triumph at the TV. “Ha ha!” I will shout. In the fantasy I even gloat a bit: I call the vanquished politicians “losers.”

But if I indulge this fantasy, I will, alas, be feeding the bad wolf. Gloating is not what my best self does, even if I tell myself that my winner’s high is felt on behalf of the last and least, those who stand a better chance of surviving when the builders of barns prevail. We always have all we need to cultivate our inner saint, our true self who sees the good in even the most atrocious human being; and yet we always feel the temptation to tear down, to burn down, to destroy. Sometimes that destructive, retributive impulse feels so good, we can hardly believe it is the wrong path. 

This inner struggle we share is expressed well by two characters in a mystery series I love. Mercifully, in the final week of this seemingly endless political season, Louise Penny published her nineteenth mystery novel, distracting me from doom-scrolling when I needed her the most. And two of her characters took up this very topic: the saint and sinner within, the two wolves battling it out. And here is what they said about how difficult and confusing this battle can be. (Again, note well: the good wolves flourish when we’re surrounded by our companions in the faith!)

The two characters, French-Canadian homicide detectives named Armand and Jean-Guy, are talking about a villainous criminal they need to find, and in their conversation, they reflect on the complexity of human morality, in this conflict-ridden world: 

“‘We need to find [the bad wolf]. We need to stop him,’ said Jean-Guy. ‘Or her,’ said Armand, even as he [felt] his own [inner bad] wolf lift its head. ‘But there’s also a [good] wolf,’ [Armand continued.] ‘We need to find him too.’ Jean-Guy considered before saying what he was thinking. But finally, he spoke. ‘Are we so sure which [wolf] is which?’”

***

Notes

1. The actual word in the film, Primary Colors, is not “fool” but “jackass,” which I judged to be over the line for a sermon.

2. In the original text in the novel, The Grey Wolf, by Louise Penny, Armand “saw” his own wolf. In a sermon in which the quotation is taken out of its context and received aurally by a congregation, I judged “felt” to better communicate the author’s meaning.

3. In Penny’s novel, the two wolves are described as grey (good) and black (evil). In a sermon preached to a congregation that hasn’t read the book, I don’t want to identify the color black with evil: this is a controversial image, and could distract listeners who worry that this metaphor is racist, whether or not the writer was conscious of this problem, and whatever the writer’s motive. (I am entirely certain that Penny does not equate the Black racial identity with evil!) To use this quote in a sermon, I needed to modify it in this way to prevent any misunderstanding.

Are you ready to take the plunge?

Preached on the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost (Year B), October 20, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Martin Pommerenke.

Job 38:1-7
Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45

When the Ten Heard This They Began to be Angry, by KPB Stevens

One way to render the answer Jesus gives to James’ and Johns’ sophomoric desire for ranking in today’s Gospel is as Eugene Peterson transliterates it. In his version of the Bible, The Message, Jesus replies, “You have no idea what you’re asking... Are you capable of being baptized in the baptism I’m about to be plunged into?”

What a question for us today.

I’m a person that loves being beside and in water. The chaos and beauty of the tumbling waves speak to my soul. I love the image here of plunging.

What if we translate Jesus’ question like this: Are you powerful enough to be plunged into the plunging of my own doing that I will be plunged into? It’s a question for them and for us about whether they really know what’s coming and how they will respond.

When I think of this question, I remember back to June of 2020. I was standing on South Beach in Point Roberts. There on that early spring day in the warmth of the sun glittering on the water, I looked across the sea to the San Juans and beyond.

It was 2020, and I had come to the water to ask what had become of me and of the world.

The three months of what felt like unfathomably long pandemic isolation, necessary as they were for the health of everyone, had bent even the strongest spines. Mine too. I think the epidemic of loneliness that plagues our society became far worse for the very fortune ones able to continue working - and working from home at that.

In June of 2020, when the isolation orders had lifted, I was changed. We all were, and yet there was still a sense of confusion and unknown. We were on the edge of a new world. We knew we’d be plunged into something.

Standing there looking out - finally, after months stuck in Renton, I was on the shores of my home village. I wondered what would would happen with me, my seminary studies, my call to the priesthood, even my own long-term relationship. Had I fled back to my gorgeous place just to watch life and everything fall apart?

Standing at the edge of the sea became for me a lived metaphor for looking out with melancholy across the abyss of crisis.

Yes, I had come to the water because I’d already been plunged into a plunging that was somewhere between my own doing and someone else’s. I was looking to find identity amidst chaos. So I had come home, I had come to the sea, I had come to the water.

I had come to the water to ask, What has become of me? What would become of me? Of us? Of it all?

In their own way, James and John in our story today are facing their own existential crisis. They too, had come to the water - had come to crisis, for this is what the water is: roiling, fearful, hope. I think it no accident that Jesus speaks of baptism and plunging.

We might dwell awhile on the question James and John asked: let each of us sit, one on the right hand and on the left in your glory. Behind their request of Jesus they’re asking, what will become of us?

They’re so like us now, aren’t they? These hot-headed brothers - Jesus calls them “Sons of Thunder.” In crisis, they’re asking which one of us rivals will sit sit on the right - the dextrous, grabby side that gets stuff- and which one one on the left - the aristocratic side that gets to have choices.

Mark’s Gospel is all about power and authority. In their ask, James and John are exercising a kind of interpretive power that comes from framing a question. They’re asking Jesus not just to rank them ahead of the other disciples, even ahead of Peter, but to decide between them as brothers.

They’re trying to get ahead so they’re ready for what’s coming. Because Jesus had just reminded them again that the end is coming. For the third time, he told them plainly that he is going up to Jerusalem to be humiliated and killed.

Can we cut them some slack? They were facing a time of serious unknown, just like we were in June of 2020. A vague sense of worry and hopefulness all mixed together. Maybe in denial, certainly in anxiety, they asked Jesus about their ranking try to get ahead of what was coming, to get a handle on things.

Jesus doesn’t take the bait. He never does. Instead, he has them face their identity crisis squarely: who do you think you are, desiring this plunging of mine?

Have they forgotten? Jesus has just said he’s going to die. Do you really want a piece of this action? A slice of what I’m choosing? Jesus asks.

Are you ready to take the plunge?

When we come to the water, when we are in crisis, on the brim of chaos and hope, we ask ourselves if we are ready to be immersed into life’s wild, restless sea, as a hymn goes. We bravely wonder what will happen if it all falls apart. Jesus, give us our identity, tell us who we might be. This is the longing behind their desire, and ours, to be ranked.

We, like those brothers, think in our anxiety that when we know the ranking, when we do the ranking, we’ll have a better handle on what’s coming. Before we will be plunged into the plunging.

When Jesus asks them if they will join him, in being plunged into the deep end they say, “We are able. We have the power.” But what kind of power?

Our culture is a juridicial one that wants to rank each other amongst the good and bad. We all want this. To know our place in the pecking order. The tough times are when the clever ones climb the most.

Some of our feelings today are not unlike what I imagine James and John felt. Election Day is coming. For many of us, it’s a hazy time of dread. The rhetoric has gotten more hateful. We’re anxious, even fearful. And like James and John, we’re zealous about it all.

This week, Bishop Phil echoed what Father Stephen has already urged us to do - to vote - to participate in this process. This ranking, this choosing, is a necessary thing in the mess and scariness we’re biting our nails about.

Among those to be ranked are some who want us to go back to a time of greatness. Others would have us question who those times were great for. It’s not a partisan question to ask: what kind of greatness are we ranking? Will we choose to rank with the greatness in mind that is Jesus’ way?

Now, some of us are children of rage, like those brothers, those “sons of thunder.” Righteously angry, or just plain angry, many of us when facing crisis say the same thing. We have the power. For those on the margins, this can be a rightful claiming, a self-empowerment that demands what has been denied them.

For those of us like me who are traditionally-abled, cisgender white men, the claim “we have the power” is as true as it is dangerous.

So - Jesus warns us that those who want to be first will become slaves of everything. We who have the power become trapped in a self-created web of subjugation. When we dare to crave power, we manipulate and injure all the living to maintain it.

The way of Jesus, though, is that of servanthood. We have an icon of this in the Church: deacons. Deacons show us that making our own selves - and America - great again is about being humble servants.

Servanthood isn’t about being subservient. Deacons kick tail and take names, reminding us that stewardship is the only way to greatness. A stewardship that surrenders to the plunging, surrendering to God in it all.

Servants, deacons, show us by their lives that to really be Jesus followers, we have to give it all up to God, because all of it was made by God, belongs to God, and returns to God.

Is this time in your life like mine in June of 2020? Are you, are we, at the edge, in the sun, looking out at the abyss, into crisis? Like James and John, I wonder, and maybe you wonder, what has become of me, what has become of us, even as we have no idea what is coming.

Like them, we have a song we sing at water’s edge. A song many of us who grew up evangelical know well. It was written by Marsha Stevens of BALM - Born Again Lesbian Music. When we’ve come to the water, when don’t know who we are, we may feel abandoned, and unknown, so we sing to Jesus:
You said you’d come and share all my sorrows,
You said you’d be there for all my tomorrows.
But I’ve come so close to sending you away.

But our Savior says to us:
Come to the water, stand by my side
I know you are weary, you won’t be denied
I felt every teardrop, when in darkness you cried.
And I strove to remind you that for those tears I died.

Have you, like me, come to the water? Thirsty and longing and wistful, because we are not the same people that we were, because we wonder what has become of us after we’ve gone through it all?

Standing at the sea, looking out at the beautiful terror, the abyss, maybe we realize we have come to the the river. The Jordan river.

So we renew our baptismal vows, even amidst anxiety: we will be the church, resist evil, proclaim the Good News, love our neighbor, strive for justice and peace, respect the dignity of all the living.

Yes, we have come to the water at this time and this moment. Do we have the power - Jesus power - to be plunged into the plunging done by and to ourselves?

We who follow Christ know that we have already been baptized into water that is dangerous, but water we can be saved from - not by our own faithfulness, but by the faithfulness of Jesus. This is an alien power - for the power is not ours, but Christ’s.

Christ says to us today that true power at the edge of the abyss doesn’t come from where we think. It doesn’t come from tyrants, but from the one who made himself the least, whose death and resurrection we have been plunged into. We have come to the water, and with Christ at our side, the vista of crisis before is as lovely as it is broken and unknown. Christ gives us his power to be servants, to be deacons.

Let the water of the abyss, the vista of the unknown, the roiling waves of melancholy crisis remind us of our baptism. We’ve already been plunged into what saves us. Plunged into this water, we have given up being the first, we have become great, we have the power.

What Must I Do?

Preached on the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost (Year B), October 13, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.

Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Psalm 22:1-15
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:17-31

Such is the Kingdom, by Daniel Bonnell

The gospel passage today is about money. We’ll get to the money part. But first, we need to talk about the powerful emotions that are driving the encounter in this gospel.

A man ran up and knelt before Jesus. This is not a casual encounter. This is not a theoretical conversation about socioeconomics. This is also not a trap conversation, the kind of encounter in which a group of religious specialists try to trap Jesus into saying something that will get him into trouble.

Instead, this encounter is sincere, heartfelt, deeply personal, and urgent. This person runs to Jesus, and kneels, and asks his question. This behavior should remind us of the people who run to Jesus begging him to save a family member who is dying. This man who runs up and kneels before Jesus needs something. What he needs is a matter of the utmost importance, for him, and as we will see, for us.

The question he asks is this: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”, or more literally, “the life of the age.” This distinction in translation is important because the phrase “eternal life” implies that this question is only about the future, maybe about some sort of life after death. It may mean that, but I propose that it does not only refer to the future in this case, but is also about the present.

Later when Jesus is talking only to the disciples, he says that “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” It is important for us to remember that the kingdom of God means, first and foremost, not some future reality, but the here and now relationality between people. The kingdom of God is how we are called to be with each other today, not after we die.

The kingdom of God is not some reward for people who scored just enough points in the virtue game. The kingdom of God is about relationship, with God, and with each other. This is why the kingdom of God is always already now and is constantly inbreaking, or rather, why we are constantly encountering ways to access the only true reality of this Cosmos, which is the loving relationality that Jesus calls the kingdom of God.

So when the man runs up to Jesus and kneels before him, and asks his question, he’s not asking only about the future, if indeed he’s asking about the future at all. This is not a question about how to get into heaven. This question, and the heart of its urgency, is about how this man can be in relationship with Jesus. This question is about how this man can be a part of this wonderful thing that is going on, this new beloved community growing up around Jesus.

Jesus’ initial response is so gentle. He lists the major commandments that have to do with relationships between people. “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” These, by the way, are not unique. These are the basic rules for any and every civilization. These are the foundation of human society that survives. Frankly, it should be unremarkable to follow them. They are stuff of minimal, basic decency.

What is remarkable is what happens next. Jesus, who knows the innermost chambers of this man’s heart, looks at him, and loves him. This man runs up and kneels, and asks his one question of God incarnate, and Jesus looks at him, and loves him.

Hold on to this moment, this extraordinary tableau. I sometimes live in this moment. It is as if the whole Cosmos holds its breath, time slows to a near stop, and the eternal story of the longing of the created for the Creator, and the love of the Creator for the created, unfolds in this moment.

And the tragedy of this moment, from the point of view of the man, is that he has asked a question of the one person on earth who will unfailingly tell him the truth.

The question, remember, is this: what must I do to inherit the life the of the age? What must I do to be in relationship with you, Jesus? What must I do to be in right relationship with God? Not because I want to know how to survive some cartoonish examination by St. Peter in front of pearly gates. No, this man, and I with him, long for our beloved, for God. It is, more than anything else in this existence, a matter of life and death, because it is about more than this body–it is about the life of the heart that longs, the heart that loves.

The answer to the question is this: remove all that separates from God. Remove all that distracts from God. And at the top of Jesus’ list of things that separate, distract, prevent us from being in loving relationship with God, and with each other, is wealth. Over and over again in the gospels Jesus teaches us that wealth is a barrier to life—not the basic, rudimentary life of human society that requires only that we don’t regularly kill or steal—but a life of flourishing in the love of God, the life of the age, the kingdom of God.

For two thousand years, Christians, and especially clergy folk like me, have worked very hard to soften this teaching. There is some good reason for this. Part of my job is to look out for everyone in this parish, including people who may be wealthy compared to other people. I am supposed to stand up here and deliver a sermon that illuminates the good news. On the surface, it seems that unless I soften the message about wealth, I’ll fail in my job to be pastoral toward people with wealth.

But I believe that to soften the message about wealth in this gospel passage is to fail. Jesus, looking at the man, loves him. Jesus sees the longing of the man, and tells him the truth about how to achieve the thing he desires. Jesus is giving the man, giving us, what we need to hear.

We need to hear that wealth separates us from God, and from each other. We need to hear that it is hard for people with wealth to be in truly loving relationship with the people around them, or, I should say, us. I am a homeowner in this city. While I have had periods of my life in which I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay rent, or how to replace clothing that was falling apart, or whether I had enough change to buy my next meal, I’ve never actually been in danger of being without shelter, clothing, or food.

Given how many people are barely staying alive, including in this city, including on this block, by any reasonable measure, I am wealthy, and always have been. I am the man in this gospel passage. I don’t know all of your individual stories. Maybe you’re also in this gospel passage, maybe not. But if you are, like me, wealthy enough to not worry about the basics of life, then I think you and I are suffering.


But I think this suffering is so common, so expected, that we have learned to pretend that it’s not really suffering. I can tell myself that I am just living the best I can in economic systems I can’t change. I can tell myself that this is the way of the world, and I just have to make my peace with it.

But I challenge us to consider, if the world is unchangeable, then what was the Incarnation for? To not take this gospel passage seriously, to me, is like saying that Jesus just needed to show up to announce that we should say some magic words like “I believe that Jesus is my Lord and Savior,” and then we just have to survive this world until we die and the magic words act, like a password, to get us into the heaven club.

If that were the case, then when the man ran up and knelt before Jesus, why didn’t Jesus tell him he could keep his wealth, but perhaps give a little more to the poor from time to time, but that what he really needed to do was to say the magic words “I believe in Jesus.”?

So. The good news is that Jesus looked at him and loved him, and told him the truth. Jesus shows us the way. We might not like the way. We might not like the truth. It might be most inconvenient.

In my own case, I’ve heard this gospel before, and I haven’t followed the directions. I am guessing that is true for some of you too. I believe with all my heart that this means that I decide, day after day, that my wealth is more important than being in better, more loving, relationship, with God, and with you. And I am sorry for it. When Jesus tells the man the truth, he is shocked and goes away grieving. I sometimes am shocked by this gospel, and go away grieving.

The good news is that relationship need not be binary, either perfect, or nonexistent. I fail to follow Jesus as much as I could. Yet I believe that Jesus nonetheless looks upon me and loves me. Jesus on the cross looks at stubborn, selfish, me, and still wants to be in relationship with me, with all of us.

For those of us who intend to keep hoarding more resources than we need, I believe that in this time before we decide to follow Jesus better, we can be mindful of how our wealth can distract, and separate us from God, and from each other.

I see people at St. Paul’s working on this mindfulness all the time. I am so glad to be here, to struggle with this gospel alongside you. To the extent that I allow unjust economics systems to persist, pretending that I can do nothing to change the world, I beg for God’s mercy, and, frankly, for yours.

"Blow on the coal of the heart, my darling."

Preached on the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Year B), October 6, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Job 1:1; 2:1-10
Psalm 26
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

Jesus Loves the Little Children, by Ann Younger

I speak to you as any foolish woman would speak.

That’s right. I’m standing next to the wife of Job, right at this particular moment. I stand next to her in defiance of her suffering husband’s dismissive remark. He snaps at her, saying, “You speak as any foolish woman would speak,” and I’m on her side. She seems to find the problem of innocent suffering intolerable, and if God doesn’t answer for it, then she is not about to just shrug her shoulders and say, “Thy will be done.”

Girl, same.

It’s all too easy for Christians, it’s easy for all people of all faiths, or no faith, to minimize the problem of suffering. But our tradition offers authentic empathy, too. C.S. Lewis, the Anglican scholar and theologian, reflected memorably on the awful pain of human grief, and how that pain deepens when it appears that God is absent, or uncaring. "Meanwhile, where is God?” Lewis wonders. “...Go to [God] when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”

That’s rough. But it feels real. It’s an authentic human experience. It’s the cry of Jesus on the cross: “Why have you forsaken me?” We may cry out, too, as we grapple with the injustice and suffering that seems to cover the face of the earth, in Gaza and Lebanon and the West Bank, in Israel and Iran and Egypt, in Ukraine and Russia, in our routine school-shooting tragedies, in the storm-ravaged towns of western North Carolina, at every hospital bedside, along every dangerous highway, in the private agony of an addict, in our endless partisan Gotcha! politics, in states that make health care for women illegal: enough. Where is God?

We need a good answer.

Just yesterday I told one of you that my emotions these days are right below the surface. They feel like they’re up in my neck, awfully close to coming forth from me at any moment. My companion said he understood, and that he thinks it’s because of the state of the world. Many, most, maybe all of us are up to our necks in passionate feelings about all that’s going wrong, about unchecked and unending human suffering. (And not just human: yesterday, in the Blessing of the Animals, we talked about the suffering of millions of animals.)

So I say again: let’s get a good answer, an answer to the question: Why suffering? 

That’s the whole book of Job — that question. Why? And Job will haunt us with this question throughout the month of October, four Sundays in a row. This is right and good: Why suffering? may be the human existential question. I will turn to two sources for an answer.

But before I do that, I need to wade into a conversation that seems to be about something entirely different. I ask your patience while I seem to change the subject. I promise: I’ll bring us back. To aid our contemplations on suffering, I invite you to come along with me, and together we will listen in on an encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees. They’re not directly wrestling with the problem of suffering, but the problem of innocent suffering lurks beneath everything Jesus says and does. And so, yes, it can be found in this encounter.

The Pharisees — good, upstanding religious leaders — are testing Jesus. They want to trap him by asking a question about divorce. If he takes a hard line on the topic, he could end up like John the Baptist, who was beheaded after criticizing Herod for marrying his brother’s divorced wife. Like their question to Jesus about taxes, the Pharisees try provoking him about divorce, to put him in danger with the Roman authorities. 

Jesus avoids political controversy, at least for now. (Lethal political controversy is in his near future, in Jerusalem. But for now he’s safe.) Nevertheless, like John the Baptist, Jesus does take a sharp and radical position on the topic of divorce. He seems to be saying that divorce is never acceptable, ever. I say that he only “seems” to be saying this even though the text appears to be firm on this point, because it’s all too easy to misunderstand the text as rigid religious dogma. And that’s not what this is.

Unfortunately, that’s how it has been read, down the ages. Church leaders have misinterpreted this text to be a firm rejection of divorce, for any reason. They are ignoring what’s going on in the world behind the text, the world of Jesus and his followers, the world of the Pharisees, the world of the ancient Roman Empire. It’s always hard, even impossible, to understand a distant time and place, but let’s do our best. Jesus is taking a strong position on divorce because in his day, divorce usually harmed or even killed the woman in the couple. (It would gravely harm the couple’s children, too, and in this encounter Jesus quickly moves on to affirm the dignity and value of children.)

In short, Jesus strongly condemned divorce because divorce in his culture caused unjust human suffering. See? I told you: the problem of innocent suffering lurks beneath everything Jesus says and does.

But unjust divorce can cause damage beyond the couple and their children. If a man is divorcing his wife in a strongly patriarchal culture, he can damage his entire community, a close social network of kinship and cooperation. Remember that the Gospels are written by and for whole communities. Jesus, in his words about divorce, is teaching a communal ethic. If a personal choice would be unjustly harmful to our whole group, then we should pay attention to that, too, and not just the impact on one household. We should take our decisions quite seriously. Jesus is stern, then, about divorce: he’s not at all casual on this issue, or any issue that could harm someone. But he’s not saying that divorce is wrong in all times and all circumstances. That would be an ahistorical and simplistic interpretation. I encourage you to let it go.

And, again, we do not live in the time of Jesus of Nazareth. In our own time and place, we know that divorce is sometimes quite just, even essential; and we know that divorce can sometimes be abundantly beneficial to the person in the marriage who has less power and fewer resources. And we live in faith communities that are healthiest when every member of that community can freely make ethical choices that honor the well-being of everyone involved, taking to heart all the nuances, all the complications. Jesus is not about hard, flat rules, then or now. Jesus is about justice and ethics, with the most vulnerable members of our community at the center.

In other words, we should interpret the teaching of Jesus on divorce with our hearts first, and our heads second. Jesus does not establish legalistic, rigid, dogmatic rules. Jesus bonds us to one another in love. Our faith tradition does not ban divorce, but it does wrestle with it, as a discernment of the heart. What solution reduces suffering? What decision protects the vulnerable? We relieve human suffering — particularly innocent human suffering — when we discern all these difficult questions with our hearts.

And this brings me all the way back to poor Job and his exasperated wife. As we’ll see in the coming weeks, Job and his friends try to make sense of innocent suffering by using their heads: they try to reason their way to the answer. Maybe Job isn’t so innocent after all. Maybe his children sinned. Maybe Job should repent of his sinfulness, and all will be well. All of these answers fall flat.

The answer comes from the human heart. The dean of my seminary, Ian Markham, published a little book a few years ago, a book with the title — wait for it — “Why Suffering?” The whole book tackles the question before us today! Here is what Ian Markham says about suffering, a problem that requires an answer from the heart:

“The Christian ‘answer’ to suffering is not [a] head [answer]. …The Christian ‘answer’ [to suffering] is Good Friday. It is an answer that says this: you need to know that the Creator of the universe has been where you are. The Creator knows what it is to suffer. The Creator understands that despair. …We are being invited to trust. We are not granted the gift of seeing exactly why suffering is necessary, but we are invited to see that the Creator God who is responsible for this universe has tasted suffering and is involved in the hurt and pain of this universe.”

Once more: “[W]e are invited to see that the Creator God who is responsible for this universe has tasted suffering and is involved in the hurt and pain of this universe.”

But please take note: this ‘heart’ answer to suffering — the idea that God in Jesus tastes our suffering and is involved with us in the hurt and pain of this universe — this answer does not glorify or justify suffering itself. Jesus becomes human to relieve suffering. Jesus takes on suffering to destroy it. We should avoid two easy but dreadful mistakes: we should never assume Jesus makes hard, flat rules; and we should never conclude that God endorses or recommends suffering. These are heresies.

Jesus is not a grim enforcer of angry rules. Jesus is the dead and risen innocent at the center of our faith. And by teaching us how to form a new kind of community, an ethical, thoughtful, heart-centered community, a community that places its most vulnerable members at the center, Jesus teaches us how to bear suffering together, and relieve suffering together, as loving companions. Innocent human suffering is met by, treated by, and finally healed by human love.

I’ll close with one more take on the wife of Job, who speaks not with foolishness, but with an understandable human desire for relief, for healing, and for an answer or two. Archibald MacLeish wrote a play called “J.B.,” a modern take on the Job story. The character J.B., of course, is Job. In the play, his wife is called Sarah. At the very end, J.B. has survived all of his sufferings and his life is back on an upturn. But he is feeling badly shaken, still plagued with the eternal question, Why suffering? Sarah’s answer is not a ‘head’ answer, not a neat, systematic formula that explains everything. She offers her husband a ‘heart’ answer to this awful, nagging, infuriating question.

“It’s too dark to see,” J.B. tells Sarah, speaking literally and figuratively, both. (They’re in a dark room, but his mind is still darkened by his anxious thoughts about his trauma.) “It’s too dark to see.” The stage directions then say this: “[Sarah] turns, pulls his head down between her hands and kisses him.” And then she says, “Then blow on the coal of the heart, my darling.” 

“The coal of the heart…” J.B. repeats back to her, wondering.

“It’s all the light now,” Sarah continues.

“Blow on the coal of the heart.
The candles in churches are out.
The lights have gone out in the sky.
Blow on the coal of the heart
And we’ll see by and by …

“We’ll see where we are.
The wit won’t burn and the wet soul smoulders.
Blow on the coal of the heart and we’ll know …
We’ll know …”

This Is Our Time To Act

Preached on the feast of St. Michael and All Angels (transferred), September 29, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.

Genesis 28:10-17

Revelation 12:7-12

John 1:47-51

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. Which means that today we are celebrating something mysterious. It is mysterious because we at once seem to know a lot about angels, and very little. Angels are well attested in Scripture, including by Jesus in today’s Gospel passage. But what are they?

The mystical theologian of late antiquity whom we call Pseudo-Dionysius writes this about angels in the treatise called The Celestial Hierarchy: “…it is they who first are granted the divine enlightenment and is is they who pass on to us these revelations which are so far beyond us.”

Angels are messengers from God to us. That’s what the word “angel” means. It simply means messenger. But not just any messenger. An angel is a messenger specifically from God, passing on to us revelation of the will of God.

In Hebrew Scripture, angels tend to show up when it is time to confirm covenant with God. In the reading from Genesis this morning, Jacob dreams about angels at the moment that God confirms for Jacob the covenant made with Abraham and Sarah and Isaac. We may recall that when Abraham and Sarah encountered angels it was also an occasion for the confirmation of the promises of God. But this confirmation seems always to shake things up, to invite us to shift our perspective, to challenge our assumptions.

When ‘Jacob woke from his sleep [he] said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!”  He did not know it. This is what I mean when I say that an interaction with an angel can shake us, in a good way. Jacob learned that night something new about God, and about the place where Jacob was.

‘And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”’ Imagine being in a place that you do not expect to be the house of God, and receiving, in a vision of angels, the good news that where you are is the gate of heaven.

It is common to refer to a church as a house of God. I like to follow Paul, and the Gospel of John, in the idea that we as the Body of Christ, become the house of God. If a church is a house of God, it is because in it are people who bear the image of God, and who are doing their best to pay attention to God, to listen to God.

I like to think of the Eucharist as a gate of heaven, the fulcrum of the Cosmos. Jesus says to Nathanael, and to us, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

I believe that when we together celebrate the Eucharist, and enter into the mystery, trembling, maybe with a little bit of the fear of Jacob, maybe a little bit with the glad astonishment of Nathanael—I believe when we enter into the mystery of this sacrament together, we are encountering the awesomeness of a time and place when God is with us, in Christ.

And I believe that it is possible that there may be angels “ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” when we gather to offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

Angels are messengers of God that confirm our covenantal relationship with God, and in the Gospels, confirm Jesus as the Son of God, the Logos, the Christ. And in confirming Christ, angels confirm Christ in us. But angels can only do so much. They are messengers. They are not God. They are not Jesus the Christ. Nor are they us.

In the reading from Revelation, Michael and other angels do a lot. They engage in an epic battle. It conjures extraordinary scenes of beings of awesome power, beings that in many ways, to echo Pseudo-Dionysius, are “so far beyond us.”

If we are not careful, we could interpret this to mean that angels are taking care of everything. Sure, we should do the usual things of loving God and loving neighbor, steadfastly following the Way of Jesus as best as we can, together, but perhaps in the end, at the time of this epic battle, we are mainly spectators, watching the angels do their thing.

Not so. Notice that in the reading, after the battle between the angels, the decisive defeat of the Accuser comes through the action of people. Let’s hear this part of the reading again: ‘Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming, “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah, for the accuser of our comrades…” —“comrades” here means followers of Jesus, confessing Christians— “for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. But they [the comrades, Christians, us!] have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.

People, us, conquer the accuser by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. We are to conquer the accuser through Christ. We are not bystanders in this struggle. We do not only tremble. We also act. Jacob, once he collected himself, renamed the place he was as a place of God. He confirmed his covenant with God. Jacob heard the message of angels, and he acted.

In Revelation, the followers of Lamb witness the work of angels, and they act. We, here today, set aside time and space to pray, to consider together the mystery of the angelic order. Today we bear witness to the ministry of angels throughout Scripture, and throughout the history of the traditions of the Church. And directly pursuant to our witness, comes our action.

This is our time to act. The angels have done what can. They have conveyed the message, the good news, that our God is in intimate, faithful, covenant with us, and that Jesus Christ is indeed the Son of God, and that we are to listen to him, and to follow him. We are to love God, and love our neighbors as ourselves.

Let us gather at this table today in a spirit of action. The heavens have opened, the trumpets resound, and Christ wins the victory over despair, over the Accuser, over death itself. We are not bystanders in this, but are to participate, here and now, in Christ’s victory. Let us share the bread, knowing that the Lamb has poured out his blood for the reconciliation of all, and be courageous in our testimony, to each other, and to all the world.

Jesus said to her, "I AM the Life"

Preached at the Requiem Mass for Tracy Steen, Saturday, September 28, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.

Wisdom 3:1-5, 9
Psalm 139:1-12
Revelation 21:2-7
John 11:21-27

Jesus said to her, “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.”

I want five more minutes with my father. I just need five more minutes. Now, I am relieved to say that we really are at peace, me and my dad, following his death last November. My wish for five more minutes is not debilitating, not terrible. But I just want one more chance to say a few good things to my father. And while we’re on the topic of personal grief, I would need many more minutes to catch up with my mother, to meet her now, now that half of my own lifetime (and counting) has unfolded after her death. My mother never met Andrew. In certain important ways, she never met me.

Jesus does not directly speak comfort to me in these reflections of mine about my departed parents. Jesus doesn’t speak simple comfort to any of us who are grieving today for our departed brother in Christ, Tracy. Jesus simply but complicatedly says this to us: “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” He does not say, “Oh, you’ll get your five minutes, and more, with your beloved dead.” And he certainly does not say, “Oh, there is no death; death is an illusion.” We Episcopalians say — and will say this very afternoon — that in death “life is changed, not ended,” but that’s as far as we’ll go on minimizing the sting of death.

It’s understandably not far enough for many people.

There is a poem that sometimes appears in our popular culture when someone dies. It is a favorite in funeral parlors, or on the back of memorial prayer cards. This poem was written nearly a century ago by Mary Elizabeth Frye, no doubt with the heartfelt intent to bring comfort to the grieving. It goes like this:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die!

I say this with true respect, but as a follower of Jesus, and as a leader of a spiritual community that follows Jesus together, I, and we, must set this poem aside, firmly, as outside our tradition. We must say No to these soft sentiments, however well-intentioned they may be, and we must assert that they carry in them a terrible falsehood, the notion that those we love but see no longer “did not die.” They did die.

Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from death, but not before Lazarus is confirmed to have died four days before. (Four days was understood in that culture to be one day beyond the soul’s ability to linger in the body of the deceased.) And whatever the condition of Lazarus at any point in the story, Jesus himself weeps in sorrow and in fury before the plainly factual triumph of the Power of Death, and the anguish Death causes in us. Jesus knows the bruising, piercing sting of death. And the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha — they would also have no time for Mary Elizabeth Frye’s reassurances. No.

“If you had been here, my brother would not have died!” Martha says. Later on, Mary says — Mary cries out — the same thing. This is a lament, but also a rebuke. And Jesus doesn’t defend himself in response to Martha. He does not deny either part of her complaint: she’s right — he wasn’t here; and she’s right — Lazarus did die. True, and true. He simply says, “Your brother will rise again.” 

But Martha, brave Martha, good Martha, exemplary Martha, a saint who in my book is a patron of all who grieve: she misunderstands Jesus. “Your brother will rise again,” he says, and she assumes he’s talking about the far future; not about today, but about someday. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day,” she says, and in my hearing, she’s almost, almost rolling her eyes. (That’s just in my hearing! It’s just how I would say it.) “I know, I know, I know,” I might say, when I’m deeply upset about something, and a friend is reassuring me that it’ll all work out in the end. In our psychologically-minded age, we could hear Martha indirectly telling Jesus here that he’s just not validating her feelings; he’s not validating her perspective; he’s not validating her. “Your brother will rise again.” Okay, yeah, sure. Aren’t you just saying, Jesus, that I’m overreacting, that I need to calm down?

No. He’s not saying that at all. And however Martha felt in that moment, and whatever the motives of her misunderstanding, and if she was making the mistaken assumption that Jesus was just offering soft comfort in a hard time, like that old saccharine poem denying the reality and finality of death, Jesus responds to her “I know, I know” statement with this startling declaration: “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.”

“Your brother will rise again.” “Sure sure, of course, he’ll rise again someday.” “No, Martha. I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” “Okay, well, that’s good to know. Thank you for your words. Thank you for coming to pay your respects.” “No, Martha. I AM the Resurrection and the Life.”

The Resurrection and the Life. Resurrection and Life are different things. “Resurrection and Life” is yet another biblical coupling of similar things or ideas, like “powers and principalities” or “your rod and your staff” or “patience and steadfastness.” Resurrection and Life: aren’t they the same thing? Yes and no. 

Yes, Resurrection and Life flow into and out of one another: you could express them in one idea, like this: we are raised up in life by Jesus. But no, they are distinct. God in Jesus resurrects all creation to abide with God; but the abiding itself is what Jesus means when he calls himself “Life.”

Life, for us mortal humans — Life is abiding with Jesus. Lazarus is raised to life by Jesus the Resurrection. But then Lazarus rejoins his sisters and their community; he rejoins them in the Life of abiding with Jesus. We see Lazarus a bit later on, when a woman anoints Jesus with precious oil. We can imagine Lazarus among those, like the Beloved Disciple, like Mary Magdalene, who rested their head on the chest of Jesus, with astonishing intimacy.

Life is abiding with Jesus. “I AM Life,” Jesus says. (I momentarily clipped out “the Resurrection” from his statement so that we won’t lose “Life” in the glare of the vivid notion of Resurrection.) “I AM Life,” says Jesus. And Life is abiding with Jesus.

Our brother Tracy understands this. Tracy does not take his life for granted. He doesn’t take leading a life for granted, either. (It’s one thing to appreciate the simple gift of life, but it’s a separate blessing to lead that life, to embrace it, to seize it.) Tracy did this, and does this even now. Tracy cherished his life after he came so close to losing it in a shooting: he appreciated the fragility of life in this perilous world. But Tracy also savored life with his friends on this wondrous planet, a world chock full of fascinating cities and beautiful places and lovely people. 

Tracy’s good friend Ruth remembers that Tracy would arrive early at St. Paul’s when we held a monthly community dinner for this neighborhood. He would do all the things volunteers did for that dinner: not just cook the meal, but dine with the guests; not just dine with the guests, but help with cleanup. Tracy understood the ethic of that ministry, which was grounded in the truth that Jesus did not feed the hungry, he ate with them. (He abided with them.) But Tracy took it all one step further: he arrived early to work in our labyrinth garden, collecting flowers for the dinner tables.

In all of this, Tracy abided with Jesus: Tracy rested his head in tender intimacy with Jesus, because Tracy cared for everyone Jesus loved. Tracy cared for the guests at the dinner, but also the cooks and servers and the cleanup crew. Tracy cared for everyone seated at the tables, delighting them with the beauty of flowers; but he also cared for everyone at St. Paul’s, all of us who say our prayers next to, and inside, this garden, right here. 

And so we grieve. We grieve Tracy’s departure from our midst. Tracy has died. And in our grief we might want to cry out to Jesus, “If you had been here, our brother would not have died!” And if that is our lament, then in Jesus we have found a companion — The Companion — who understands our complaint even better than we understand it ourselves. “Tracy will rise again,” Jesus then says. And we’re tempted to reply, “Of course, of course, we know, we know.” Big deal. But then Jesus cuts across our dismissal, and says again, says always, in words that ring through the universe: “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.”

“I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” Tracy has died, but even now Tracy abides with us in the Community of the Risen One. Even now our garden — trapped beneath a giant construction crane — our garden vibrates with the joy that Tracy cultivated there. Even now, this neighborhood is changed and gladdened by Tracy’s ministry, and by ours.

Jesus does not say, “Do not grieve.” Jesus is not such a heretic. We may grieve all we want. Our grief is just another color, just another fragrance, in this ever-growing garden of Resurrection and Life.

Welcoming the Child

Preached on the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year B), September 22, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Mark Lloyd Taylor, Ph.D.

Mark 9:30-37

Beatitudes Cross, created by the children of St. Paul’s

Mark the Evangelist – Saint Mark, not me – Mark is a storyteller. The first Christian to compile a narrative of Jesus’ adult ministry of words and deeds, his passion and his death, and the promise of risen life in him. Better: Mark the Evangelist is a weaver, skilled at repeating and intertwining different story lines, different colored threads to create a vivid and intriguing tapestry.

Picture two green threads running down the fabric of Mark’s gospel. Two stories of Jesus, his hometown, and his family. Reminding us that Jesus himself was both sibling and child. The hometown folk take offense at Jesus and his family comes to restrain him, worried that he has gone out of his mind. Who are my mother and brothers, Jesus asks? And then, looking around the circle of strangers crowded into the house with him, answers: Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

Mark also tells a pair of stormy sea stories. Blue strands. Jesus stills the storm. Jesus walks on water.

Not one, but two stories of Jesus feeding hungry multitudes from just a few loaves and small fish. Brown threads woven into the gospel tapestry.

Three bright red strands run across the fabric the other way. Stories of children in great peril. Their parents begging Jesus to help, demanding even. Jairus the synagogue leader’s twelve-year old daughter at the point of death. The Syrophoenician woman with her demon-possessed child. And a man whose son has been tormented and kept from speaking and hearing since childhood by an unclean spirit. Jesus responds to all three with words and deeds of healing.

And Mark weaves in heavy purple threads. Three of them. The repeated story line of Jesus teaching his disciples that he must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the leaders of his own people, and be killed, and after three days rise again. We heard the first of these proclamations of the passion, of what it truly means for Jesus to be God’s anointed, in last Sunday’s gospel reading, and the second this morning. The aftermath of the third awaits us next month.

But what knots all these narrative strands together – green, blue, and brown; red and purple – are two golden stories of Jesus welcoming children into the intimate circle of his followers. Welcoming the child as a human being who has much to teach all of us adults about the kingdom of God.

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The story lines of the passion and the child get vividly braided in today’s reading from the gospel of Mark (9:30-37). Jesus and his disciples are passing through Galilee on their way back from Caesarea Philippi where Peter confessed Jesus to be the Messiah but mistook the meaning of his confession. So, for a second time, Jesus tries to teach the disciples that he will be betrayed into the hands of the political and religious authorities, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again. And, for a second time, the disciples fail to understand what Jesus is saying. Instead of being torn open in costly love, as Father Stephen put it in his sermon last Sunday, instead of embracing the cruciform truth that we lose to gain and die to live, they argue with one another about who is the greatest. Who’s number one? The strongest. Most important. Always victorious. Never a loser.

When they get back to Capernaum, and when Jesus catches wind of what they had been arguing about, he sits the twelve down, sits down with the twelve to set them straight about true greatness. Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. Then Jesus took a little child and put the child in the center of the circle, and taking the child in his arms said to his disciples: whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the God who sent me.

The interweaving of silence and speech, speech and silence here intrigues me. Jesus doesn’t want the public, the crowds, to know about their journey through Galilee because in private – just among themselves – he breaks the silence about his impending passion. He speaks of dying and rising out loud and openly to his closest followers. They fall silent – they did not understand and were afraid to ask. Later, in the house, Jesus continues to speak directly to the twelve: What were you arguing about on the way? And they remain silent, even though they had had plenty to say earlier, when they argued who was greatest. Jesus talks about first and last and servant of all and then puts the child among his disciples. A silent child, for the child never speaks. Nor does Jesus speak to the child, but rather to the so-called adults in the room. Jesus doesn’t even speak about the child. Instead, he simply welcomes the child into the circle. Welcomes the child to speak silently to the twelve. To teach them using non-verbals.

But why? And how? Why allow or even invite a child to teach adults? How does a person speak non-verbally? What should we make of Jesus’ invitation to listen as adults to the silent eloquence of children? What might we, sitting in something of a circle of our own this September Sunday morning, learn from Jesus and the child?

Jerome Berryman has responses to these questions. Berryman created the Godly Play program of children’s Christian formation used by many churches around the world, including here at St. Paul’s. He passed away in August – and so my words offer a brief tribute to him.

Although he used to joke that Godly Play is more fun to do than to talk about, Berryman does write that by teaching children Godly Play lessons, the adult storytellers become “genuinely mature human beings.” That Jesus put “the silent child, the other ‘text’” – beyond words and concepts – “in the midst of the disciples to teach them and us about the kingdom of God.” That Jesus’ goal was to welcome the “child’s ability to teach adults about their own maturity.” That to put into practice a theology of childhood is nothing less than the project of “perfecting and saving humanity.” That – quoting theologian Karl Rahner now – “a child of God is an adult who approaches life with radical openness.” In fact, Berryman makes what he calls “the silently eloquent ‘discourse on true greatness’ by the child” in our gospel reading from Mark central to his own theology and practice of children’s formation.

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Berryman’s words ring true. So true. The children of St. Paul’s have taught me all this and more over the past twenty years. For Jesus has placed children in the midst of our circle. Better: Jesus comes among us as the child. Here’s a tapestry of things I’ve heard them say, along with what I learned.

Once, at this communion rail, I served a child the chalice – maybe the first time they tasted wine. They puckered a little and smacked their lips and said: “Mmmmm…, spicy!” My learning: something’s wrong if our sacramental life as a community – baptism and Eucharist, marriage and ordination, and the rest – is bland, flavorless, inoffensive.

Another time, a new family came forward to receive communion and a parent worked hard to get their child to kneel on one of those cushions. But the child pushed back with: “I don’t know about kneeling!” What messages do the non-verbals of our liturgy send? For our postures and gestures may speak louder than words. How do we both welcome newcomers and old-timers alike with our body talk and still keep asking questions about why we do what we do?

Years ago, after I told the lesson on Jesus’ Parable of the Leaven, I asked the first to third grade Godly Play group: “I wonder if you have ever come close to something little that caused such a big change, like the leaven hidden in all that flour?” A child replied immediately: “Human beings. We’re so small, but with global warming we’ve caused big changes to the earth.”

And just last Sunday, I had the honor and felt the heavy weight of trying to share with the current Godly Play circle the story of Cain and Abel. A lesson created by our own BJ Ohlweiler, the one who has welcomed more children and their wisdom for more years than any other adult around St. Paul’s. BJ frames the story of Cain killing his brother Abel as what happens when we choose not to honor the image of God in others. As we wondered about the story, one of the children put on their best theologian hat and taught us all that the image of God looks different on each of our faces – and that by being ourselves, by looking just like ourselves, we reflect God’s nature.

But, I need to remind myself, the child Jesus placed among his disciples two thousand years ago and places among us today can be a silent child, who teaches nonverbally. As Jerome Berryman also writes: Adults learn not so much from what children say, as from how they are. Not “what they say,” but “how they are.”

I’ll never forget the time a parent served as lector at St. Paul’s 5:00pm Sunday mass with their several-month old baby gently but securely held to their chest by one of those soft sling and strap contraptions. The child did contribute to the reading some sounds of their own. But mostly, they just were. It was strangely moving to see a little baby in such an adult context. Something about embodiment and juxtaposition. About living scripture out, even the hard readings with their sharp edges, or just the weird ones. I couldn’t help noticing in the icon that stands behind and to the right of the lectern downstairs where adults read scripture, that Blessed Mother Mary presents her infant Jesus to us face outward, while the other baby in the room that evening faced in toward their parent. We all need to snuggle into a loving, protective, and supportive human being even as we turn to look out at the world around.

Or the three-year old a few weeks ago who, after receiving communion and lighting a candle at our upstairs image of Mary and baby Jesus, walked alone (with Mom watching), all the way from west to east along the communion rail, using those kneeling cushions as a path of pilgrimage – touching the long wooden rail with their hand as they passed by and then continued up the side aisle that looks out on the Bolster Garden where our dearly departed have been put to rest. The child tracing for us the mysterious thresholds of life and faith. The child vulnerable and receptive. Playful and creative. Able to improvise with what’s right in front of them, at their fingertips and under their feet.

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Some of you may have seen it coming, but how could I end this sermon without a few Godly Play-style wondering questions?

I wonder what you do not understand about Jesus and the kingdom of God but have been afraid to ask?

I wonder how you might welcome the children in and around your life more fully, welcome back, perhaps, something of your own childhood, and allow the child to teach you to become a fuller human being?

And I wonder what it would feel like to have Jesus take us, each and every one of us children, into his arms?

Resources

As background to the Gospel of Mark as a tapestry of interwoven stories. Jesus and his family – Mark 3:19b-22, 31-35 and 6:1-6 (green threads). Two stormy sea stories – 4:35-41 and 6:47-52 (blue). The feedings of the five thousand and the four thousand – 6:30-44 and 8:1-10 (brown). Three children healed – 5:21-24, 35-43; 7:24-30; and 9:14-29 (red). Three proclamations of Jesus’ passion – 8:27-9:1; 9:30-32; and 10:32-45 (purple). And the two golden stories of Jesus welcoming the child/children – 9:33-37 and 10:13-16.

Jerome W. Berryman (1937-2024) and Godly Play. The first volume of the curriculum books lays out the theology and practice of the whole enterprise. All my quotes come from: The Complete Guide to Godly Play, volume 1: How to Lead Godly Play Lessons (Morehouse Education Resources, 2002, 2006), pages 108, 116, 119, 120, 124. Berryman refers to Karl Rahner’s essay “Ideas for a Theology of Childhood,” in Theological Investigations, volume 8 (Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1971), pages 33-50.

You lose

Preached on the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year B), September 15, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Proverbs 1:20-33
Psalm 19
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38

Christ and his disciples, by Dan Comaniciu

“[Jesus] rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’”

What are divine things?

What are human things?

I will start with some human things, and hopefully a new understanding of divine things will emerge from them.

Here’s a human thing: I am setting my mind on candidates up and down the November ballot. So far, I feel good about my decisions. I’m supporting a growing slate of candidates not because they have all the right answers or do all the right things, but because I am persuaded that they are the candidates who will listen to friend and foe alike, and who will submit to accountability in moments of failure or wrongdoing. They are far from perfect and will always need loyal opposition, but I am confident that the world will be a healthier place if they’re in the city hall, the courts of law, the governor’s mansion, the halls of Congress, and the White House. If they lose, I will be deeply disappointed. In one case, I may feel utterly devastated.

But this is a human thing. Jesus did not endorse my candidates. Jesus endorses no candidates, no governments. Jesus rebuked his friends when they imagined him as a political savior. I may feel crushed if my candidates lose, but Jesus — Jesus is not about that. Jesus doesn’t speak to this concern of mine, at least not directly. 

Now, “human things” are not necessarily bad things. They are not unimportant things. God made humans in God’s image and likeness: God surely understands that we humans will set our minds on human things. (And please, please vote! Voting is a powerful expression of our faith.) But God in Jesus directs our attention ever higher, eternally beyond the level of electoral politics. God in Jesus directs us to divine things, which are both more fundamental (meaning: closer to the bone), and more ultimate (meaning: of universal importance).

But this is a hard teaching. Consider these other human things, lovely things that I very much don’t want to disregard: I love my husband and our home and our dogs. I love friends, and I especially love a positive, conflict-free friendship. I love St. Paul’s and dream about our future here, every day — really: every day. I want to care for my family and my church. I want to repair relationships when they break. I want everything I know, everything I touch, to thrive, to be good, to be sound and whole, peaceful and joyful.

And yes, of course, these are human things, but surely you agree with me that they are good things! I wrote a book about the joy of repaired relationships! A religious, theological book! Jesus surely is not opposed to any of this. And God dwells humbly in and with all of these things. My marriage: God dwells there. My dog walks: God inspires every step of those walks, even the ones when I have a short temper about dogs being dogs, stopping constantly for who knows what, setting their minds on canine things. When I simply vacuum my house or pick up litter around the church, God’s creative energy flows through me. These are all good things. But … they are human things, and Jesus rebukes Peter for setting his mind on human things.

So: let’s ask the question and let’s get a good answer. It’s actually two questions: If the human things are often good and worthy of our attention, worthy of us “setting our minds” on them, then one, why does Jesus rebuke this; and two, what are divine things?

Here are my answers. First, Jesus discourages us from setting our minds on human things because they all too easily distract our attention from one ultimate concern, one divine thing that transcends everything, something beyond all of our strivings, our passions, our commitments, our vows, our friendships, our financial priorities, our possessions, our careers, our homes, this building (this beloved building! oh how I have set my mind on this lovely human thing, and fully intend to continue doing so!) — Jesus wants me, you, us to set our minds on something more fundamental, more ultimate. 

And second, this is the fundamental, ultimate thing; this is the divine thing: Jesus wants us to set our minds on being torn open in costly love. 

We are to set our minds on being torn open in costly love.

Consider again what Jesus says, calling the crowd to get close so that everyone can hear: “He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’”

So it works like this. If I set my mind on the human thing of electing a good political leader, that is a good and productive thing to do. It’s even something my Christian faith inspires me to do. But I am not really following Jesus until I allow the things that that good leader cares about — and the things I care about — to tear me open, to nail me to a cross. I’ve had arguments with people about the ideas and issues that drive my political involvement. The divine thing that fires those arguments is my willingness to enter that fray even if it tears me apart.

So: What do my candidates stand for? Lots of good things, but in my particular journey of faith, Jesus cares ultimately about what I stand for — what I stand for so strongly that I would be willing to die for the cause.

Jesus cares, in turn, for what we stand for, all of us together, here in this Christian community. What will we all, collectively, stand for, even if it nails us all to the cross? Remember, he called the whole crowd together for his teaching on this. He wants us all to set our minds on the divine things.

All of the human things — our families and friendships and homes, our vocations and possessions and public elections — they matter deeply to us, but the divine thing for Jesus followers is our willingness to be torn open in costly love.

And at the very same time, we must recognize — with sober humility — that many of God’s people, a majority of God’s people, do not enjoy a choice in these matters. They are nailed to the cross whether they choose it or not. One of our siblings in Christ — their name is Phelps — reminded me this week of the book by theologian Howard Thurman called Jesus and the Disinherited, which focuses on the identity of Jesus as one whose “back is against the wall.” We can recognize our Savior most powerfully in the witness of persons of color, living in a racist world, with their backs against the wall. The anguish of coping with racism can all too easily tear them apart, inside and outside. Racism can exhaust their minds and bodies, and finally defeat them with fear, hatred, or the daily acts of strategic deception that they must employ to simply survive.

Thurman affirms that the disinherited in our world can only be saved by love, love that they choose to put into practice, even and especially for their oppressors. But this is not cozy love — this is costly love. It is an excruciating experience, this immense effort to love an enemy, particularly an enemy with substantially more power, more money, more health, more privilege. Like James Cone who recognizes the cross of Christ in every lynching tree, Thurman is not naïve about the difficulty of the Way of the Cross, particularly for the oppressed and the disinherited. Love leads the victim of racism to resurrection, but not before it breaks the person — breaks them open. This love is truly an awesome challenge.

But we do not lose heart, no matter who we are, no matter how many — or how few — privileges we have. Back to that human thing I mentioned: my thoughts and feelings as I prepare to vote this November. If all my candidates lose, and I am setting my mind on divine things, then however sad or discouraged I feel, I will still be here, my heart open — broken open — and my mind and body ready to lift the heavy cross. The Jesus Movement never endorsed the empire or the local political leaders; they just did the hard political work of building Christian community at great personal cost to themselves. They entered the arena — and for them, the “arena” was often a literal arena with animals who gored them in a martyr’s death. They stepped into danger to speak the hard truth.

Even something much smaller than the political sphere — a marriage, say, or a friendship; a vestry, or a ministry team — even in these smaller spheres, we are called to take up our cross and follow Jesus. We are called to lovingly speak the truth to one another, not counting the cost to ourselves. One couples therapist and writer calls this the “crucible” of a relationship. I recall a mother-daughter relationship in an old movie where the mother says, “Go ahead and say it. You think I’m an alcoholic.” The daughter pauses, then replies, “Okay. I think you’re an alcoholic.” In that moment of truth, the daughter goes through a crucible that destroys her smaller self in order to build a braver self, a better character.

We lose to gain; we die to live. Jesus goes to Jerusalem knowing full well what could — what will — happen to him in that dangerous political tinderbox. He is arrested, he is nailed to a cross, he dies. This death inspires a movement that sets its mind on divine things, on losing to gain, on dying to live. And so justice and righteousness rise up on the face of the earth. Christ is resurrected. When we pass through the crucible — crucible: a word related to crucifixion, excruciating, cross — we take a terrible risk, but love grows; we lose personal safety and easy serenity, but justice flourishes.

In a film that came out in 1972 — long ago: I was just two years old — Robert Redford plays Bill McKay, an idealistic young lawyer, the son of a cynical old politician. Bill disrespects his father, a former governor who played by the world’s rules at the cost of his own character, who set his mind on human things. Bill McKay, a hopeful activist, dreams of a better world. Then, a political operative approaches him and pitches the idea of running for the U.S. Senate against yet another cynical, morally compromised politician.

Our hero is torn. He is definitely intrigued by the possibility of a wider arena for activism, for principled leadership, for real change that benefits actual people. But how can he avoid becoming just like his corrupt old dad, just another political animal, just another cynic?

The political operative shows him how. He pulls out a matchbook and scribbles something on it, then hands it to Bill McKay. He tells Bill he can say anything he wants. He can say the right thing and the good thing, no matter how people respond. In every way that counts the most, he can achieve all that he longs for most deeply, as long as he remembers this one thing. And here is what the political consultant scribbled on the matchbook:

“You lose.”

One tiny seed

Preached on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 18B), September 8, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2:1-13, 14-17
Mark 7:24-37

The Great Faith of the Syrophoenician Woman, by Susan Feiker

One of the members of our parish has a terrific job title. This is my opinion of course, and you may disagree. When I told him one time that I love his job title, he seemed unsure how to respond — I think he’s just a self-effacing person who hasn’t really dwelled on the idea that there are “terrific job titles,” so my comment may have caught him off guard.

But even if you haven’t ever focused on the topic, I’m sure you can think of some grand job titles: Chief Justice of the United States; Supreme Allied Commander, Europe… Or how about this whopper: Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Province of Rome, Sovereign of the State of Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God. That’s all one job title. 

(By the way, my favorite part of that particular title is — no contest — “Servant of the Servants of God,” a job title we all receive as baptized Christians. You — you are a Servant of the Servants of God. Your baptismal certificate is your business card.)

But even Pope Francis, in my view, must tip his miter to our sibling in Christ, Ian, whose job title is … wait for it … Director of Fights and Intimacy. Ian works in the theater as an actor and director, and I just can’t get over this title he sometimes holds: Director of Fights and Intimacy. 

I learned all too recently that there is a need in the world for a Director of Fights and Intimacy, but when I think about it, of course we need a director of fights and intimacy! The actors in any performance will need help choreographing their fights, but also their intimate scenes. How can they really fight well, and embrace well, and make it all work for their audience? More crucially, how are fights and intimacy woven together, informing and enlivening each other? The best arguments are ones between intimates, and the best intimate friendships can be invigorated by healthy conflict. A director focusing on fights and intimacy can help actors bring it convincingly to life on the stage.

This weekend, our friend Ian is busy: he and Jenny and Toby are welcoming the newborn Malcolm James into their family. But if he ever has extra time in the future, I might ask him to block for the stage today’s Gospel encounter near the coastal city of Tyre, in southern Lebanon. Tyre is where Jesus chooses to go for a break, to get away from it all, and fails in his attempt. Mark the evangelist tells us that though Jesus attempted to get some time for himself, “he could not escape notice.” (The burdens of fame…) A certain woman is among the horde of people trying to get close to this preacher and healer.

Mark says this woman is of “Syrophoenician origin,” that is, from the region in west Asia that today we call Syria; and Mark makes sure we know that she is a Gentile, that is, not a member of the Judean or Galilean groups who welcome Jesus as one of their own. (Matthew’s Gospel calls her a “Canaanite” woman, an anachronism: “Canaanite” was already an outdated term by this time.) But whatever demonym you prefer for her — Canaanite, Syrian, Phoenician — she is probably close to home, here in the region of Tyre. Still, through the eyes of Jesus and his friends, she is an outsider, a foreigner.

But this foreign woman is probably not indigent, not desperately poor. We don’t know this of course, but her confident action on behalf of her daughter, and her success in getting her daughter the help she needs, suggests a person with resources, maybe even an educated person, though that would be rare for a woman of that time. In my imagination, she looks sharp in a fine silk scarf. Whatever her status or background, she is ready to fight for her daughter, and draw Jesus into a powerful, and powerfully intimate, encounter. She has crossed a cultural border to confront this visitor from the south, and he has literally crossed a border to encounter her on her turf: this intimate fight takes place across a border.

Across several borders, actually: not just the political borders of their respective homelands, but the border of culture, and perhaps the border of language; the border of gender, and perhaps the border of socioeconomic status. (She may be wealthier than Jesus…) There are several lines in the sand beneath and between these two.

There was wider conflict along this border in that time of human history, and it has only worsened in our day. Southern Lebanon is in the news, at the northern border with modern Israel, a borderline of entrenched fighting. This region knows great conflict and devastating warfare.

And yes, Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman do fight. She punches her way into his world, into his private quarters, into what he had hoped would be a quiet afternoon. She begs him to heal her daughter, and in this begging she echoes all of the laments — all of the ‘rage prayers’ — of Holy Scripture, all the times when the people of God cried out in despair, wailed in agonizing fury, pleaded with God for mercy, begged God for healing, reconciliation, restoration. It takes courage to do this, to push your way into someone’s face on their day off and beg for your child’s life. Her motive is heartfelt, but this is confrontational: she is fighting.

And of course his reply to her is … well, it is wretched. Jesus seems to be voicing awful prejudice and intolerance in his reply to her plea. “Let the children be fed first,” he says, “for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Make no mistake: this is, on its face, a dreadful thing to say. “Dogs” in their day were not pampered and adored, like our beloved pets. Dogs were street animals, feral by definition, filthy, usually covered in sores, infectious, scavenging rotten food from the gutter. You’re from where again? Syria? Oh, well then you are no better than a dirty dog.

How might our friend Ian block this scene, so far? I haven’t asked him. But if it’s me, I might have the woman not on her knees but standing upright, shoulders forward, her body weight lurching toward Jesus, her eyes wide in surprise after he coolly, archly delivers his devastating line. 

As I imagine blocking this scene as a drama on a stage, it’s at this point that I want to soften Jesus, if only because I don’t want anybody’s Jesus to be a hard pill for oppressed persons to swallow. I want Jesus to be enlightened and loving, but not just because I’m a cis white guy who loves happy endings: I want Jesus to be an icon of acceptance, representation, and allyship for all of us, for everyone. I don’t want persons of color or really anyone to have to explain to our Savior why he’s causing harm!

But the text of this encounter doesn’t really support that impulse of mine, at least not yet. The woman is assertive, perhaps even aggressive in her urgent need, and Jesus replies with a devastating retort. I think we need to let that be what it is, at least at first: take it in, friends in Christ. In this moment, Jesus is being wretched.

And it is the woman who carries him, and with him, all of us, out of that wretchedness. Her reply is savvy. She is game for the fight. She is undaunted.

The best we can say about Jesus in this encounter is that he saw a worthy adversary, and beckoned her to rise up to meet him; that he threw down with her, jousted with her, deliberately provoked her. We can also notice that behind this story is the first generation of Jesus followers wrestling with the idea of letting Gentiles cross the border of their Jewish community. This story stands on its own as Good News about Jesus, but it also echoes an early intimate conflict among the people we call our forebears in Christian faith.

But finally, ultimately, however we read Jesus, and whatever the historical background behind the scenes, we are left with a shocking, riveting story of intimate conflict at a border; and we are invited to let that story form us in faith. We meet Jesus at the borders in our lives, the tense and often dangerous edges of our comfort zones, where “homeland” and “foreign country” touch.

As I said a moment ago, this particular border is still a war zone on the map, in a region wounded by many — all too many — war zones. A bit further south, of course, is the modern border of Israel and Gaza. That is yet another borderline of bitter conflict that has endured for centuries, all the way back to the age when the Philistines — who give us the term “Palestinian” — lived along the Gazan coast and battled the Judean kingdom of Saul and David.

I want to take us from Tyre down to that border further south, and close with a poem composed by a modern sister of the Syrophoenician woman, a woman of our own day who has spent months pleading across the border between Israel and Gaza, begging for the life of her son, a hostage in Gaza. Her name is Rachel Goldberg, and she learned last week that her son Hersh was killed.

During the attack on October 7, Hersh had bravely grabbed hand grenades to throw them out of harm’s way, and one exploded in his hand, blowing off his arm. He was then held captive, and his parents, Rachel and Jon, have been working tirelessly to secure his release. But — like so many people on all sides of the war, and all around the world — Rachel and Jon have also demanded an end to the war, and justice for all innocent people.

Unlike the Syrophoenician woman, Rachel and Jon had to bury their child. But they and many others continue to lament this horrible war, and Rachel’s poem still can be heard over that terrible border. Rachel is crying out to a mother — to all mothers, to all parents — suffering in Gaza. She is trying to clasp their hands in an intimate conflict that pulls all people of conscience into the fray. I pray that everyone caught up in this conflict, and all conflicts, will find the restoration, reconciliation, and healing that Jesus and his worthy adversary experienced, long ago. 

Here is Rachel Goldberg’s poem:

There is a lullaby that says your mother will cry a thousand tears before you grow to be a man.
I have cried a million tears in the last 67 days.
We all have.
And I know that way over there
there’s another woman
who looks just like me
because we are all so very similar
and she has also been crying.
All those tears, a sea of tears
they all taste the same.
Can we take them
gather them up,
remove the salt
and pour them over our desert of despair
and plant one tiny seed.
A seed wrapped in fear,
trauma, pain,
war and hope
and see what grows?
Could it be
that this woman
so very like me
that she and I could be sitting together in 50 years
laughing without teeth
because we have drunk so much sweet tea together
and now we are so very old
and our faces are creased
like worn-out brown paper bags.
And our sons
have their own grandchildren
and our sons have long lives
One of them without an arm
But who needs two arms anyway?
Is it all a dream?
A fantasy? A prophecy?
One tiny seed.

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

Preached on the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17B), September 1, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Kevin Montgomery at 5pm Mass.

The Song of Solomon is by far the most sensual book of the Bible, glorying in vibrant imagery and metaphors that delight the eyes, the ears, even our touch and smell and taste. “Song of Solomon” is actually a misnomer. The better title is “Song of Songs,” meaning the greatest of songs. The great 2nd century Rabbi Akiva likened it to the “Holy of Holies,” the locus of God’s presence among the chosen people. 

At the heart of this collection of poems is the power of desire, the kind of love that yearns for another. It’s not just emotional but visceral. It’s not general but particular. You might even say it’s scandalous in its particularity. At the surface level here, we have two lovers delighting in each other when together and yearning when apart. Each one speaks to or about the other (with the woman perhaps speaking more). She hears the voice of her beloved as he approaches. He calls to her to pass beyond the walls that enclose her and be with him.

Imagine ourselves in this as if God is calling to us as his beloved. God does not stand far off waiting for us but bounds across the landscape to us. "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” In Hebrew it’s the same word used when God told Abram to leave his home and travel to a new one. Except that here it’s not to an unknown place where there ends up being conflict, hunger, wandering. Instead, it’s a world of life abundant with flowers and birdsong and fresh fruit. A world not of violent dominance but mutual love and affection.

What’s amazing here is not that God calls to us as a lover. What’s amazing is that in this song we respond wholeheartedly to that call. We long to hear that voice with every fiber of our being. Without our beloved we feel something missing in ourselves. The chambers of our heart resonate with the voice in that divine song. We know without a doubt that our deepest longings are fulfilled in him. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you,” writes St. Augustine.

But if only that were the case in our lives. Who among us can say that we fully long for God? Who among us totally trusts the voice that calls us and then follows it? At some level we feel something is missing. Instead of turning outward toward the voice, we curl in ourselves and perhaps even cease to hear it altogether. Yet we still yearn for . . . something? Perhaps we think more stuff will fill the lack. Or we seek fame or social favor, believing the adulations of others will satisfy our need for love. Most of us, I think, want to do good, to be good; but what is the good? Even when we do the right thing, the reasons almost always have at least some bit of not so right mixed in there. Maybe we do hear the voice, but it’s muffled and incomplete.

"Arise, my love, my . . .”

For whatever reason, something within the heart just seems off. I might also compare it to trying to grow flowers, but they don’t seem to bloom just right. Or perhaps grape vines that produce fruit that’s always just a little bit sour. Well, it pains me to say it, but I alone can’t fix it. In the collect for today, we asked God to graft in our hearts the love of his Name. Well, maybe it’s in accepting that graft that we can begin to turn that desire toward what, or rather who, will ultimately satisfy it. We didn’t hear the Epistle reading tonight, but in it James tells us to welcome the word implanted into us. And that word is the voice of our beloved. As we learn to listen to it more and more, we begin to do more than just hear it but to actually follow it. It becomes more and more a part of us, and we even join in the song ourselves. And singing with joy, we see the garden of delight around us, growing the fruit that nourishes us. We ourselves even become the fruit that nourishes others. So let us accept the love that God grafts in our hearts that we may more fully hear and heed the voice that calls, “Arise, my love, my fair one.” Then let us pass beyond the walls that enclose us and come away with our beloved.