Jewels, Precious Jewels

Remarks for Shared Homily at the 5:00pm Mass given on the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Apostles (transferred) by Mark Lloyd Taylor, Ph.D.

2 Timothy 4:1-8; John 21:15-19

This might be a terrible way to launch a sermon, but I have to confess I don’t remember the specifics of a single sermon I heard preached as a child – and growing up in the Church of the Nazarene, I heard sermons every week, Sunday morning and evening, Wednesday night prayer meeting too. But I do remember the hymns we sang. I could probably retrieve a hundred or so, at least their first lines or refrains.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I attended the liturgy at Seattle University celebrating and lamenting the closing of the graduate School of Theology and Ministry where I used to teach and the queer, Black artist who provided the music, Stephanie Anne Johnson, sang a hymn I hadn’t heard or thought about in fifty years. It’s entitled “Jewels,” which is also the name of Johnson’s newest album. I immediately recalled the first verse and refrain from my childhood:

When He cometh, when He cometh / To make up His jewels,

All His jewels, precious jewels, / His loved and His own. //

Like the stars of the morning, / His bright crown adorning,

They shall shine in their beauty, / Bright gems for His crown.

Stephanie Anne Johnson, with their acoustic guitar, did a blues-y, breath-y, Black church and country-fied version of the hymn. I’ll play it for you on my phone after mass, if you’d like.

When I got home from the liturgy, I had to look up the hymn in one of my old Nazarene hymnals. [Holding up “Worship in Song” hymnal and then paging through it.] This is not the 1950s hymnal I grew up with, but the one that replaced it in 1972. Still, there it is, “Jewels,” #494 in a little five-page section of hymns for and about children. Then I turned the page to #495, a hymn that begins: “Our church is such a friendly place; It’s where I love to be.” Words by Elizabeth B. Jones – my maternal grandmother. And when I flipped back to the inside cover, there she had written her name: Elizabeth B. Jones. This was my grandmother’s copy of the hymnal. I have no idea when or why it came to me, but this family history coupled with Stephanie Anne Johnson’s redition, forced me to sit a while with the hymn “Jewels.”

It’s an old hymn, with words written by William O. Cushing back in 1854. So, I was not surprised to find lots of capital H “His-es” throughout, which always puts me off a bit: His jewels / His loved and His own / His crown. Although in this case, at least, they all refer to Jesus rather than God “the Father.”

In the first verse: When He cometh, when He cometh / To make up His jewels: “make up” his jewels? Why that verb?

The second verse is a bit more troubling. He will gather, He will gather / The gems for his kingdom: / All the pure ones, all the bright ones, / His loved and His own. Which might suggest there are others, not so pure and bright, but dirty and dull, who Jesus won’t gather. I hope that’s not what Cushing meant.

The third verse makes explicit the connection between children and jewels:

Little children, little children / Who love their Redeemer / Are the jewels, precious jewels, / His loved and His own.

But what most intrigues and entices me about “Jewels” is how this hymn reverses a typical way of imagining us and our lives in relation to Jesus. Think of another old hymn: “Crown Him with many crowns, the Lamb upon His throne.” Little old us paying due allegiance to a high and mighty Lord Jesus, and showing proper deference. Or, how about this one: “So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross, / ‘Til my trophies at last I lay down. / I will cling to the old rugged cross, / And exchange it someday for a crown.” Jesus crowning us with what belongs rightfully and truly to “Him.” Of course there’s truth in both those notions. But listen again to what “Jewels” proposes:

When he cometh, when he cometh / To make up His jewels,

All His jewels, precious jewels, / His loved and His own. //

Like the stars of the morning, / His bright crown adorning,

They shall shine in their beauty, / Bright gems for His crown.

We are the jewels in Jesus’ crown. We adorn him, not just he us. We adorn Jesus by shining with our innate beauty. Like the stars of the morning. How do they adorn Jesus? They just be themselves and act themselves and shine with their own beauty. Us too, in all our unique differences one from one another, and yet also knit together in unity by God’s Spirit. That should be a source of deep pride for us, especially at the end of this Pride Month.

And maybe even Saint Peter and Saint Paul who we commemorate today. What if we imagined them not as bearded men, but as little children, as jewels, as gems for Jesus’ crown. Peter with the belt someone else fastened around him, gracefully letting go, closing the distance from those people he’d rather have avoided. Paul holding on tenaciously, finishing the race, keeping the faith: a libation, a cup of wine, a chalice poured out for God and other people. Pure and bright, both in their own ways.

Stephanie Anne Johnson seems to agree, given the few slight changes they make to the 19th century text of “Jewels. “So let’s be children, little children,” Johnson sings; and “We’re those pure ones, we’re those bright ones, / his loved and his own.”

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So, I wonder if and how my trip down memory lane with the hymn “Jewels” engages your life and your experience?

And I wonder how with pride, capital P “Pride,” we might each shine in our own unique beauty – like the stars of the morning – and adorn the crown Jesus wears?

I invite your reflections.

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Resources:

stephanieannejohnsonmusic.com

“Worship in Song: Hymnal” (Lillenas Publishing Co. 1972).

Foreign Country and Homeland

Sermon given Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Apostles (transferred) by Mark Lloyd Taylor, Ph.D.

Ezekiel 34:11-16; Psalm 87; 2 Timothy 4:1-8; John 21:15-19

Auslӓnder!

All these years later, I can still hear the irritation, contempt even, in her voice. Auslӓnder. Foreigners. She was an attendant at the Pergamon Museum in East Berlin – back when Germany was divided by the Iron Curtain and there still was an East Berlin. It’s true, my little family and I had arrived thirty minutes before closing. But we really wanted to catch a glimpse of those treasures of the ancient world: the bust of Nefertiti, the Ishtar Gate that once led into Babylon. Just when the attendant was ready to be done for the day. Can you hear it even in the German word she used? Auslӓnder. Out-landers. Outsiders. Foreigners. I held my tongue, but felt like responding: “Ja, aber kann ich ziemlich gut Deutsch sprechen. / Yes, but I can speak reasonably good German.” After years of study and eight months of making myself at home – at least a little bit – in that foreign country. Of course, there’s the deeper issue of why an American graduate student with spouse and two young daughters would be able to view the wonders of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in a museum in central Europe. We’ll come back to that later. For now, let the attendant’s word ring in your ears as it does in mine: Auslӓnder!

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A second century document known as the Letter to Diognetus speaks of Christians as foreigners. Back at a time when they were a tiny, non-conformist minority within the Roman Empire, the anonymous author defends Christians against the charge that they live off somewhere in cities of their own, speaking some different language, and describes their paradoxical citizenship. They dwell in their own countries, the Letter asserts, but only as sojourners. For to the follower of Jesus, “every foreign country is a homeland, and every homeland is a foreign country.” In other words, there’s something odd socially and politically about being a Christian. Christians can and should be at home, can and should be active participants in any society; for the Christian calling is always and everywhere to love God with one’s whole being and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. And yet the Christian will never be fully at home in any society or under any form of government, because each and every human political system falls short of the reign of God’s justice and peace. Every homeland a foreign country and every foreign country a homeland.

Now the Letter to Diognetus could well have cited Saint Peter and Saint Paul – who we commemorate today – as examples of this odd citizenship, this paradoxical stance toward society and government. Both apostles end up in Rome during the corrupt, brutal, and chaotic reign of emperor Nero and are put to death for following a different Lord, the Lord Jesus. But Peter and Paul negotiate foreign country and homeland in different ways.

Peter was a backwater Galilean fisherman from the edge of the Roman empire, while Paul was a cosmopolitan rabbi and Roman citizen. Some might have dismissed Peter as a hick or a yahoo. Others, in turn, might have despised Paul as one of those coastal elites. Despite their different social locations, however, Peter and Paul shared a common Hebrew heritage of moving back and forth between homeland and foreign country. Their ancestors Abraham and Sarah just picked up and left home in Haran and set off for a foreign country God promised to show them. Then later, Jacob and Leah and Rachel and all their children were forced to flee that promised land of Canaan for Egypt during a time of famine. Over the years, guests became slaves. Until Moses led them out of bondage and back home again. For a while, at least, until the cycle repeats – next time with defeat and displacement by the Babylonian Empire. Exodus and exile. Return and restoration. From foreign countries and to foreign countries. Leaving home behind and making a new home. But always guided by the promise we heard from Ezekiel: that God would seek out the people and rescue them from all the countries to which they had been scattered and bring them once more to their own land. That God will search for the lost, bring back the strayed, bind up the injured, and strengthen the weak (34:11-16).

Peter was settled in his Galilean homeland only to find it a foreign country under Roman occupation. Paul had made the Greco-Roman world, in all of its cultural foreign-ness, a homeland; even though that didn’t prevent him from being brought in chains to the heart of the empire of which he was a citizen.

Peter teaches how to negotiate homeland as foreign country by gracefully letting go. Peter returns home to Galilee after Jesus’ crucifixion and takes up fishing again. And there, just as Jesus promised, Peter reunites with Jesus. Jesus has breakfast ready on the seashore and a thrice-repeated question: Simon son of John, do you love me? Jesus continues: “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go” (John 21:15-19). Letting go, when age or change or circumstance re-makes the one who was once at home and in control; re-makes Peter such that he can no longer dress himself and choose where to go and what to do.

Paul teaches how to hold on tenaciously in order to negotiate foreign country as homeland. “Proclaim the message,” Paul writes Timothy from his prison cell. “Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable. Convince. Rebuke. Encourage….I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:2, 7).

But both Peter and Paul’s citizenship remains paradoxical. By letting go, Peter closes the distance between himself and those people he’d rather avoid: Jesus on trial for his life; Cornelius the Roman centurion and his Gentile household; even Paul the apostle to the Gentiles. Peter once knew how to keep his distance and stay ritually pure. He was good at fastening his own belt. But distance made for denial. When someone else fastens the belt around him, a path, a road appears – not to where Peter planned to go, but to a foreign country Jesus will show him. A road that leads to other people, to difference, to love.

By holding on, Paul safeguards something he can then offer others. “As for me,” he confides, “I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come” (2 Timothy 4:6). A libation. A cup of wine, a chalice, ritually presented to God or the gods by ancient Hebrews and Romans. If Paul, if Paul’s very life, is poured out as a libation, then it is not being squandered. Instead, Paul bestows his life upon other people as a precious and unexpected gift. And just as unexpectedly, the same Jesus who once turned water into wine, promises to transform the executioner’s sword awaiting Paul into “a crown of righteousness” (4:8).

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Debra and I just returned home from a week-long trip to Olathe, Kansas. It often felt like a foreign country, far from Seattle and St. Paul’s. There were lots of white guys wearing t-shirts, many with interwoven religious and political messages. One read: “Jesus loves me and my guns.” Debra quipped: “Well, he’s half right.” Another: “Jesus is my savior. Trump is my president. Biden is just a resident.” I don’t speak that foreign language. But, at the same time, our adopted Starbucks coffee shop – at 135th Street and Black Bob Road (yes, Black Bob Road, that’s its name) – had a chalk drawing on its welcome board celebrating Pride Month with lots of little colorful balloons, and there was an active American Sign Language table for the deaf and an employee who could communicate by signing. That made us feel more at home for an hour or so each day.

And at first, the assisted living facility where my soon-to-be 95 year old father with his late onset Alzheimer’s lives, hardly felt like home – even though the primary reason for the trip was to be with Dad again. My siblings and I with our spouses worried that we shouldn’t go visit him all at the same time because it might just confuse him. It turned out, the more we were with him, all together, interacting with each other, day by day, the more alert he became, more engaged, more fully himself – so that as we were saying our good-byes that last afternoon, he was able to volunteer: “Thank you so much for coming here to see me. Bless you.”

On the wider stage of world history, why were those antiquities from Egypt and Babylon on display in that museum in Berlin rather than in Cairo or Baghdad? Because of centuries of European colonialism, of course, and its many forms of theft of other peoples’ homelands. In North America, truly native born, indigenous folk have become a tiny minority, pushed to the brink of disappearance by the rapacious behavior of millions of white settlers, including my own ancestors. Native Americans marginalized by the outsiders who displaced them, put them down and in their place alongside black and brown people removed from their homelands physically or economically. Maybe all it takes to make us feel like we’re in a foreign country is to follow the daily news about our supposedly democratic institutions or take a walk through this neighborhood around St. Paul’s. What happened to our sense of the common good?

But here’s the hope I cling to. That the God of Jesus and Ezekiel does still seek the lost, bring back the strayed, bind up the injured, and strengthen the weak. That Jesus incarnates both Peter’s belt and Paul’s chalice, closing the distance and pouring out his very life for us. That as both Auslӓnder and native born, Jesus makes his home in our lives and in our world. Ancient and timely words from the Letter to Diognetus again: “Do you think that Jesus was sent by God to establish some sort of political tyranny, to inspire fear and terror? Not so….Therefore, Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity either in locality or in speech or in customs….Every foreign country is a homeland to them, and every homeland is a foreign country.”

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Resource:

Jaroslav Pelikan discusses and quotes from the “Letter to Diognetus” in his book “Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture” (Yale University Press, 1985), pages 49-50.

God is coming: bake bread

Preached on the Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6A), June 18, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Genesis 18:1-15
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:8

The St. Paul’s Centennial Garden, where so many encounters with the divine take place.

This week, an unhoused neighbor and I had words. Neither of us was in a happy mood. It wasn’t a pleasant conversation. This is at least partly because it happened at the wrong time of day.

I’ve noticed that often I follow a daily emotional arc, in my effort to get ahead of the chaos that swirls around Uptown in these hard times. In the early morning I feel quiet, thoughtful, insightful, sometimes even serene. Then, at the proper beginning of the workday, I feel anger: a righteous anger, something akin to a “mama bear,” even though I am not a mama, strictly speaking. As the sun reaches its zenith, I feel more regulated and steady, working alongside staff and volunteers with level-headed reliability. For an hour or so in the mid-afternoon, I feel tired, in need of rest. Then I rally in the late afternoon and feel energized and in good humor, leading to a relaxing evening with follow-ups and a look at the next day’s tasks. That’s the pattern; that’s the arc. I’ve noticed that other leaders here at St. Paul’s follow their own emotional arcs, but I’ll let them describe their own experiences.

In any case, one day this week, an unhoused neighbor bumped into me during my mama-bear hour. Now, even at the wrong time of day, I rarely lose my professional composure, give or take an eye roll, and I did not lose it in this encounter. But I was, let’s say, stern, when the neighbor saw me cleaning up our property and was outraged that I was taking the debris that he thought was his. He chose to call me something designed to provoke a strong reaction, a dreadfully bad name, one I can’t even type out on my laptop, let alone repeat out loud. My response was a gruff “uh huh, call me that all you want,” and I continued cleaning up. That was it.

Not earth-shattering, no. Just a grumpy exchange. But I don’t like those interactions. I’m a pastor. I’ve been a counselor. I have training in reconciliation and communication. If there’s one thing I like the least in our mission work – apart from the staggering human suffering I see – it is the scarcity of positive, constructive conversations with our ministry partners who live outside. I wish we all could talk more, and really hear one another. And I strive to listen better myself.

And – I confess I harbor a somewhat ridiculous hope for stirring dialogue in our conversations around the neighborhood, for flashes of inspiration and insight, for a conversation that would jump off the page of a novel or be featured in a clip on Oscar night. I know this is all base vanity. Most everything outside these doors is grounded, concrete, earthy – because it needs to be. The countless people who live and work here need to address important practical concerns. That’s not to say it’s not spiritual work: quite the contrary. But God’s Spirit lies down in deep humility along these urban streets. Give someone a blanket, and listen to what they have to tell you, what they have to give you, hidden in a conversation about the basic needs we all have. That can be a top-of-the-mountain spiritual experience. It really, truly can. But you have to want it. You have to accept that the Spirit moves, but she moves down low, in the dust and dirt of the struggling neighborhood.

And that brings me to the real problem I was having in that gruff exchange with our neighbor. I forgot the wisdom of the Torah, where God’s people meet God in deep humility. Specifically, I forgot the teachings of our foremother Sarah. Just before a momentous encounter with the divine, she responded positively to Abraham’s hurried request, and she “made ready quickly three measures of choice flour, kneaded it, and made cakes.” This is Sarah’s grounded, concrete, earthy teaching: When an important encounter with the divine is about to happen, prepare food.

If God is coming, bake bread.

Sometimes, of course, the bread we bake to welcome the divine is not literally bread. But it’s often still food of some kind. In the spiritual work of recovery from alcoholism, for example, Sarah’s bread takes the form of hard candy. The practical AA literature suggests setting out a bowl of candy to help recovering alcoholics raise their blood sugar, and to give them something to do with their palettes. Much of a substance-abuse disorder is caught up in the bodily mechanics of drinking or using, and the hard candy gives the person a little bit of that experience – but safely. My favorite hard candy is grape Jolly Ranchers: for me, grape Jolly Ranchers are as holy as Sarah’s three quick-bread cakes. They help make possible my encounter, in sobriety, with the Holy Spirit.

Oprah has famously said that she grew up in a family that always placed food at the center, in every celebration, in every wedding and funeral, in every meaningful encounter. And who is Oprah but a contemporary foremother, teaching God’s people the basics of spiritual practice?

A friend of mine, someone far less famous than the matriarchs Oprah and Sarah but someone who, as a mother, comes honestly by the title of “mama bear,” told me this about herself: “I will always feed my children,” she said. She said this in the context of our conversation about so-called “tough love,” in which the parent sets hard boundaries with the teen or adult child when they are suffering from substance-abuse disorders, mental illness, and the deadly, untreated, comorbid diagnoses that so often lead people into unsheltered living on the streets. Strong boundaries matter: “If my child were ever to come to me off the street, demanding money for drugs,” my friend said, “I would not give her money for drugs. But I would feed her dinner. I will always feed my children.” This mother knows in her bones that food is the beginning of a spiritual path, a spiritual conversation, a spiritual connection with the divine. No matter what, she and her children will always enjoy this connection, together.

So again, here is the teaching: When an important encounter with the divine is about to happen, prepare food.

If God is coming, bake bread. 

And so, finally, near the end of the week, a couple of emotional arcs after our grumpy conversation, I finally remembered the Torah. I remembered Foremother Sarah’s example. (And I remembered that people here at St. Paul’s buy Oreo cookies for me.) So I went downstairs, got a snack pack and two bottles of water from our SPiN storage room, and took them to the neighbor. And once again, whether I needed to learn it or not, I got the dull lesson that this mission is not about magic moments: the unhoused neighbor pointedly did not say thank you. I said, “Here are some snacks and water,” he took the snacks and water, he said nothing at all, and that was the end of our exchange. “You’re welcome,” I mumbled inaudibly (well, I dearly hope it was inaudible), and I suppressed an eye roll.

But then, but then! On Friday, late in the evening when I was greeting a new security guard we’ve hired to safeguard not only our property but the safety of so many of our friends who live outside, I ran into this unhoused person a third time. This time he asked me a question, beginning with the title “pastor.” “Pastor,” he began, and then he asked his question. We were at peace. The Spirit arrived. (Well, she’s been here all along. She was revealed.) The three strange beings who visited Sarah and Abraham at the oaks of Mamre: there they were, in our own labyrinth garden. We did not have a particularly memorable conversation, this unhoused neighbor and I. He is not capable of very many memorable conversations, which I say not to disparage him at all, but only to be realistic about his limitations as he suffers with so many untreated illnesses and losses. But the awful epithet was replaced with the word “pastor,” and for a moment I felt like a pastor – a shepherd – and I sensed that he was once again someone under my protection, and no longer a wolf that I snarl at when the morning sun stirs my angry defenses. And I was someone who could learn something from him, too.

Go, then, good shepherds, as Jesus has commanded us to go. “Cure the sick,” Jesus says, “raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” If Jesus were to say this in my hearing, I would add some commands: Go, I would say – and Go I do say! – Go, and cast out the demons inside you, not just the ones haunting others. And then hand out Jolly Ranchers, hand out snack packs, feed your wayward children, gather your family around a table laden with food, carry the gifts of food and drink forward to this Table; make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes. An important encounter with the divine is about to happen. We must bake bread.

You want a piece of me?

Preached on the Second Sunday after Pentecost (Year A), June 11, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Genesis 12:1-9
Psalm 33:1-12
Romans 4:13-25
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Jerry Stiller as Frank Costanza, in “Seinfeld.”

Some time ago I was talking with someone about renting our space downstairs, and we were discussing the complications of parking and basic safety, given the various challenges posed by our neighborhood, which is of course on the front lines of the ongoing Seattle housing crisis. After several generations of national political and cultural conflict, major cities like Seattle have seen a slow, yet devastating, dismantling of the social contract: we simply do not live in a nation that reliably works together, giving people a hand when they need one, everyone doing their part, all citizens understanding that each of us receives good things from the whole, so each of us therefore should give and serve; we should do our part.

Of course this has always been a problem, down the whole history of the United States, and if I have failed to see that, it is only because I have enjoyed privileges that allow me to look away. Founded by slave owners, our nation gave the vote to women only about a century ago, and we seem always to have been quarreling with one another about how best to build and sustain a just society. It may just seem even worse now, and worse for more people, but the struggle has endured throughout this country’s relatively short life. 

St. Paul’s is one of countless faith communities that work to cover the gaps, helping our neighbors while other institutions fall short, or even work against the causes we champion. This is what it was like for Jesus and his followers, too. 

That’s the big picture. But in my conversation with the person who wanted to rent our space — like most conversations around the neighborhood these days — the stated topics were small and practical: where will people park? Are they safe walking from their car to our bridge door? How do they handle unwelcome visitors who might walk in during their event?

And then this person said something like this: “It’s a shame,” he said, “that quiet little churches like yours have to deal with all this.” “I’m sorry?” I replied. He clarified: “Well, you know, churches that are getting older, having to cope with all this.”

“Older.” “Little.” “Quiet.” These were not flattering descriptions of this parish I so passionately love and serve. An image flashed in my mind, as I suppressed my irritation at someone who evidently was condescending to us. I indulged a little fantasy. For one delightful moment I imagined responding to this person like the legendary comedian Jerry Stiller, who memorably played George’s father, Frank Costanza, on Seinfeld in the 1990s. When Elaine insulted his son George in the final scene of one episode, Frank looked at her in outrage and said something I honestly would love to have said to this guy, who called my beloved parish “older, little, and quiet.” Frank says to Elaine, “Are you sayin’ … you want a piece of me?” Elaine gives him a look and says, “I could drop you like a bag of dirt.” And Frank says, “You want a piece of me? You got it!”

Of course that’s not how Jesus responds to condescension. They laugh at him when he says the little girl is only sleeping, that she is not dead. Of course she is dead by their reckoning: they are world-wise in a weary world. Of course she is dead. Jesus sounds like a fool, a Pollyanna, a frivolous optimist. And anyway did you see him talking to that woman with a hemorrhage? He is ridiculous; the hemorrhaging woman is ridiculous; that the dead girl is just sleeping is ridiculous. They laugh at him. But Jesus rises above it. He is no Frank Constanza. He just keeps on doing his ministry, noticing and responding to the people who need it the most.

And Jesus notices and responds to sinners. “Sinners”: this is a complicated word. It doesn’t only mean wrongdoers. Depending on where it appears in God’s Word, it can mean wrongdoers; or it can refer to people like Judas who refuse to abide in God’s love; or it could be outcasts in a class-conscious society; or it could be a term for all of humanity buckling under the Power of Sin: we can all relate to the experience of being our lesser selves, messing up, getting lost. The world-wise people with good reputations criticize Jesus for befriending “sinners” like poor Matthew who sits in a tax booth colluding with the hateful empire, probably because he inherited the family business, and so he’s doomed to ply his father’s trade. Jesus doesn’t care if they criticize; he doesn’t care if they laugh. He’s here for Matthew, for the hemorrhaging woman, for the feverish girl asleep on her sickbed. Jesus knows these neighbors need a powerful community of support, not just a clutch of “quiet, little, older” people.

And those who laugh at Jesus — how quickly they forget Abraham, the father of many nations, so old that he was “as good as dead,” by the standards of the condescending world. God chose ancient Abraham and elderly Sarah to parent a whole nation, and eventually to gather all nations into God’s embrace. Abraham: another laughable old fool. 

So, who are you? Are you decrepit Abraham or doddering Sarah, overlooked — or looked upon with condescending pity — by our ageist world? Maybe you’re the woman who can’t stop the bleeding: you’re battling chronic illness, and in our ableist culture you are well aware of your low status. Maybe you’re the sleeping girl: vulnerable, weak, unable to advocate for yourself. Or you’re her father, frantically trying to help your vulnerable neighbor. Or you’re sitting in your proverbial tax-collector’s booth, toiling your life away as you uneasily contemplate how your labor perpetuates an unjust and even cruel economy.

If you resemble any of these laughable people, hear this Good News: Jesus isn’t writing you off as dead. Jesus is your truest friend, and he is here to help you. Jesus is visible and tangible — he is incarnate — in this mighty assembly, the Body of Christ. This week a few of us lent our aid to an unhoused neighbor who suffered a catastrophic loss. At one point this person was sobbing with me on the phone, and I wasn’t the only one he called. It is horrible to beg for one’s life. He literally cried out to us, and we did not not look down with contempt, or shrink away in fear. 

Our response was not “little” or “quiet.” We were the sleeping girl’s father in this week’s crisis with this neighbor. We were advocating forcefully — and sometimes frantically — for someone we love who is achingly, agonizingly vulnerable, as close to death as that centenarian nomad called Abraham, who (Paul tells us) “hoped against hope,” even though his body was “as good as dead.” 

I am fiercely proud of all that we do in this youthful, vital community of faith. I am profoundly inspired and motivated by all that we are, and how we live out what we believe. Our love for our neighbors rises up in might from this mission base; our exquisitely musical prayers ring through creation; our passion — and our compassion — is a sign of the Dominion of God, right here. We often observe solemn silence, but we are not quiet. We are not little. We are not older. Now, sure, some of us are full of years; some of our strongest leaders are senior citizens. But others of us are not yet even ten years old, and all of us are mighty oaks like Abraham and Sarah, formed and sent to proclaim Good News with power and purpose.

God transforms the quiet, little, older ones, so that they will then transform this world. God in Jesus draws alongside hapless government officials and unwell women and ailing children and old crones, clothing them in dignity and raising them up as part of a loud, large, and vigorous mission. We have no reason to be modest about all that God is doing here, with and for us, and for our friends who live outside, and for all who cry out in need. And that’s why, if someone looks down on anyone in this house of God; if someone condescends to my friends at this gate of heaven — whenever someone does that, I may just say, with the fire of God’s own Spirit: “You want a piece of me? You got it!”

In the Beginning, Here and Now

Remarks for Shared Homily at the 5:00pm Mass

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Trinity Sunday (Year A)

June 4, 2023

Mark Lloyd Taylor, Ph.D.

The Trinity, by Lance McNeel

Creation stories are on my mind this evening. We hear Genesis chapter 1 with its “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth” read each year at the Easter Vigil. But the Sunday lectionary offers us just one opportunity every three years to engage this Hebrew creation story as a 5pm community and share our reflections. Let’s take advantage of our opportunity this Trinity Sunday in Year A.

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Creation stories are ancient. Ancestral. Passed down across centuries, carrying the wisdom of our elders. Creation stories reach back to a primordial past to account for the present. Creation stories try and explain why things are the way they are here and now in light of how they came to be back in the beginning. But creation stories always narrate their “in the beginning” from a particular historical and cultural vantage point. We humans create creation stories in our own image to explain a way of being in the world.

Take the creation story of the Dunne-za, an aboriginal people from the subarctic region of western Canada – a hunting culture. In the beginning, their story goes, things were different from the way they are here and now. Roles were reversed: giant animals hunted and killed human beings. Until Saya, mythic hero of the Dunne-za, steps on to the primordial scene – the first person to follow the trails of animals, the first person with knowledge, the first hunter. Saya boldly stalked the giant animals who had been preying on humans. After slaying one enormous beast, Saya scattered its flesh in all directions and called out the names of the wild animals that populate Dunne-za lands to this day, and brought them into being: rabbits and deer, weasels and wolverines, lynx and cougar. The giant animals Saya did not kill, he pursued relentlessly until, in their desperation, they sought refuge under the surface of the earth. There the great beasts rested. You can still see the contours of their bodies in the hills and valleys and mountains of Dunne-za lands.

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Now I know the historical and cultural context of Genesis 1 differs dramatically from that of Saya the first hunter. In fact, the Dunne-za narrative might remind us more of that other Hebrew creation story in Genesis 2 and 3, with its God who walks in a garden at the time of the evening breeze and has hands to form the first human being from the dirt and then take one of the man’s ribs to make the first woman. The God of Genesis 1 is less anthropomorphic, more cosmic, and, well, up there. The story itself is so neat and symmetrical; so logical and step by step – six days of creation, evening and morning. Light. Sky, seas, and dry land. Plant life. Sun and moon. Water creatures and air creatures. Land creatures and human beings. And then God rested on the seventh day. So familiar. Still, with my ears tuned a bit differently by the story of Saya, I hear three intriguing ideas in Genesis 1.

First, God creates by separating. God allows, no encourages, mandates even that each element, light and darkness, waters above and below the dome of the sky, be itself, fully, unique and not diminished or coopted by another. As if God said, let there be variety and difference. Dignity in diversity. Diverse dignity.

But second, God also creates by gathering together – the seas in their own place and the dry land in its. As if to proclaim: all that make up these particular aspects of the world are richer in solidarity than if they remained scattered; more productive and abundant together than apart.

And third, the God of Genesis 1 creates by creating co-creators. Yes, let there be light, God says, and there was light, just like that. More often in the story, however, God says things like: let the waters bring forth great sea monsters and everything with which the waters swarm; and let every winged bird of every kind fly above the earth and across the sky. Let the earth bring forth green plants and trees, cattle and creeping things and wild animals – and let them all, the creatures of land and air and water, continue and expand God’s creative work by being fruitful and multiplying. So, too, God’s human co-creators, who are singled out in the story for special attention: created in the image of God with dominion over the other creatures, told to fill the earth and subdue it, whatever those words meant to the ancient Hebrews or might mean to us now. After all, this is a human creation story, told from our vantage point. I wonder how the cattle and green plants, or the sea monsters and birds, would narrate God’s creative work?

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Creation stories are ancient and ancestral. But they can grow old and tired and out of touch with the times. Creation stories try and explain why things are the way they are, but often end up reinforcing social, political, and economic structures that elevate and privilege some people, while oppressing others. So creation stories sometimes need to be questioned and critiqued – even turned back upon themselves. An extreme example would be Jim Jones, founder and cult leader of the Peoples Temple. Jones used to preach a parody of Genesis 2 and 3 every six months to get his people, 75% of whom were black, to laugh at the cruel and dominating “Sky God” of the King James Bible and break free of “Him.” In Jones’ version, the serpent is not the tempter of the first humans but one who brings revolutionary knowledge of liberation from slavish obedience to racist and capitalist authority. Of course, Jones led the Peoples Temple to communal suicide, rather than salvation, becoming himself an image of the tyrannical god he originally critiqued. More helpful are the generations of activist leaders who insist that the Genesis 1 story of God creating humankind in God’s own image enshrines the truly revolutionary idea that all human beings, not some, possess equal divine dignity despite the racism, patriarchy, and homophobia of the established order. I’d love to add to the warning of centuries of Christian wedding ceremonies: “those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder” (BCP 428), an alternate and liberating affirmation of Genesis 1: what God has separated in order to give each their unique dignity in diversity, let no one join together, let no one incorporate and dilute to the advantage of men over women, white folk over people of color, straight over queer.

Because, even at its best, no creation story ever tells the whole story. There’s always something left out – like, where did those giant beasts that hunted and killed human beings come from before Saya the first hunter reversed the roles? Or there’s something left over and above or hidden behind and beneath every creation story. A wild card. A surplus of meaning. Something excessive and maybe transgressive of the dominant narrative the creation story means to tell. For me, it’s those lines early in Genesis 1, before the six days of separating and gathering together, bringing forth and multiplying, that are most suggestive. “[T]he earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” The word our Hebrew ancestors used was ruah: wind, yes, but it also means breath and spirit. What if we imaged God not as subduing and having dominion over darkness and the formless void but accompanying them as partner. Before God speaks God’s Word and creates the new, the ordered, God is already present and active in other guises. A wind sweeping over deep waters, energizing them. The breath of God sighing gently in the darkness, stirring life. God’s spirit hovering over the void like a mother caressing the unborn child in her womb.

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But I wonder, for you, what does the creation story of Genesis 1 still help explain here and now? And what does it fail to explain?

What social, political, and economic structures might Genesis 1 reinforce that ought to be questioned and critiqued? And does this ancient, ancestral story nevertheless hide an alternate narrative that could help point us toward liberation?

I invite your responses.

Resources

For the Dunne-za creation story, see David Suzuki and Peter Knudtson, “The Wisdom of the Elders” (Bantam Books, 1992), pages 38-39.

And for Jim Jones and his parody of the Genesis creation stories, David Chidester, “Salvation and Suicide” (Indiana University Press, 1991), page 106-109.

Creation is splendid

Preached on the Feast of the Holy Trinity (Year A), June 4, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20

Our dog Keiko, enjoying a quiet corner of God’s splendid creation.

God creates a vast, blazing array of burning globes that fling themselves eternally outward from God’s first, fierce bang of energy and light. Our light by day is a cheerfully yellow star in the long stride of middle age, and our great night light glimmers with a silver sheen. God invited these lights into being, and they complied. 

God creates an astonishing, lush tapestry of trees and flowers, sea creatures and birds in flight, cattle and creeping things. Even the rats that bedevil our office building: even they are part of God’s splendid creation, if a troublesome part. And then, on the same epochal day when God creates the creeping things, God says, “Let us make humankind in our image.” And God proclaims humans and all the creatures of the earth very good.

We humans participate powerfully in God’s splendid creation: we are able to learn and gain insight; we can build things and preserve things; we can look back and plan ahead. As sentient beings, we can be understood as the universe looking at itself: when we contemplate the gorgeous majesty of creation, and when we reflect on our place in that majesty, we are the universe itself becoming conscious, becoming self-aware. And yet, though the psalm today rightly sings of humanity as but little lower than the angels, adorned with glory and honor, nevertheless our reason informs us that this is likely also true about other intelligent species on our planet, and on other planets, too. The universe is too splendid for us to be its only location of self-awareness.

And yet we often fall short of our potential. Even in the proclamation in Genesis that sings beautifully of God creating the heavens and the earth, even there we suffer a failure of imagination. We limit ourselves to narrow descriptions of vast things, particularly when we say, “Male and female he created them.” Humanity is hemmed into two boxes—male and female. And God has he/him pronouns.

But we have moved beyond these constructs! We know better. Just listen to the song of diversity ringing through the creation story of Genesis, chapter one. Seeds of every kind, trees of every kind, swarming sea creatures of every kind, winged birds of every kind, animals of the earth of every kind… And then, *clunk*. Humans are male and female. And God, who creates us, is he/him. In my reading of the Genesis creation song, this is a disappointingly flat lyric. The music suddenly comes to a bumpy stop, even though in the very next bar, God beautifully blesses us and commissions us to care for creation with love and skill.

But I believe the text falling flat just here, in the phrase “male and female he created them,” is a great irony, because the Genesis creation song is working hard even here to show God’s creative diversity, this time in humanity. Humanity is not just “man,” we are “male and female.” We have found vastly more diversity in our species since this was first written, but that’s what they knew then, and they noted the diversity they saw. Or (more likely) they knew more than that, but that’s what they were ready to say out loud, ready to write down. It was a good start. The song of diversity is meant to be edited and expanded.

And God as “he/him”? Well, in a patriarchal, pre-scientific culture, the male of the species was assumed to be the source of creative life. And anyway you heard it yourself: when God describes God’s own self, God uses the plural personal pronouns “us” and “our.” “Let us make humankind in our image.” So God as “he,” even in this primary source, is not what it seems, not the last word on God and gender.

But back to humans as “male and female”: this will disappoint those who shout silly, mean-spirited things like “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” but we have explicitly transcended the “male/female” construct in our Christian tradition. We Christians have long since moved beyond the male/female binary. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Notice the conjunction words in that sentence: “Jew or Greek; slave or free;” and then a twist — “male and female…” Not male or female, which would make for clean parallelism in Paul’s writing, but “male and female.” Paul breaks the parallelism because he is directly lifting a portion of the phrase “male and female God created them” directly from Genesis 1. He is transcending the difference claimed there and saying we are all alike, all one. He wants us to catch the Genesis reference.

We can, in turn, transcend the male/female binary in a new direction from Paul, and say we are no longer male and female not because we are all alike, but because we are all different, all along the rainbow, even as we are one. Paul builds on the Torah; we build on Paul; how might our descendants build on us?

Today, in our celebration of God’s splendid creation, we sing of God blessing us and then commissioning us to care for the earth and all creatures, and then we sing of God in Jesus commissioning us to baptize by the power of that same creative, generative Spirit. And finally today we will gather at this Table, which sometimes is rightly called a banquet table at a great wedding, the celebration of the marriage of the Holy Three with all humanity, and with all the whole creation in which humanity is embedded. 

When we celebrate the life and work of the Holy Three in creation as a marriage, we are adding a stanza to the Genesis creation song. God does not only bless us, as we hear in stanza six of the song. God goes on to marry us. God first chooses God’s people Israel as God’s own spouse in the story of salvation, freeing them from bondage and raising up prophets, priests, and sovereigns from among them who proclaim the coming of God’s reign of justice and peace over the whole earth. God then keeps God’s own promise to Abraham in Genesis 12, sending God’s people – who now include us – into the world on God’s mission. Now, the image of marriage can be problematic: many – maybe it’s fair to say most – of us are well acquainted with the challenges and vexations of marriage. And always when choosing our metaphors we have to watch out for the pathology of patriarchy. But God marrying humanity in the midst of creation: let’s rest with that for a moment. I think it works. I think it proclaims something true.

The metaphor of course gets a lot of help today as we celebrate and bless the marriage of our siblings in Christ, Howard and Aman. (And of course their union also helps us see how thoroughly our Christian tradition has transcended the old confines of “male and female” in our understanding of human nature and human love.) Today Howard and Aman give us a few bars of music in the marriage stanza of our creation song. God blesses them today, and God blesses their union as another expression of God’s own creative force in a splendid universe.

And then, after asking God’s blessing on Howard and Aman, then we will gather yet again at this Table of Holy Eucharist, where all of God’s wedding guests of all times and places always draw close to us. The Eucharist is a wedding celebration, but it’s not celebrating the union of just one couple. At this Table we sing joyfully about the marriage of all creation with the Holy Spirit of God, who moves through creation at the will of the Creator, and marries us in the Word of God, Jesus Christ. And finally, strengthened by this wedding feast, and married to the Holy Three, we will go from here, flinging ourselves ever outward, like the blazing stars, bearing warmth and light into the splendid creation of God, still groaning for God’s justice, still longing for God’s peace.

Come to the Table, then, and do not delay. Come and see all that God has made. Indeed, it is very good.

Fluency in the language of compassion

Preached on the Day of Pentecost (Year A), May 28, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Scripture readings: Acts 2:1-21, Psalm 104:25-35, 37, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13, John 20:19-23

Andrew and I in Paris, September 2016.

Let me begin by saying that I do thoroughly love the City of Light, Paris, one of the greatest world cities, perhaps the greatest world city. I love walking in Paris, exploring a market in Paris, gazing at stained glass in Paris, figuring out labyrinthine museum floor plans in Paris, and above all drinking espresso and eating baked bread in the morning on L’Île Saint-Louis in Paris.

I love it all.

But I struggle with Paris. Specifically, I admit with embarrassment that I struggle with the language in Paris. I was a careless and inattentive French student. In high-school French class, I focused less on the House of Être and the genders of nouns, and more on the thrilling and vexing crush I had on one of my classmates. (But you know, that’s kind of French of me, now that I think about it.) And then I moved through young adulthood without studying languages other than English, and now I am right down the middle, a disappointingly average adult who finds it hard to learn new languages.

Andrew and I would go places in Paris and I would not even need to open my mouth – they knew I was a U.S. American. My clothes, my temperament, my failure to understand fluently how they carry themselves, how they do things, how they express their thoughts and feelings: they knew I didn’t fit in. Now, they happily took my money, and again, I did love being there! So there was really no downside to all this, in the end. But I struggled.

Not Andrew. Andrew loves Paris without complication, without reservation, without any scrap of doubt. And his French is good enough that even if his Parisian conversation partners know instantly that he’s not a local, he nevertheless can carry on a conversation with reasonable skill. We were in a shop on our way back to the hotel one afternoon, and Andrew conversed at some length, in French, with the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper was polite, even friendly, not the cliché smug Parisian who looks down on Americans. Often the French will anticipate an English speaker and stop the tourist with an English “May I help you?”, but this person allowed Andrew to speak to him in French. I believe he respected Andrew’s ability, and whatever strengths of character empowered Andrew to look away from cute classmates and pay attention in French class.

I do not think Andrew would say he is fluent in French, but I would say Andrew is fluent in Paris. He knows how to visit that great city. I know how to follow a good visitor, so back in 2016 we enjoyed a good trip there together. But London is next.

Except London is problematic too, because like all cities, like all places, many languages are spoken, literal languages and figurative ones. If the television show Ted Lasso is true to life, Londoners verbally abuse each other as a particularly passionate love language. In one scene, after three tweens yell obscenities at one of his close friends, the character Roy Kent looks them over, pauses, and says, “Good lads.” I do not speak this language. I am prone to feel hurt when someone who loves me expresses their love in such a rough way. I can learn this language! Even now I can understand it. But I am not fluent in it.

But on that same show, another language is spoken in London that I know well. It is the language of Judas Iscariot, spoken by the most troubled character on Ted Lasso, poor, suffering Nate Shelley, who attacks his friends and then betrays them. It’s immodest to say it, but the therapist in me correctly predicted the dramatic arc of Nate’s character. “He’s hurting so much,” I thought to myself. “So many wounds, inflicted by his father. Oh, Nate.” I have witnessed Nate’s grievous, frustrated rage. Of course I have heard it in the therapy room, but I’ve also heard it in parish life, including here at St. Paul’s. It is the language of a spiritual malady. And so, if people speak that language in London, I will immediately hear it with understanding – understanding both what it is and why it is.

Today the Holy Spirit gives us fluency, fluency in languages other than our favorites, deeper fluency in languages we know and love, curiosity about languages of whose existence we are only now becoming aware, and a humbling education in languages we’ve avoided learning because our privilege allows us to ignore those who speak them. The Holy Spirit is sometimes a slight tug inside us, other times a fireball billowing toward us, leading us up and out of our usual languages, our usual dialects, our usual ways of doing and being and relating.

I hear many languages here in this faith community. Some of us are fluent in technical languages that help us fix what’s broken, most recently our parish-hall coffee machine. Music is a language – a beautiful language of mathematics – and it is fluently sung here. Liturgical movement is yet another mathematical language – the mathematics of dance, visible in this room as a ballet of prayer. And of course many of us fluently speak the provocative language of spoken scriptural proclamation. Some of us are fluent in group dynamics and make for dynamite vestry members; some of us hear easily the quiet, often silent cry of those among us who are lonely and in need of pastoral care. And some can spot a newcomer’s body language from yards away, and know exactly what to say and do, and not say, and not do.

Going deeper, St. Paul’s is home to many who are fluent in the language of deep feelings and profound moral values, a language of empathy for those who suffer, the God-given language of compassion, the language spoken eternally into the cosmos by our wounded yet risen Savior, Jesus Christ, the Word of God. 

I hear this language whenever we are faced with a dilemma. Someone is languishing, unsheltered, on our parking strip: what must we do? Many of us, fluent in the language of compassion, prayerfully discern how we can honor the dignity of the person first, and respond to practical challenges second. We care about our troubled friend, and that care empowers and directs our actions.

This fluency in compassion that so many of us enjoy is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and it is a treasure more valuable than any earthly asset we possess. These buildings and grounds one day will pass away, but the Spirit-led language of compassion, spoken here for generations, will reverberate through the universe until the Last Day. I mean this: are you aware how few people in the world are fluent in the language of compassion? I suspect grievously few. But the Spirit moves here at First and Roy in Seattle, and she makes us fluent in the one language this world so desperately needs. I assure you, those most in need of it can hear us speaking it.

Every week at our Sunday-morning prayer meeting we call the Holy Eucharist, we invoke that same Spirit to dwell here, to keep forming us in the language of compassion. The fancy word for this (a word borrowed from the language of Greek) is epiclesis. The epiclesis is the moment in our Eucharistic Prayer when we ask God’s Spirit to descend upon the gifts of bread and wine, making them the Body and Blood of Christ; and the second epiclesis when we ask God’s Spirit to descend upon us, making us the Body of Christ in this world so starved for compassion.

We make the sign of the cross to mark this moment, to trace the descent of the Spirit on our own bodies. And whenever we do this – whenever we pray the epiclesis – we participate in a great recurring pattern in the universe, a Trinitarian pattern. Here’s the pattern: “Where[ever] the Holy Spirit moves at the will of the [Creator], the Word of God becomes incarnate in history.” That is how it was described by the theologian Michael Raschko. I’ll say that again. Michael Raschko writes, “Where[ever] the Spirit moves at the will of the [Creator], the Word of God becomes incarnate in history.” The Spirit moves over Mary at the will of the Creator, and the Word becomes embodied in Jesus Christ. The Spirit moves over the chaotic waters at the will of the Creator, and the Word brings all creation into being. The Spirit moves over the bread and cup at the will of the Creator, and the Word becomes Christ present with us at the Eucharistic Table. The Spirit moves over us at the will of the Creator, and the Word becomes flesh in you, in me, in all of us together, the Body of Christ, God’s embodied Word, broken open in compassion, creating the world anew.

So, come to this Table, come to our troubled parking strip, come to this complicated city of Seattle, come to the glorious and ever more complicated city of Paris: travel boldly across this universe, and do not be afraid. The Holy Spirit is moving over you at the will of the Creator, and the Word will teach you exactly what to say.

"The greatest teacher, failure is." –Yoda

Preached on the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year A), May 21, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen

Scripture readings: Acts 1:6-14; Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36; 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11; John 17:1-11

The Blue Line train to Mall of America, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This past Monday I arrived in Minneapolis for a conference and decided to take the light-rail train. I was staying downtown but needed to go to the Mall of America to buy a gift for my niece. I boarded the train and watched southeast Minneapolis rush by, noticing some of the many changes that have transformed this region since I last lived there, in the 1990s.

Suddenly, a man behind me exploded in anger. He shouted obscenities into his phone. He simmered down, but then he filled the train again with another startling outburst. After the third or fourth episode of rage, a woman a couple of rows in front of me got up and walked to the forward part of our train car, where there were more people. This left me alone with the angry man in the back half of the train car.

The man turned his rage against the woman. He shouted insults at her about her fears, but also about her personal appearance, specifically her weight. He mocked her. I fretted in my seat. I thought, I should just get up and follow the woman, and sit down next to her, and tell her, “I’m just going to sit up here with you,” or something. Yes. That’s what I should do. I should get up and follow the woman, and sit down next to her. I imagined the man turning his rage on me. A couple of days later, reflecting on the experience, I thought of some good movie dialogue I could say back to the man, something like, “Why don’t you shout at me for a while, and leave her alone. Just keep yelling at me, if you need to.”

But I kept my seat. I did nothing. I said nothing. That same day, on the plane, I had watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the Tom Hanks movie about Mr. Rogers, and I recalled how courageous Fred Rogers was – courageous but also sensitive; bold but also gentle. Surely Mr. Rogers would have handled this situation on the train with skill and poise. Mr. Rogers taught children how to work with their emotions, including and perhaps especially the painful emotion of anger. He might have gone and sat next to the shouting man, and said something to help the man regulate his rage, breathe it out. At the very least, the Fred Rogers in my imagination would have gone to be with the woman.

But I was scared. That’s the raw truth. I thought, “He could be armed. He could attack me, right here in the train. I could be killed.” And then it was too late: the woman got off at the next stop (which I seriously doubt was her actual stop – it was not a convenient place to get off the train, not a likely place to get off). She was gone. I prayed for her, but I felt futile and even ridiculous as I prayed. 

“Then all the disciples abandoned him and fled,” I thought. That’s a line from Matthew’s Passion. I was one of those fleeing disciples, in this situation. The woman had no companions on that train. 

The next day I visited my dad, and we talked about this experience. He empathized with my fears, which I confess I needed and wanted – I wanted a friend to tell me they understood, and all the better if that friend is my father, who I greatly admire. But then my dad and I talked about Dr. King’s take on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Dr. King felt empathy for the priest and Levite who walked on by, leaving the victim in the ditch, but then Dr. King said that the Samaritan “asked [himself] a different question,” and in doing so, the Samaritan chose bravely to offer assistance, even though helping a victim on Jericho road is an easy way to get yourself killed. Dr. King, in his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, said that the priest and Levite had asked themselves, “‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’”. The answer is clear: they could be injured or killed themselves. So they walked on by. Dr. King then said, “But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”

I clearly asked myself the first question as I kept my seat on that train – if I do something, what will happen to me? But I do remember asking myself the second one, too – I did wonder what would happen to the woman if I didn’t get up to stand and sit alongside her. If I don’t get up, I reasoned, she will leave the train alone, in a world that’s just a little dimmer for her, a little sadder, a little more lonely and hard. And finally I asked myself a question Dr. King did not pose in his great speech: "If I do not help this woman,” I asked myself, “what will happen to me?” By not helping – by not doing something, not doing anything – I also left the train diminished. My world was a little dimmer, too.

I say all of this not to get your empathy, and I ask you not to try to console me after mass. I really am okay, and I’m not being too hard on myself. I doubted the value of my prayers for the woman as I sat there on the train, but those prayers were fervent, and she did have a friend on that train, if not a brave one. And it’s all learning: I am ready to board another train. The universe doesn’t let us go back and do things differently, but it continually gives us new opportunities to make a different choice.

I say all of this not to get your empathy, but to encourage you to join me in failing upward, as they say, to notice those moments when you forget who you are, or you forget the life of self-giving love to which you are called – and to learn from those moments of failure. Maybe we fail in these ways because we forget that Jesus says we are under God’s protection, and so no matter what happens to us in train-car encounters like this, even if we are badly injured or killed, even then, God is here with us, holding us, and yes, protecting us.

Here’s how Jesus says it in the High Priestly Prayer. Today we heard the first third of this long prayer, including this particular line: Jesus said, “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

“Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

God protects us by joining us together as one. We still may be injured or even killed, as we move through this world so damaged by rage and injustice, so distorted by fear, so benighted by ignorance. That shouting man on the train: he is suffering, as surely as the woman is. He is probably suffering more than I can imagine, and I’ve seen a fair amount of suffering as a therapist, a pastor, and a person with an ordinary personal life marked by change and loss. But that poor suffering man is potentially lethal, and God does not protect me – or any of us – from the damage we could sustain when we do the right thing on the train car.

But God protects us by joining us together as one. The risen Christ – still bearing the wounds he sustained when he was riding in his train car – the risen Christ breathes God’s Spirit upon us, and binds us together. We may be hurt by this world – no, we will be hurt by this world – but we will be hurt together. We can give one another more courage when we’re out in the world. We need only remember, while we sit and fret on our train cars, how brave our Neighborhood Action ministers are here at St. Paul’s; or how compassionate and sensitive our Godly Play teachers are; or how the dance and rhythm of our liturgical servers forms us to recognize beauty, harmony, and peace in this world, so troubled yet also so beautiful. 

We enjoy God’s protection when we recognize the risen Christ active and alive in one another. When we pray as one, when we serve as one, when we give our hearts to the world as one, we draw on God’s wisdom, God’s strength, God’s grit. Jesus fervently prayed to God that his followers – and that includes us – would be one, as God is one. This is not merely because we would be happier if we agreed on most things and hung together as a group. No, we are one because that is precisely how we receive God’s protection in this daunting and dangerous world, and it is how we bravely offer God’s protection, too. We are one because that is how God gives all the train passengers – including that poor shouting man – friendship, connection, consolation, and peace.

If you’re in Minneapolis, a train ticket costs two dollars and fifty cents. You can catch it on South Fifth Street, in front of City Hall. Go ahead, take the train. We’ve got you. We’ll protect you, no matter what happens.

I love you the most

Sermon preached on the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year A), May 14, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by the Reverend Stephen Crippen

Scripture readings: Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-18; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21

Dash (top), Flambeau (lower right), and Keiko, our three dogs.

There were several times in my childhood when my father would hold me close, hold me tight. Then a mischievous spirit would steal over him. He would begin to tickle me, and as he did so he would embrace me even more tightly. And then he would begin a chant which always delighted me. He would say this, with increasing energy and excitement: he would say,  “You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away. You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away. You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away.”

Oh, how I treasure that memory, and the unshakeable bond it reveals that holds me close, even now, to my father. And how I long to form and share this bond with others. I do not have children but Andrew and I are closely bonded, and we vigorously welcome dogs into our household and our family. As I’ve said to a few of you, one of our current three dogs – yes, three! – one of them has wandered into the very center of my heart. Now, I do truly love all three of our dogs. I do. But I confess I sometimes take Dash into my arms and hold him close, and I whisper a chant inspired by my father, but corrupted a little by the guilt of my sin of favoritism. I whisper to Dash – very quietly, because I am absurdly afraid the other two dogs will hear it – I whisper, “I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most. I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most. I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most.”

And so you can see that my father is, unsurprisingly, a better man than me: he can bond with another being without ranking that being favorably against others. And that is saying something: I am one of seven children. It wouldn’t be hard to rank us. (I could help with that.) But both of my parents worked hard – and successfully – to love all of us with abundant and freely distributed love. 

“You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away.” “I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most.” What might your favorite chant be? What is the chant that your heart most longs to hear?

I ask because it is your heart that Jesus chants to. It is your body that Jesus wants to embrace and hold tightly. It is you who Jesus loves – and yes, loves the most. God in Jesus loves all living beings; in fact, God in Jesus loves all created matter: as the universe is created, God repeatedly proclaims everything good, which can rightly be understood as God lavishly loving all beings, all things. (And when God creates human beings, God proclaims us very good.) And so unlike me, God can love you the most without loving me or other people any less. God in Jesus loves all of us the most. And God in Jesus tells his friends and followers that they will never get away, they will never get away, they will never get away.

“I will not leave you orphaned,” says Jesus. “I will not leave you orphaned.” Not “I surely like and respect you, and so I will make provisions for you when I’m gone.” Not “When I ascend into all things and am no longer directly with you, I’ll be sure someone takes over for me.” And certainly not “Oh, you’ll be fine without me, don’t worry.” “I will not leave you orphaned”: Jesus speaks of his departure as a looming cataclysmic trauma for his followers. Even as a metaphor, “to be orphaned” is terrifying to them. Being orphaned in their day amounted to a death sentence: it was not merely the loss of one’s parents, sad and hard as that would be; it was the loss of identity, the loss of property, the loss of all bonds of kinship that hold a person in the community, that hold a person in life. 

Holy Scripture often frames God’s love as that of a patron or lord who rescues the orphan and the widow. In our day we can miss the tremendous depth of meaning in that metaphor: to be an orphan or a widow in the ancient world was to be as good as dead. God in Jesus loves his friends and followers so deeply that God sustains them in life. Without God’s love, they would die. And with God’s love, they overflow in life-saving love for actual orphans and widows.

This was true for my childhood self in relationship with my father: only on the most surface level can we laugh lightly at a father being silly with his young son, holding him and tickling him and playfully saying that the kid will never get away. No, this is a life-saving action on my father’s part: he gave me the life-saving, life-transforming gift of secure emotional attachment. Everything I am and everything I do today is possible because my parents rescued me from solitude; they rescued me from a life without love; they rescued me from death and held me in life by loving me unconditionally, by loving me so powerfully, so viscerally. They loved me with their whole being. (And my living father still does.)

Dash, in turn, may “only” be a dog, but he too is a living being who was saved by love. He was sent back by his first adopted home because Dash was (quote) “too much” for their young child, and the family didn’t want a dog who was so outgoing and energetic. This fact in Dash’s rescue file sears my heart. They sent Dash back?! He does not show any sign of emotional damage, and for all I know he wasn’t thrilled to be with them, either. In any case it only deepens my commitment to love him the most, to love him the most, to love him the most.

And that is what we are talking about today, on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, the 36th day of Eastertide, this day of Creation, this day of Resurrection. We are talking about life-saving love, love that is vastly, infinitely more than a mere feeling, love that forms a pulsing community of abundant life that saves countless beings from death, love that pours God’s inexhaustible love out and down, in and with and under all people, all beings, particularly those who have been rejected by the world, sent back, left for dead – all the orphans and widows.

Today we will plunge our siblings in Christ, Patrick and Wyatt, into the water of God’s abundant love, where they will drown. They – particularly Patrick, who is going all in at our full-immersion font! – they are being pulled down into the depths of God’s heart, where we all drown to sin, drown to our old and lesser selves, drown to the forces of evil that tear people and communities apart, drown to everything that separates us from God. And then Patrick and Wyatt will rise up from the water, up into God’s embrace, up into their best selves, up into the forces of good that hold people and communities together, hold them close, hold them and remind them that they’ll never get away, they’ll never get away, they’ll never get away … and that God loves them the most, God loves them the most, God loves them the most.

“God holds our souls in life,” the psalmist sings. Yes. And Paul sings that “in God we live and move and have our being…We are God’s offspring.” If you have not felt this way; if you fear that you never have been held this closely; if you have come to believe that you are on the outs, that you do not matter, that somehow you have lost out; if you have been turned into an orphan or a widow – that is, an outsider, someone outside the pulsing heart of God; then hear this Good News: God in Jesus holds you close, holds you tight, holds you here and now with all of us, folds you into this community, knits you fast into the fabric of this Body, and God in Jesus whispers this in your ear, over and over until you finally will let yourself hear it:

“You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away. I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most.”