Repentance is Resistance

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

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

Fig Tree In The Wind, by Jill Steenhuis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who do you really care about?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pay attention to me!

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

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

Christ in the desert, by Jan Toorop

PAY ATTENTION TO ME!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pay attention. Pay attention. 

Lent is just a study carrel

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

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

West Elementary School, Worthington, Minnesota.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lent is for Easter

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

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

Aschermittwoch, by Karl Spitzweg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Save also the Egyptians"

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

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

Transfiguration, by Alexandr Ivanov

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the Exodus we will proclaim on Easter morning:

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

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

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

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

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

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

O merciful God,

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

Come closer to me

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

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

Joseph Embracing Benjamin, by Yoram Raanan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they came closer.

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

Blessed are you when people hate you

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

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

Jesus preaching, by Jose Trujillo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We had better unpack this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She continues:

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

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

God doesn't have time for that

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get with the program Paul. 

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

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

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

“Get up and go” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unworthy to the end, at least he thought so.

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

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

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

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

Say Yes to Jesus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Presentation of Our Lord

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

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

Detail of Presentation in the Temple, by John August Swanson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

"Put your sword back into its sheath."

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

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

‘Peter and Paul’, by Carlo Crivelli.

“Put your sword back into its sheath.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have you had enough?

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

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

Wedding Miracle at Cana, by Ronald Raab

How do you know when you’ve had enough?

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

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

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

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

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

(It does.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I love you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, Seattle, rest now.

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

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

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

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

Oh, Jesus: we praise you.

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

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

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

Jesus is soaking wet with these passionate words. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Is Your Epiphany?

Preached on the Feast of Epiphany (transferred), January 5, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.

Isaiah 60:1-6
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12
Psalm 72:1-7,10-14

Three Wise Men, by J C Leyendecker

Some time ago I encountered a man who related a dramatic story about his life. It starts in a dark place. He described himself as a law-abiding citizen, and faithful in his religious community. In the time of his life in which this story takes place, his country seemed to be torn apart by different political factions, and some people seemed to be taking advantage of the situation by spouting blasphemous things. You could say ideas are just ideas, but this man saw that some ideas are more dangerous than others, and he saw some people spreading ideas that could lead to further division in the country, and beyond that, great violence and suffering.

He once had occasion to help, in his small way, make a difference in his community. He was able to serve as a witness in the trial of one of the people spreading dangerous ideas. Now, he was respected among his fellow citizens, and when he spoke, they tended to listen. With his help, the criminal was found guilty, and was executed, which sent a message to all those like him that there was indeed a limit to what you could get away with in a civilized country. So far so good.

Here is where the story takes a turn. This man, this faithful, law-abiding citizen, had an epiphany, which is why I am telling this story. Today we celebrate the Epiphany. The word epiphany has at least three, related, definitions. The first is the most general: a sudden revelation or insight. That’s it.

The sudden revelation or insight that this man had was that he had been wrong about the criminal. Some time (I don’t know how long) after the execution, the man realized that the so-called criminal had not, in fact, done anything wrong, or at least certainly not worthy of death. Imagine with me how he must have felt, realizing suddenly that he was at least partially responsible for the death of an innocent person. I have not knowingly been in that situation myself, but I imagine that it must have been shattering to this man, to his sense of himself as faithful and law-abiding. He had been party to the law being used wrongly. His faith taught him to tell the truth, and he had been party to what he later realized was a lie.

What was he to do? Nothing he could do would bring back the man who had been killed. This is where the second definition of epiphany comes in. It adds some specificity to the first definition: a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being. So it’s still a sudden revelation or insight, but now it is specifically about the divine. In the depths of shame, in the pit of this man’s realization of his crime in helping to put an innocent man to death, in his insight into his role in a state-sanctioned murder, God manifested to him. He had thought himself faithful in his religious community, and in many ways, he no doubt had been, but now he was gifted a revelation of God that broke open all his assumptions about himself and the world around him.

Now to hear him tell the story, the manifestation of God came first, and his sudden realization of his sin came after. I hope he will forgive me for switching the order around a little. I do this because it is my opinion that self-realization of sin and manifestation of God are, for many of us, a bit of a chicken and egg thing. Sometimes it can be hard to tell for sure which comes first. In any case, this man had now experienced two of the three definitions of epiphany: a sudden realization or insight, but also one that includes a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being.

He now was at a crossroads in his life. He knew that what he had done in the past was wrong. But he was still part of his society. He was still, to his neighbors, the same faithful, law-abiding citizen. But inside he had been transformed. He now had a choice. On the one hand he could lay low, certainly not participate in any more trials like the one before, but also not say anything to anyone that might change what they think of him. He could just keep quiet, keep his head down, do no harm, but also not speak up about what was going on politically around him. On the other hand, he could speak up about what he had done wrong, he could again be a witness, but this time a witness in defense of those being wrongfully imprisoned and executed.

This is where we encounter the third and final definition of epiphany: the manifestation of Christ.

By now I expect that many of you, perhaps all, have guessed the name of the man in question. His name is Paul, the patron of this house, and the man executed, Stephen. I know that we will remember the conversion of St. Paul later this month, so we will hear this story again. But I hope you will indulge me, because it is my opinion that the story of what Saul did, and how Saul became Paul, and then what Paul did, is a story worth retelling over and over again, and especially today, Epiphany.

The specificity of Epiphany being about Christ is important. This is because it could be easy for us to say, we are Christian, here we are in a church, we’ve just been celebrating Christmas, so of course what we do is about Christ. But those are just words. Christ is not a passive element of our existence. Christ is a transformative divine presence in our lives, in fact, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Christ is the definitive presence in our lives.

This is why the epiphany of Saul made clear his choice. Saul’s epiphany was not just any sudden revelation or insight, nor even of just any divine or supernatural being. Rather, Saul’s epiphany was of Christ, and Christ’s transforming action in Saul’s heart led him to not lay low, but to get up, and speak up, and change the world. Paul worked tirelessly from the time of his epiphany to save the lives of people like Stephen, in whose death Saul had participated.

As we heard in the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians, he calls himself “the very least of the saints.” He knew his past had not been erased. But that did not stop him from accepting, as he says, “the gift of God’s grace,” so that he could become a servant of the Gospel.

There is more to the story of course. Saul is struck blind. Christ speaks to him. His epiphany is as dramatic as any. But epiphany does not require that drama, not really. We have access to epiphany all the time. It is in our Baptism. If you don’t remember your baptism, that’s okay; epiphany is available to you every time we renew our Baptismal vows. And epiphany is available to us every time we celebrate the Eucharist.

The question for each and every one of us is this: what is your epiphany? We all have the potential for epiphany, because we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. God is always speaking to us, not just on the road to Damascus. God is always doing God’s part of epiphany. Are we ready to receive revelation, insight, and not just any revelation, but that of Christ, whose presence in our lives promises to transform us?

In hindsight, Paul’s conversion may seem a foregone conclusion. Who is Paul if not St. Paul? But Saul had a choice. Remember, there are plenty of people in our Scriptures who receive revelation, and reject it. Or Saul could have called himself a Christian, gone through the motions, but not become an evangelist. That’s not necessarily bad, but it wouldn’t have been what God called Paul to do.

So I repeat the question: what is your epiphany, and when – not if, when – Christ calls you to transformation, how will you respond?

Omit needless words

Preached on the First Sunday after Christmas, December 29, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 147:13-21
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
John 1:1-18

Festival of Lights, by John August Swanson

“Omit needless words.”

This is the greatest commandment in “The Elements of Style,” a little guidebook for writers by William Strunk and E.B. White.

If you want to be a powerful, effective writer, then heed Strunk and White’s instruction: Omit needless words.

The rule elegantly obeys itself. It requires only three words to teach writers the power of brevity. 

I first read Strunk and White as a creative-writing student at Sibley Senior High School in Mendota Heights, Minnesota. Our teacher was David Coleman, an Irish scholar of mythology and drama. Mr. Coleman nurtured my first attempts at writing things worth writing. His assignments were deceptively simple: “Write a paper about an interesting person,” he would assign us. And: “Write a paper about an interesting experience.”

We spent the class doggedly weeding needless words from our gardens, while cultivating and pruning the needful words. “Do not say that something is very good,” Mr. Coleman taught us. “‘Very’ is a weak word. The thing is good, or it is not.” And he taught us not to fill our written confections with empty calories such as “I think that…” or “I believe that…” “If you didn’t think it,” Mr. Coleman would say, “then you wouldn’t have written it. Just say what you think. Show, don’t tell.”

Words are powerful. As the prophet Samuel came of age, growing steadily into a clarion voice of God’s Word, we are told that the Lord “let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground.” Words can fall to the ground — that is, they can be wasted or lost, cast aside, ill-chosen, or ignored. They might just be weak words, filler words, words like “very.” Or they might be destructive words, words meant to injure, striking the ground with dreadful force.

And this is the graver sin. Sometimes I write too many words in a frivolous way — I have written a sermon or three that could have helpfully been edited down by several dozen — several hundred — words. But it’s even worse if I use words to cause harm, to tear the fabric, to plunge the sword. 

Words are powerful.

The fourth evangelist, whom we call John but who might have been as many as three different people, was an eyewitness to the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He (or she: we aren’t completely sure about their gender) knew well the power of words. John takes up words, and the singular Word — capital W, logos — as a key way to understand who Jesus is, how Jesus relates to God, how Jesus is God, and ultimately how God, through Jesus the Word, creates. “In the beginning was the Word,” John sings. “The Word was with God; the Word was God.” And here’s the money quote: “All things came into being through the Word.”

All things came into being through the Word.

God creates through the Word. God is Word; God is with the Word; and God also speaks the Word, out and into the universe, bringing all things into being. We can better understand these heady concepts if we appreciate the power of words, and how their power deepens — for good or for ill — when we craft them into a message. God shared with us God’s own power to create with words. And we are also able to twist that power into a weapon.

For nearly every week over the last two years, I have written what we call The Weekly Word, a short article that anchors our weekly newsletter (sometimes not so short: I will forever be a student of the laconic Mr. Coleman!). Maybe you pass over this article week by week, or you briefly scan it to glean an idea or two about how things are going at St. Paul’s. The Weekly Word is not literature as much as a brief note in a periodical. But perhaps you can at least appreciate that The Weekly Word is but one example of the many ways words create St. Paul’s; the ways words shape our community; the ways words guide and form us in faith.

But there are other, painful examples. Have you ever written an email and then sorely regretted it? If we had a show of hands on that, I would raise my own hand high: oh, the suffering I have caused myself and others by quickly pressing ‘send’! If you’ve ever said or written something hurtful, then you likely have felt that sickening, futile desire to take those words back. But you can’t. The power of words deepens when we release them. Words create. And sometimes they create something new by destroying something, or someone, else.

We email a lot in our church life. We converse a lot. We trade thousands of words a day, as we work here and play here; as we live here and die here.

And so we should pay attention to words, here in this congregation of faithful souls, we who, in that font, are drowned as many, then raised as one; we who are gathered around this Table to be strengthened for mission. We choose words, many words, countless torrents of words, to shape our prayers to God. And many of these words are chosen for us, whether we like them or not. And we argue about words. Tell me: what is your least favorite sentence or phrase in our thick, word-stuffed Prayer Book? I bet you have at least one.

Here’s mine: I strongly affirm our faith, but I worry quite a bit about the words of the Nicene Creed. I wish we weren’t required to recite the Creed every Sunday. The Nicene Creed is mystifying and upsetting; it parses words (what is the difference between “begotten” and “made”?!). It confuses, or disturbs, or even enrages us. (What do we mean by “virgin”? And how can we square that with the startling, prophetic proto-feminism of the New Testament? And does the Spirit proceed from the Son? Yes or no? How can we decide that question when we barely understand the esoteric concept of “Trinitarian procession” itself?) All these words! If they create, they sometimes seem to be creating a big, upsetting mess.

And John the evangelist, for all their elegance in the sublime words of the Prologue, which we proclaimed today as our Gospel: John does not follow the “less is more” wisdom of Strunk and White. Jesus in John says substantially more words than he does in the other three Gospels, teaching and praying at great, exhausting length. The Word, in John’s telling, seems never to stop talking.

But those words, numerous and exhausting as they may be, sound a deep bell in our hearing. John’s words work on us; they move and shape us; they form us in faith; they bind us as one, as Christ’s Body.

”The light shines in the darkness,” John sings, “and the darkness has not overcome it.” Another translation has the darkness failing to understand light. These powerful, consoling words can stir us to action in this benighted world, so full of suffering and so impoverished of good, strong words of authentic hope.

But the song continues. “The Word became flesh and lived among us,” John sings. Another translation has the Word becoming flesh and “moving into our neighborhood.” Our neighborhood is plagued by inequality, by indifference, by human anguish; but God is with us.

And then: “From the Word’s fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” Another translation has grace “following after” grace. So we receive the grace of hope, but that is quickly followed by the grace of the realization of that hope: by God’s faith we have found housing for several of our neighbors; by God’s hope we have incorporated nearly two dozen children into our community; and by God’s love we have established a legacy of faithful stewardship here that will nourish our great-grandchildren.

And so we rejoice. We may have plenty of words to injure one another, to break our bonds of fellowship, to destroy all that is good and great in this world; but we have even more words, countless words, the fullness of the Word — the Word by which God mends this world, and repairs our relationships, and builds a home for our descendants to live in peace.

Do you have a favorite word that speaks of God, a favorite phrase that proclaims God’s Good News, a favorite paragraph or poem that creates a new thing in this universe? Maybe your favorite is in that Creed I find so troublesome. Maybe your favorite is in a hymn you sing from the depths of your heart.

My favorite creative word — my favorite needful word, my favorite word that speaks of God, my favorite word that creates something new in the universe — my favorite word is Reconcile.

I invite you to wonder about your favorite word, your needful word, the word you love most among the words that bring forth something new from the chaos. And I promise, as long as I know you, I will never omit your needful word from our common prayer. I will sing it right along with you, by your side, for many long days.

Invitation to Rest

Preached on Christmas Day, December 25, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.

Isaiah 52:7-10
Hebrews 1:1-12
John 1:1-14
Psalm 98

Detail from Nativity, by John August Swanson

I invite you to rest.

Whatever is happening in your life, in the past year, or the past month, or yesterday, or even this morning. Whatever you expect to happen this afternoon, or tomorrow, or next week, or next month, I invite you to rest.

For the next half hour, together, I invite us to rest in the Christmas season. I invite us to rest with Mary and Joseph and Jesus — poor, maybe sometimes on the run, of a people oppressed by empire.

Perhaps that doesn’t sound very restful. So let me be more specific. I am not inviting you to a rest in physical, financial, or political security. While I do wish those things for you, and for all, I am not naïve about these things. I read the news. I walk this neighborhood. I have some idea of the sorrows and suffering in this very room, past and present.

And yet, I invite you to rest. I am inviting you to a spiritual rest in Jesus, and more specifically, in Jesus the child, Jesus the infant. I am inviting you to a rest in Jesus at his most vulnerable, with the possible exception of his last hours on the cross.

This invitation to vulnerability is surely paradoxical. I propose that this paradox is part of the mystery of the Incarnation. In the coming weeks and months we will hear all about the life of Jesus. As we do every year, we will hear about Jesus the miraculous, Jesus the wise, Jesus the shepherd, Jesus the Son of God who always seems to be two steps ahead, to know unknowable things, Jesus resplendent in glory, “full of grace and truth.”

But this morning we encounter Jesus the infant, Jesus the vulnerable, Jesus decades away from the wedding at Cana. And the astounding, surprising, perplexing Good News of Christmas is that even in the vulnerability of Jesus the child, we are invited to a spiritual rest.

This is because the spiritual rest to which I refer is not freedom from circumstances that worry us. It is rest from our illusions that we are in control. We aren’t. Whatever control any of us thinks we have over our lives at any time, it is passing, illusory, a castle in the sand. The truth of our existence is that we are all vulnerable, about as vulnerable as Jesus the child, all our lives.

I grant you that many of us do a fair job of keeping up the pretense of control, of knowing what we are doing, or at least looking like it for a moment or two. But if you’re like me, it is incredibly hard work to keep up that act.

I am inviting all of us, for the next half hour, to drop the act. I propose that we agree all together, right now, to stop pretending to each other, and most of all, to ourselves, that we are not vulnerable.

And then, I am invite us to rest in our collective vulnerability, in the faith that Jesus is Emmanuel, God-with-us. Jesus is not just a man born two thousand years ago, half a world away. Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, and Jesus is also the Logos, the Word of John’s Gospel. Jesus is the vulnerable infant, and Jesus was in the beginning, was with God, and was, and is, God.

Jesus is the navel, the spine, the beating heart of all the Cosmos, for all time and beyond time. And we are members of the Body of Christ; we are connected, even in this moment, with God in time and beyond time. We can access at all times and places the infinitude of God, through Jesus, and yes, through Jesus the vulnerable child.

God does not need us to be strong to connect. God is with us at all times, and it is a well-attested phenomenon that we are often best able to realize our connection with God when we are vulnerable. Sometimes the changes and chances of this weary world forces vulnerability upon us. But we can also access that vulnerability anytime we want, by doing the spiritual work to let go of our ego, to let go of our illusion of being in control.

This Christmas season I invite us rest in the will of God. You might well ask me, okay, what is the will of God? As always, I have two answers for that. First, I am trying to discern that myself, to listen, in prayer, to hear the will of God. So in that way, I don’t know any better than you. Second, the life of Jesus teaches us that the will of God is most often that we care for each other.

This immediately creates another paradox. If, as I propose, the will of God is that we care for each other, that may not sound very restful. But remember that I am not inviting us to a rest from labor, or even from suffering. I am inviting us to the spiritual rest of doing God’s will above our own. Caring for each other, as best as I can tell from the Gospel, is the surest way to rest in God’s will. 

Caring for each other does require us to be vulnerable. It works both ways. To care for someone else requires, at least for a moment, to stop obsessing about ourselves, and that can be vulnerable. To be cared for requires us to admit that we need help, and that is most certainly to be vulnerable.

But that is the invitation – to rest in the knowledge that we are vulnerable, that we need help. And it is important to rest in the sure knowledge that however vulnerable we are, we are still, in the midst of that vulnerability, capable, and called to, care for each other.

I received a wonderful gift yesterday, on Christmas Eve. I met a neighbor here at the church who has been going through some very hard times. Yet her face was shining with light, in the midst of her troubles, because earlier in the day she had met a man who asked her if she wanted to hear some poetry. She had said yes, and then he had gifted her with what she described as excellent poetry. She didn’t memorize it, so couldn’t share the poetry itself with me, but what she could, and did, share with me, was her gratitude for the gift he had given her. She then gave that gift to me, by radiating joy. I was awash in her joy, and it was the best Christmas gift I could imagine.

I believe that the source of her joy was her experience of that connection, that love between people that can happen anytime, anywhere. I suspect she might agree that she is vulnerable. Her circumstances are still extremely challenging. Her connection with the poet didn’t solve her worldly problems. Nor did the joy she gave to me solve mine, nor can my joy solve yours.

But in that moment she and I shared, she and I found rest. That is the rest I wish for you, and for all, this Christmas morning, and as often as you can manage it henceforth.

As we turn now to our prayers, and then gather around God’s table, I hope you can find some rest, in the faith that God is with you, God is with us, God carries us, and always gives us the strength and courage, if we dare accept it, to be vulnerable before God, and each other.

Alone but not lonely

Preached on the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ (Christmas Eve), December 24, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 9:2-7
Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-20

Detail of Nativity, by John August Swanson

It’s dark. It’s glam. It’s sad.

It’s Christmas.

I have remembered this line from a television sitcom for twenty-three years. It was spoken by the actor Parker Posey, guest starring on “Will and Grace,” a show about a gay guy living with his straight woman friend. Back then, it was a major step forward for gay characters simply to appear on prime-time television, so progressive fans of the show put up with the fact that the queer characters never so much as held hands. They were the most chaste gay New Yorkers imaginable. And of course transgender identity – even the existence of transgender persons – was barely mentioned, let alone explored. 

But “Will and Grace” had this terrific line, and they gave it to the dry, droll Parker Posey. She played a tough, uncompromising manager at Barney’s department store, and she was reviewing a store window that Grace had decorated for the holiday season. Grace’s window featured crimson trees, sad people in festive masks, and images of haunting characters from some of the darker Christmas stories and films. And this was the hard manager’s take on Grace’s work: “It’s dark. It’s glam. It’s sad. It’s Christmas.”

And Christmas is dark. The twinkly lights only accentuate the darkness. They would not twinkle without it. Barbara Brown Taylor, the Episcopal priest and spiritual writer, devotes a whole book to the spirituality of darkness, a book called Learning to Walk in the Dark. She confronts one of the great but terrible experiences we have in the darkness, both literal and spiritual darkness: in the anxious world of a dark night, we often fail to discern the presence of God. In the depths of night, we can sometimes only sense a great absence, a void. If anything is present, it is something (or someone) that terrifies us. If God is present in the night, God is utterly, forbiddingly mute and invisible. Even Jesus cries out in the night of his painful death, a cry of dereliction thrown at a silent God: “Why have you forsaken me?”

Taylor does not shrink from this nocturnal human experience. But neither does she allow God’s perceived absence to plunge her into nihilistic despair. She closes her book about spiritual (and literal) darkness with an essay about her choice to go for at least one day and night without electricity or human connection, in a twelve-by-twelve cabin in the woods.

Taylor knows that before light bulbs, humans had as much as fourteen hours to sleep, stir to half wakefulness, sleep again, half-wake again, and so on, back and forth, riding the different states of consciousness that our species has evolved to survive on this spinning planet. Taylor says, “In prehistoric times, this rest state may have provided a channel of communication between dreams and waking life, supplying rich resources for myth and fantasy. It may also explain why so many biblical stories are powered by big dreams… [Today,] the long hours of rest before, during, and after sleep are gone, along with the state of consciousness that went with them – the collateral damage of a world in love with light.”

Spending a night in that lonely cabin, Taylor confronts terrible – and terrifying – inner demons, and she bursts into tears of relief and wonder when the pre-dawn skies begin to brighten. Her night is terrible, but it is not bereft of holiness, purpose, or hope.

Surely the Bethlehem birth of Jesus is a story written down by a community that knows about long nights, literal and otherwise. The skies are torn open in the middle of the night, and the light shining at the wrong time terrifies night-shift field workers who had been tending their livestock, mucking out stalls, just going about their hard work. And a woman gives birth – without a doula, without clean water, without a spinal block – inside what was probably a shallow cave, much like Taylor’s cabin in the woods. When it’s dark in a cave at nighttime, it is really and truly dark.

The darkness of human despair, the darkness of a human womb, the darkness of a graveyard shift for people almost out of hope: here is where, finally, a supernova – a great, new thing – explodes with blinding light. Right here, right now, in the wee hours, where God’s perceived absence is most devastating, heart-breaking, and soul-crushing: this is where the light shines.

But God appears as an infant screaming in the night. This is not a pleasant sound, though it may at first be a relief to hear because the baby’s yell confirms that he is healthy, he is alive. God appears first to us as a newborn in the nighttime: not a wise, wizened wizard; not an enlightened and serene sage; not a wily, wonder-working witch. No, in the dead of night, God appears as a senseless, needy infant. In the darkness of our night, God is clothed in – God is found in – a profoundly vulnerable, unnervingly weak, impossibly tiny person.

God is found, then, in the most vulnerable humans in our arms, in streetside tents, in the emergency room, at the graveside of someone they love. And God is found in the tiny child inside you, too. We are taught rightly to search for the adult Christ at Christmas, and to be sure, we will meet him soon: in a couple of weeks Jesus will appear at the river Jordan, for his baptism and the beginning of his ministry. But the first piercing burst of light, the first dawning of God’s presence and power in the dead of night – we may not discern it until we turn quietly, in the shadows, toward the youngest, most frightened, least verbal parts of ourselves. The scared child inside you: God is found there.

Behind the workaday, frantic, light-drenched world of bustle and business, of strain and stress, my inner child longs for God. Does yours? My youngest and most vulnerable part wants to be held, held tight, loved, cared for, kissed gently on the forehead.

And this is sad. My inner child is often sad. If God is found in the most vulnerable among us, then God is immersed in sadness. Again, quoth Parker Posey: Christmas is sad.

For the last two years I’ve gone to a holiday show at ArtsWest, a playhouse in West Seattle led by one of our own parishioners here. ArtsWest created a new tradition called “Snowed In,” a play about a clutch of friends charged with writing, rehearsing, and performing a Christmas play. “This is pretty meta,” one of them says: it’s a play about people writing a play.

“Snowed In” reliably opens with an upbeat number, lots of dancing, much joy, many smiles. But both times I attended this holiday production, I wasn’t in the mood. I arrived there more than a little drained by all that’s going on in our world, and all that’s going on with me. As delightful as things are here at St. Paul’s (and truly I tell you, there is much cause for rejoicing here), I sometimes feel emotionally exhausted. Now, I don’t expect a playhouse to open their holiday show with a doleful scene of gloomy actors, sulking through their task of creating a cheerful Christmas play. But – let’s just say I feel tremendous relief when they finally get to the part when one of them sings “In the Bleak Midwinter,” that soulful, sad carol we just sang a bit ago, with earth frozen hard as iron, and a new mother quietly kissing her child.

Recently, in a room at Harborview, I visited with one of our unhoused neighbors. (Our own Neighborhood Action ministers secured safe housing and health care for him.) He has lain on his back on this block for a decade and a half, sweltering under the heat in the summer, fighting off frostbite in the winter. (He lost four toes in that battle.) And here we were, chatting in a warm room. He was clean and dry, and in good spirits.

I even had the absurd thought that our newly-housed friend has healthy skin. I almost asked him, “So, what are you using? Just pore strips? Whatever you’re doing, it’s working.” I see Christ in that sad yet cheerful face, that weathered yet surprisingly healthy face, that face of someone profoundly, devastatingly vulnerable, and yet one of the hardiest survivors I’ve ever known. Sometimes the glow of Christ’s presence truly transforms a human face. 

It was so good to see him warm, and dry, and nourished. Yet he still faces an uncertain, anxious future, and he still wanders mostly alone in a nocturnal wilderness of dual diagnoses, scarce health care, and an indifferent, often hostile city.

Our friend in Harborview is a biblical lament in human form: he is Lazarus beneath the rich man’s table, the Son of Man with nowhere to lay his head, the wandering people of God in the wilderness. He is our inner child externalized, our shared vulnerability incarnate. He is God’s people wondering how they can sing a song in a foreign land, how they can nurture hope in a night seemingly bereft of God’s presence. 

So yes, Christmas is sad. I’ve been your pastor for two years now, and I tell you, there are several sadnesses here. I can feel them. They run in our blood. We carry sadness from forty years ago when we buried so many people who succumbed to complications from AIDS. We carry sadness from the present time as we minister alongside the unhoused, beneath a heaven torn apart not by angels but by atmospheric rivers of rain. 

This is my second Christmas with both of my parents dead and buried beneath the iron-hard earth. I’m sad about that, even as I know that it’s not even remotely newsworthy: every single one of us feels the sadness attendant to death, attendant to love. To love is to feel sad, for all whom we love must die.

But all this sadness, all this darkness – in the face of it all, I come back to “Snowed In,” that play about friends and friendship, that fun and funny trifle about the joy and sadness of the holidays. After they sing “In the Bleak Midwinter,” the friends reflect on how sad songs like that make us feel. In their telling, sad songs of the season help us feel “alone but not lonely.” Alone but not lonely. And that is Christmas night. Mary had Joseph and Joseph had Mary, but each was existentially alone in the night, alone with their differing duties and burdens, alone with their fears, bone-deep alone in their perception of God’s absence. Yet they were not – they are not – lonely. We sing our sad songs together, even if the night haunts us one by one.

And so, finally, because it is dark and sad but also bright and hopeful, Christmas is, yes, glam. There is an elegant sheen on everything. We may think of superficial glamour, of course: splendid wine-colored dresses and black-velvet jackets, or a tony holiday cocktail party where you devastate everyone with your sharp silver necklace. (Girl, you’ve got the neck for it.) 

But Christmas is glam in a deeper, more useful way. It’s not at all about the holiday parties attended by the one percent, while the world burns. Our mission here, our ministries here, our purpose in this life, our future as God’s people, your individual future as one conscious, anxious human being – they all shine with God’s nighttime presence. By the light of the star that guides ancient sages ever westward, we glimpse the harrowing beauty of God’s birth into the awful vulnerability of human life, God’s birth into each and every one of us – we who are existentially alone.

Each of us is alone this Christmas, in this night. But as we gather at this entrance to the dark, sad cave of God’s birth among us, I pray that you and I, that all of us, will be alone – but not lonely.

Visitations

“Visitations”

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

5:00pm Sermon

The Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year C)

Psalm 80:1-7; Luke 1:39-55

December 22, 2024

Mark Lloyd Taylor, Ph.D.

A Beatles song says it well:

There are places I’ll remember

All my life, though some have changed.

Some forever, not for better;

Some have gone and some remain.

All these places had their moments

With lovers and friends I still can recall.

Some are dead and some are living,

In my life I’ve loved them all.

Familiar places. Moments – those dates on the calendar we’ll never forget. Names and the people who wore them. The stories their lives told.

My mother died on December 22nd – this very day six years ago. At 7:01pm Central Time. Oh, that’s right now! December 22nd: the same day she gave birth to my youngest sibling, fifty-eight years earlier.

I wasn’t in the room at the skilled nursing facility in Kansas when my mother died. But thanks to my sister and her smartphone, I was able to see Mom’s face from faraway Seattle as she lay in bed earlier in the evening. I read the 23rd Psalm to her, along with Psalm 103 and a prayer that begins, “Eternal God, you call us to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.” She mouthed silent words in return. Then, I watched over her for a little while from my sister’s chair across the room.

In 2018, December 22nd fell on a Saturday, not Sunday like today. I didn’t sleep much that night. Instead, I looked at lots of old family photos. Somehow, I managed to get up the next morning – the Fourth Sunday of Advent – and set out on my short journey to attend the 9:00 o’clock mass here at St. Paul’s. I came alone because Debra had just finished her first week of radiation treatments following surgery for breast cancer. I sat over there, in that place in the corner, near mother Mary and baby Jesus. It was a different icon back then, but I wanted, I needed, their company in my grief and loss. Desperately.

People called my mother Betty, but her name was Elizabeth. And the gospel reading I heard that Sunday morning after my mother’s death was the one Fr. Phillip just proclaimed. The story of Mary’s visitation with her relative Elizabeth and how the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaped for joy at Mary’s greeting and the coming of the baby in Mary’s womb (Luke 1:39-45). How could I not hear my life story woven into the stories of pregnant Elizabeth and Mary, unborn John and Jesus? Pregnant Elizabeth and unborn Mark? This evening, however, I find myself carrying these familiar stories and names and moments and places differently. Holding them, embracing them, anew.

+++

I wonder why Mary chose to visit Elizabeth. Why did Mary travel so far in such great haste? From Nazareth up north in Galilee all the way to the Judean hill country – south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Over eighty miles. On foot? On a donkey? Did Mary travel alone? If not, who accompanied her? Why with haste? In those days, we’re told, Mary set out on her journey. Those days: the days immediately after angel Gabriel announced the startling news to Mary that she would bear a child even though she was a virgin. Immediately after that same angel announced that, despite decades of barrenness, Elizabeth had also conceived a son and was in her sixth month of pregnancy. Did you catch that? Gospel writer Luke dates the annunciation to Mary from time of the angel’s earlier visitation with Elizabeth – not the other way around. Why did Mary stay with Elizabeth so long? The verse following the end of our gospel reading says: “And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home” (1:56).

Mary needed something from Elizabeth. Mary wanted something from Elizabeth. Desperately.

Maybe Mary was surprised by the changes in her body. Maybe they frightened her. Maybe Mary found herself utterly alone as the gossip about her pregnancy outside of marriage spread and the other villagers began to shun her. Maybe Mary was shamed and felt ashamed. Maybe she worried how, worried if, she – a woman, young and unmarried – could provide for a child. Would Joseph her betrothed even stay with her throughout an unplanned and problematic pregnancy? Would she and the child become an intolerable burden on her family’s financial resources and social capital? Maybe Mary simply despaired at the thought of bringing a child into the world – into this world. Israel defeated and occupied by the Roman empire. A people empty and adrift. A world of overwhelming cruelty and sorrow.

Why Elizabeth? Well, she was older than Mary and she too was expecting a child – although she was experiencing pregnancy for the first time. Whatever the reason, Mary came to the right place. She found in Elizabeth a mansion prepared to welcome her. Not only did the unborn child filling Elizabeth’s womb leap for joy, but Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Spirit and stepped right into the role of a prophet in Israel. Elizabeth serves as Mary’s forerunner, preparing the way – just as John, Elizabeth’s son, later prepares the way for Jesus. Mary felt herself and her unborn child honored instead of shamed. Praised by Elizabeth, not blamed. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. As the angel Gabriel had said earlier to Mary – but about Elizabeth’s pregnancy: Nothing will be impossible with God.

+++

I can’t help wondering what psalm Mary might have been singing to herself on her long journey to visit Elizabeth. Could it have been one of Israel’s songs of lament – given Mary’s fear and surprise, loneliness and shame, worry and despair. Could it have been Psalm 80, the psalm we prayed together this evening?

Restore us, O God of hosts;

show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.

O LORD God of hosts,

how long will you be angered

despite the prayers of your people?

You have fed them with the bread of tears;

you have given them bowls of tears to drink.

You have made us the derision of our neighbors,

and our enemies laugh us to scorn.

Restore us, O God of hosts;

show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved (1-7).

If so, if this was Mary’s psalm, then her lament turned toward God, when sorrow and despair tempted her to run away. We remember Mary singing her own song, that most familiar song: My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for you have looked with favor on the lowliness of your servant. You have lifted up the lowly. You have filled the hungry with good things (Luke 1:46-55).

But here, for me on this December 22nd, is the most stunning new insight into all these familiar stories and names and moments and places. Mary sings her song of rejoicing not in response to Gabriel’s annunciation but to her visitation with Elizabeth. To be sure, Mary’s response to the angel was one of trust and willingness, but hardly joy: Here I am the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word (Luke 1:38). The Magnificat, instead, is Mary’s joyous response to Elizabeth’s spirit-filled, prophetic words. In fact, there are even a couple of ancient manuscripts of the gospel of Luke that attribute the Magnificat to Elizabeth; and name Elizabeth as the singer of the words: My soul magnifies the Lord. Even if we don’t choose to go that far, I can imagine Mary and Elizabeth singing the Magnificat as a duet.

And if a duet, then why not a congregational song – one we all can join. In this place. At that altar where we bring our gifts, even our bread of tears and the bowls of tears we drink. We bring them and pray that they will be transformed into the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven and the Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation. We are mansions prepared by the daily, weekly, yearly visitation of Christ. Not empty and adrift, but full of those good things. For nothing will be impossible with God.

Resources.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “All My Life,” from the album Rubber Soul (EMI Records, 1965).

For the prayer “Eternal God, you call us to ventures…,” see Book of Common Worship: Daily Prayer, Presbyterian Church (USA), page 39.

The words around “daily visitation” and “mansions prepared” come from the collect for this Fourth Sunday of Advent (Book of Common Prayer, page 212).

The world has already come together

Preached on the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year C), December 22, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Micah 5:2-5a
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-55
Psalm 80:1-7

Windsock Visitation, by Br. Mickey McGrath

Today’s Good News includes a happy reunion of two of our matriarchs in the faith. But this delighted meeting of two pregnant women got me thinking about two more matriarchs, Sarah and Hagar. 

Sarah is the savvy wife of Abraham, famous for being startled and then amused by the ludicrous promise that she could have a child in old age. Sarah found that idea so ridiculous that when it finally happened, she named her child Isaac, a name that means “Laughter.” 

Soon after she gave birth to Laughter, Sarah wasted no time expelling the household slave Hagar and her illegitimate son from the family compound. Abraham had slept with Hagar (at Sarah’s suggestion!) to hedge his bets on God’s promise of a son by Sarah. (It’s highly doubtful that Hagar had much of a choice in this matter.) Hagar had duly given Abraham a son, who was named Ishmael, a name that means “God will hear”. But with Isaac’s arrival, the clock was ticking loudly for Hagar. She and Ishmael had to go. 

But take note: after they are ejected from Abraham’s household, God takes care of Hagar and Ishmael, in the wilderness. True to Ishmael’s name, God hears them in their time of great need. But to Sarah and Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael were first instruments they could use, and then dangerous inconveniences. 

My friend Arienne Davison, a priest in our diocese, offers a helpful perspective on this story of household conflict. (Arienne calls it “a fleshy story about cultural differentiation.”) Sarah was a woman in a strictly patriarchal culture, and so it fell to her to transmit that culture to the next generation. She ejects Hagar and her son not because Sarah is a jealous, small-minded villain, but because in a real sense it is her job to do this. God cares for the rejected Hagar and preserves her son’s life, but it would have been hard for Abraham and Sarah to do that, given all the constraints of their time and place. God is present and powerful in all cultures, but God is also bigger than our human cultural constructs and rules. 

And now, today, people of faith in Arab cultures claim Abraham as their ancestor through Ishmael; and people of faith in Jewish (and later, Christian) cultures claim Abraham as their ancestor through Isaac. It’s a difficult, frustrating schism in the family of Abraham that has had disastrous results down the ages. 

But at the dawn of this age – our age – in a rural backwater and among unrenowned hill people, two more mothers discover that they have the power to come together, rather than break apart in a painful schism. They don’t heal (or at least they haven’t yet healed) the great rift of Isaac and Ishmael, but they offer a new pattern to people of faith, a new way of being, a new way of relating. And because their story is told by Luke, that wonderfully skillful and lyrical evangelist, we get to enjoy intimate, vivid portraits of these women, and we even get to hear them sing songs of love and triumph; songs of freedom and justice. 

Mary goes “with haste” – she is in a big hurry – to the hill country in Judea, from north to south, and visits her cousin Elizabeth. Why is she in a hurry? I’ll assert that she bears in her body the immediacy, the urgency of God’s incarnation: God in Jesus arrives in our lives with haste, coming to us soon, very soon, rushing into our sphere of suffering with healing and release, with comfort and gladness. 

And Elizabeth erupts in joy when her younger cousin arrives. Elizabeth doesn’t get a full song – a full aria – in Luke’s beautiful songbook. (That honor goes to her husband Zechariah, her cousin Mary, the Bethlehem angels, and old Simeon in the temple.) But Elizabeth does get a recitative, 

as it were. (A recitative is a brief, sung recitation of dialogue that moves the

story along.) If Luke’s Gospel were an oratorio or opera, Elizabeth’s brief song is the recitative that sets us up to hear Mary’s Magnificat aria. 

Elizabeth prepares us for Mary’s good news. “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit,” sings Luke, “and [she] exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” 

Let’s look at this recitative more closely. Why is Mary blessed? Is Elizabeth singing that Mary is blessed because she believed God’s promise? (Great is your faith, Mary! You’re blessed!) Or is Mary blessed by the fulfillment of the promise itself? (It worked out like you believed it would, Mary! You’re blessed!) We’re not quite sure what Elizabeth means because in the Magnificat, Mary sings of God’s triumph in the past tense. God has already knocked the mighty from their thrones, and fed the starving multitudes. God has already reversed the world order. And Elizabeth’s syntax matches Mary’s: the Lord’s mother is blessed because she believed (past tense) that there would be a fulfillment (past tense). They’ve already won, these two! Nailed it! Much winning! 

And this is all so joyful. Instead of the old-world structure in which two child-bearing women can’t help each other, can’t lift each other up, can’t even dwell under one roof, now they come together with gladness. Elizabeth is the older mother who is giving birth to the less-important child – she already knows that Mary’s child will outshine her own – but she greets her more fortunate cousin with uncomplicated joy. The last time something like this happened in the Bible was when the older brother Aaron embraced

and supported his younger brother Moses, letting go of his own ego, his own agenda, maybe even his own dreams. 

This is all so lovely. From even before his birth, Jesus teaches us that we need not adhere to the old ways, the old divisive ways, the old schismatic ways. Now of course, we sometimes still harbor ill will toward one another. We occasionally nurse resentments. But anxious resentment is wretched and destructive. Anxious resentment breaks us apart; it tears at the fabric of community. Resentment is a great enemy, and Saint Elizabeth teaches us to let it all go, to release it. It sounds like she didn’t even resent Mary in 

the first place! Be at peace. You need not compete with your neighbor, and you’d likely lose anyway. Don’t worry about it. In the new world brought into being by the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, everyone is on the same level, valleys filled, mountains knocked down. Your children don’t threaten mine. We multiply our joy by freely sharing it with one another, with our community, and with the stranger at our door. 

But hold up: let’s go back a step. Let’s talk about that past-tense bit. Maybe Elizabeth just got carried away, but did I really hear her sing that Mary is blessed because she believed the world would be changed, and therefore the world has already changed? And then, in Mary’s aria, is she really singing that it’s all done, mission accomplished, poverty is no more, all is well? Are they out of their minds? Are they fantasists? Are they high on hormones? 

No, they’re onto something. Consider this: the whole story of Mary and Elizabeth was written down by a community that already knew that both of their sons would be executed by the state. They already knew that Jerusalem would be flattened by the imperial army, just a half century or so after this happy Judean baby shower. Mary and Elizabeth aren’t fools, any more than Sarah and Hagar were. All the women in these stories know

what the world is really like. (And that includes Hannah, yet another matriarch. Mary’s Magnificat is in many ways a reprise of Hannah’s aria.) 

The world may be a big, awful mess – we Christians are not naïve about that – but our matriarchs teach us that the Resurrection has already routed the evil powers of the world, even if it takes millennia for that routing to fully manifest itself. Are you lamenting the state of the world? (If not, I wonder if you’re paying attention.) It’s bad out there. But Saints Mary and Elizabeth teach us that the grace and the triumph of the Incarnation is right here, growing inside us like a leaping baby. 

I’ll give you a strong, good example. I met with Phil LaBelle, our new bishop, this past week. I like him a lot. Phil is from the east coast: he has not yet been to 15 Roy Street; he does not yet know St. Paul’s. I filled him in. I told him that when I got here in late 2022, I couldn’t find even one area of ministry that was not in need of development in the wake of the pandemic. I told him that I have counted no fewer than twelve urgent projects in our Buildings and Grounds Ministry. I told him that while every congregation around the world suffered greatly in a time of plague, St. Paul’s had one or two additional difficulties to handle during those years, including having a front-row seat for the exploding housing crisis in our restive city. 

But then I told Bishop Phil that we have rushed back joyfully and ferociously, determined to regain our place on this street corner, delighted to relaunch our vital mission in this neighborhood. I told him that as bad as things got, our parish had strong vital signs and strong faith. We nourished prophets and evangelists here. We empowered witnesses and servants. We cultivated justice and peace in this Resurrection garden. We’ve already done so much. God has already accomplished so much, in and with us.

And the holy Child of God’s abundant presence is already kicking joyfully inside us, foretelling a bright and graceful future. 

Is the world falling apart? Yes, it seems so. But here, right here, just here, the world has already come together. God has already helped us, in remembrance of God’s mercy, according to the promise God made to our ancestors, to Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, to Mary and Elizabeth, and to their descendants forever.