"Boe a hyn neled herain… dan caer menig!"

Preached on Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

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

Help comes to Aragorn’s beleaguered army in the closing scene of the Battle of Helm’s Deep, in “The Two Towers,” the 2002 film adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien novel, directed by Peter Jackson.

The army is assembling on the hillside. The enemy is forming a battle line. They are in lockstep, forming into ranks and files. They brandish dreadful weapons. They are so numerous they cannot be counted. They are not a group or a team or even a crowd: they are a swarm. They are younger than our elder warriors. They are older than our untrained youth. They stand tall. 

Here is how the prophet Joel describes them: Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.

Consider their weapons. One of their most awful weapons is disinformation: the enemy persuades people in our land to believe conspiracy theories, to assume the worst of our leaders, to be cynics. Civil discourse about civil rights can hardly stand up to snide, combative personal attacks. Everyone plays the Gotcha! game, and eventually everyone loses. There are so many lies and distortions floating around, nobody can believe the truth, or even trust a few basic facts.

But the enemy also comes at us with the subtle yet devastating weapon of despair. Our young adults resign themselves to a lifetime of debt, and our housing crisis persists, dulling the city with gray and gritty discouragement. Climate change seems inevitable: “We’re cooked, literally,” people sigh to themselves. Factory farming, systemic racism, hollowed-out small towns, extreme weather, apocalyptic regional wars, rising seas: it is all too easy to submit to the enemy’s nudge in the back of our consciousness, the thin, wretched voice that whispers to us, “All is lost.” And if all truly is lost, I don’t have to do anything, do I? What’s the point?

And then there’s the weapon of discord. The enemy sows conflict, and makes every encounter a battle. Let’s fight. It’s all too easy for me to assume you are my opponent, my adversary, that you have malign intentions against me, even if we actually have deep capacity for empathy, and we both just feel lonely, or scared. When, say, the nation is struggling with issues of justice and freedom of speech on college campuses, we don’t look for common ground; somebody needs to take the blame. Somebody needs to go before the kangaroo court of a Congressional hearing and get tripped up in a cynical interrogation, say the wrong thing, and be forced to resign.

Even in the Church, again and again, we take up our opposing sides. Who’s the better congregation? Who’s wrong about how to spend our money? Whose fault is it that many mainstream churches are declining? And what was the National Cathedral thinking, charging admission to a Christmas Eve service? Let’s berate them on social media! Jesus said his deepest desire was for us to abide with him as one people, in beloved community. But the enemy tears our community apart with the weapon of discord.

In the face of this oppressive enemy, the prophet Joel blows the shofar, and calls an assembly. We are to come together. All of us.

We come together every springtime, usually at about the same time in Seattle when we begin noticing the crocuses pushing up from the sodden ground. Every single blade of grass is green right now — have you noticed? In just five months or so we’ll see brown grass everywhere, but right now the land is green. The trees are beginning to awaken. This is Lent. Lent: a word related to the word lengthen, as in, lengthening daylight. Spring is the time in the church when we hear Joel’s horn blowing and we come together. We assemble. The aged, but also children, “even infants at the breast.” Everybody comes together.

Then we take stock. We take a hard, morning-after look at what we have, what we’ve lost, how we really are doing. On Ash Wednesday, we sort through all the ways we’ve strayed from the Good News, all the ways we’ve squandered the gifts we’ve been given, all the ways we’ve messed things up. We account for all of that. We do this not to beat ourselves up: we never, ever proclaim a faith that shames people. That is never what we’re about. We are just being honest. Here’s what we’ve done that we should not have done. Here are the ways we can strive to do better.

We do all of this taking stock, all of this self-examination and confession, because like the quietly awakening earth in springtime, God is reliably drawing alongside us, and God dwells most powerfully in the hearts of those who are awake, aware, and ready. Hear again the prophet Joel’s consolation: “‘Yet even now,’ says the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart.’ Return to the Lord, your God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”

I invite you to notice, as we gather today to begin again, to look honestly at everything, to confess wrongdoing, and to resolve to do better — I invite you to notice how plural all of our language is. “We confess to you, Lord”...”Our anger at our own frustration”...Our negligence in prayer and worship”...and on it goes. Yes, Psalm 51 sounds more like one person’s remorse, but we say even that highly personal psalm together as one people, one assembly, one Body. We are in this together. How do we fight disinformation, despair, and discord? We fight them together. We come together; we sing laments together; we own up to our mistakes together; and we receive the springtime embrace of God’s mercy together.

All of this battle imagery, and especially the idea of the Christian community assembling for a great battle, brings to my imagination a popular story of a dreadful battle, a battle at the center of a fantastic war — literally fantastic: a war in a fantasy story. If you haven’t read the books or seen the films, don’t worry, it’s a familiar scene you can easily imagine: a few military leaders are reviewing their troops before a battle, and they are worried. The scene is set in the middle of the second volume of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and in the film version, you can see the worry lining every face as our heroes prepare for battle in the fortress of Helm’s Deep. 

It doesn’t look good. The earth is thundering with the sound of the approaching army, an astonishing horde of orcs, grotesque monsters born in mud who are ferocious and merciless, relentlessly closing in on a dwindling band of villagers. Everyone is frantically getting ready behind the wall of their fortress, rushing to hide small children deeper in the great rock while conscripting boys and men of all ages into a ragtag army. Here is the worried conversation of their leaders, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli:

Aragorn reviews the men and boys preparing for battle and says, “Farmers, farriers, stable boys. These are no soldiers.” Gimli says, “Most have seen too many winters.” Legolas adds, “Or too few.” Legolas looks over the clutch of people rushing back and forth, trying on ill-fitting armor and feeble swords. “Look at them. They’re frightened. I can see it in their eyes.” He turns frantically to Aragorn. “And they should be [frightened]. Three hundred against ten thousand!” Aragorn replies, “They have more hope of defending themselves here than at Edoras.” But Legolas pleads, “Aragorn, they cannot win this fight. They are all going to die!” Aragorn shouts back, “Then I shall die as one of them!”

A bit later on, Legolas comes back to Aragorn and repairs their friendship. He says to Aragorn, “We have trusted you this far. You have not led us astray. Forgive me. I was wrong to despair.” Aragorn is graceful: “There is nothing to forgive, Legolas,” He says.

Aragorn is right. There is nothing to forgive. Legolas is afraid, and that is reasonable. Three hundred against ten thousand! You and I, we are not fighting an actual battle in a fantasy world of orcs and dwarves and elves. This is not a movie, this spiritual battle for which we prepare. It is all too real: we live in a complicated, woeful time of disinformation, despair, and discord. If you think we’re not equal to the task, well, that is reasonable.

But Aragorn was right in other ways. He was right when he was confronted with the certain death of his people and he said, “Then I shall die as one of them!” And he was right before that, when he searched for the faintest silver lining, and remembered that when his people are all together in one place, getting ready together, their chances are better. And — this is made clear at other points in the saga — Aragorn, quietly faithful, nursed authentic hope that help would come to them from outside their camp. And so it did.

Help is coming to us. It is even now here. Crocuses are pushing through the soil in this garden, right here, and the Lord of heaven and earth is faithful. God is abundant in steadfast love. Come together then, and take stock. Consider our shared strength, and our shared weakness. We are about to join in spiritual warfare, but we have trusted God this far, and God has not led us astray. Spring is coming, and with it great struggle. But our patron Paul is right when he reminds us that God fashions weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left. Ahead lies hard work, but all will be well.

***

Note: the title of this sermon is Legolas’s Elvish line in the dialogue with Aragorn, when he says, “And they should be [frightened]. Three hundred against ten thousand!”

The human person fully alive

Preached on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, February 11, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

2 Kings 2:1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9

The Transfiguration, by Albert Bouts

I intensely dislike stains on my clothing. When I notice them for the first time, when I’m standing up at a restaurant or walking after lunch, my morale plunges. I groan. A stain on my clothes can ruin my day. In my compulsive hatred of stains, I suffered grim disillusionment when OxyClean came on the market and I discovered that it’s not great for oil stains. And those little Tide stain sticks? No. They don’t work, especially on oil. Oil is my nemesis. In my household, I take command of all laundry activities while Andrew governs the kitchen, and oil is despised in my realm as much as it is essential in his. This is a happy problem, but I intensely dislike stains.

And so I smile when Mark the evangelist tells us that Jesus is dressed in clothes so clean, clothes so spotless, that they dazzle in a way that “no one on earth could bleach them.” No stains! Jesus gleams. He is perfect. Undamaged. Unmarred. Clean and bright and beautiful.

But the response of his friends, when they see this vision that should stir the heart of every launderer, and inspire the imagination of every person ever to tri-fold a t-shirt — the response of his friends is terror. They are knocked to the ground in fear. They recoil in awe. We could just attribute this to the understandable human response to a bright, dazzling, and splendid explosion of divine glory. But I think it goes deeper than that. I think the friends of Jesus are frightened by his Transfiguration because it reveals the human person as God created us to be — it reveals the friends of Jesus as the human persons God created them to be — and the human person in full glory is terrifying. Your best self is unnerving. Your unstained soul, free of all blemishes, cleansed into perfection, is scary.

Reflect on this for a while. Imagine your best self: the ideal you. Speaking for myself alone, the ideal me is powerfully compassionate and empathetic, a force of reconciliation in this torn-asunder world of conflict. But, unfortunately, on any given day, in any given meeting, the ideal me does not necessarily appear. Maybe I’m nursing a tension headache, or worse, I’m nursing a self-centered resentment. Maybe, as we meet, there’s the dull irritation of construction noise down the hallway, something that has happened fairly often these past weeks. Maybe, like today, I’ve just gotten over a head cold, and I am wary of lingering congestion. But underneath or beyond all of that, the ideal me is alive. He is active. He is here.

And he is not neutral.

A human person at full, healthy, God-given strength is formidable. They bear a gleaming shield that wards off the enemies of ignorance and indifference. They brandish a flashing sword that defeats the demonic powers of nihilism and cruelty. They inspire people of good conscience, but they are daunting. They do not feel tame; they are not tame.

Part of my own therapy in recent years has been to get in touch with my better self, my stronger self, my dreadfully powerful warrior-for-justice self. I was formed as a later-born child to sit in the back of the family van; I was rewarded for keeping silent, for endorsing the status quo, for sitting tight. And so it is scary for me to stand, and walk, and act on God’s errand. It is scary to get into conflict for the right reasons, to get into what the Civil Rights hero John Lewis famously called “good trouble.” It is daunting to realize that when I am doing the right thing, I can be intimidating.

And so we draw alongside the friends of Jesus as they retreat in dismay from the Transfiguration, and we empathize with them. They see in Jesus what St. Irenaeus famously calls “the human person, fully alive.” Here’s the full quote: “The glory of God,” says St. Irenaeus, “the glory of God is the human person fully alive.”

Fully-alive people do all sorts of scary things. They ask for forgiveness, and that is scary because it invites the person they harmed into a terrible intimacy, into a perplexing, costly relationship of trust. Or they offer forgiveness, and that is frightening, too: “Do I deserve this forgiveness?” their offender may wonder. It is scary to contemplate the Gospel truth that yes, indeed, you do deserve this forgiveness. This truth compels you to be vulnerable to the person you harmed, and to go forward with the real intention to do no further harm. Do you have it in you to be this good? Yes, yes you do. Every living human person has the capacity to improve. But this is all quite unsettling, to say the least.

Fully-alive persons do many other scary things. They freely offer grace and goodness to their neighbor, regardless of that neighbor’s rap sheet, regardless of their own beliefs about whether that neighbor deserves their aid. They place their trust in people, knowing that to trust is to invite heartbreak. They don’t give up on people, ever, and while that does not mean we disregard healthy boundaries (our faith does not teach us to be doormats or powerless abuse victims!), we nevertheless always, always hold out hope for every single living human person: hope that they will respond to God’s saving love, hope that they will return to our community safely and peaceably, hope that we will never fail to see the reflection of Christ on their face, no matter how marred it might be by addiction or misbehavior or illness or abuse or despair. Fully-alive persons rise up in might as agents of mercy to those who appear least deserving of that mercy: and all of that is scary.

But the transfigured and risen Christ gives us a vision of humanity that is scarier still.

Back to those stains I hate: I despise stains, literal stains and metaphorical stains alike, because they get in the way of something or someone good. They make my favorite shirt look disheveled; or they hide my better self, my best self, behind a smaller me, a snottier me, a resentful or bitter me. I say No to all stains. 

But I say Yes to the five wounds of the crucifixion. The Transfiguration story is possibly a post-Resurrection vision of Jesus, retrojected into the weeks before he arrived in Jerusalem and suffered, died, and was raised. Whatever the literary facts behind the text, the vision of the Transfiguration is definitely a lot like the Resurrection appearances: Jesus shines; he is familiar yet also strange; he is joyous yet also terrifying. And so it is good for us to remember that the risen Jesus is wounded: He shows his wounds to his friends, and he even invites someone to touch his wounds. Why? Aren’t the wounds of the crucifixion stains on the otherwise flawless Body of Christ? 

No. The wounds don’t dim the brightness of his glory. They enhance it. They reveal his broken-open self, his vulnerable open heart that he offers to all people. The wounds reveal the risen Jesus, the best Jesus, the noblest human Jesus and the most majestic divine Jesus, both. And so we can dare to improve on St. Irenaeus, who again said “the glory of God is the human person fully alive.” That’s true! But we can add to it:

The glory of God is the human person fully open in ministry to their neighbor. The glory of God is the human person fully heartbroken in relationship with their offender, or their victim. The glory of God is the human person fully wounded by the wrenching injustice of this world, wounded because we rise up in might to face that injustice, for the sake of the least of these.

The wounds of the risen Christ are the opposite of stains. They reveal to us our own dazzling capacity for self-giving love, for life-giving service, for world-saving compassion. They move us to be wounded, too.

And so, at the dying of the old year, in early December, at the beginning of Advent — ten weeks ago, at the beginning of the incarnational season that reaches its end today — we sang a hymn about the dazzling, dreadful, risen Christ, a hymn that evokes the frightening splendor of the Transfiguration. In one stanza of that Advent hymn, we sang in particular about the wounds of the risen Christ. But as we sing about the wounds of the risen Christ, we do well to remember that they will become our wounds, too, whenever we follow him. We shine brightest — we are at our best — when we are wounded in Christian mission. With confidence, then, but also with some amount of fear, we sing these stirring words:

Those dear tokens of his passion
still his dazzling body bears,
cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshipers;
with what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture
gaze we on those glorious scars!

Power is made perfect in weakness

Preached on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (transferred), 1-28-2024, 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

The Conversion of Paul on the Road to Damascus, by Caravaggio.

I don’t like weakness. I don’t like failure. I don’t like to feel lost, and forlorn, and sad. I don’t like feeling foolish, looking foolish, acting foolish, being the fool.

So … why, why does the Risen Christ appear most powerfully, most helpfully, most beautifully when I am weak, when I am grieving, when I am failing, when I am the fool?

The risen Christ appeared to me on the worst day of my life, making it simultaneously the best day of my life. On the day when I painfully chose sobriety, I was confronted not only with my own weakness and grief, but with my own wrongdoing. And in that confrontation, I found peace. I found acceptance. I found painful correction. And I found a path to health, a path to strength, a path to usefulness. 

But it has always been like this. I am not alone. I am not unique.

The risen Christ appears to Mary Magdalene when she is stricken with traumatic grief: she stays by the tomb to weep, openly, and only then does she see the Risen One. Mary had understandably responded to the catastrophe at the center of her life—the violent killing of her last, best hope—with abject sorrow. (Note, however, that Mary never gave in completely to despair: she stayed by the tomb, a choice that even in the throes of grief reveals her strength of character, and her abiding faith.) But oh, how she wept. She not only failed to imagine how anything good could follow all that had happened, all that was still happening; she failed even to recognize her friend when he appeared before her, badly wounded but very much alive. But then he spoke her name, and she recognized him, and after he met her in the worst moment of her life, she rose up in strength to become the first apostle, the first to cry out, “I have seen the Lord.”

The risen Christ appears to the disciples when they are in hiding, shame-faced, guilt-ridden, culpable in his execution because they fled in terror when he was arrested, rather than defend or protect him. Not only had their greatest hopes been dashed, but they were appalled by their own weakness, their own failure, their own broken selves. Not only were they terrified that the authorities would find and destroy them, just as they had destroyed their teacher; they were also miserable victims of their own self-destructive actions. But the risen Christ appeared to them in the depths of their anguish and weakness. He breathed the Holy Spirit on them. He wrenched them out of their crisis. He toughened them, bucked them up, pulled them to their feet, and transformed them into apostles.

The risen Christ then appears to the Jerusalem authorities, albeit indirectly, when his followers bravely stand up to them and tell them that the one they handed over, the one they condemned to death, has overcome their resistance: it turns out that they failed to destroy him. The Jerusalem authorities thought that they had been strong, but they were weak. They thought that they had been in the right, but they were mistaken. And in their encounter with the community of the Risen One, they finally come to terms with their own folly.

And finally, Saul: Saul the Pharisee, Saul the persecutor of the Jesus Movement, Saul the latecomer to that same movement. Saul is confronted on the road and is struck to the ground, incapacitated for three days, knocked flat. 

The risen Christ appears to us when we are grieving; the risen Christ appears to us when we are weak; the risen Christ appears to us when we have lost, or when we are confronting our most dreadful mistakes.

But it is the grieving who need someone bearing authentic joy. It is the weak who need someone strong. It is the wrongdoers who need a redeemer, a just judge, a merciful savior. 

Paul our apostolic patron, Paul our name saint, Paul our forebear—Paul reflects often on this basic but confounding truth about Christianity: ours is a faith for the grieving, for wretches, for the guilty, for the losers. Paul points to the cross of Christ and acknowledges readily that some find it a stumbling block, and others a folly. He meditates on a “thorn in his flesh”—and what he means exactly by this thorn, he does not say—and Paul concludes that in Christ, “power is made perfect in weakness.”

Power is made perfect in weakness.

Power is made perfect in weakness.

This needs to be broken open, unpacked, brought to light, explained, and finally understood. Here are a few ways to do that.

Power is made perfect in weakness; joy is made perfect in grief. The Risen One meets Mary inside her grief, not with a glib message of glee, but bearing his open wounds on hands, feet, and side. This means our deepest grief has a home here, meets a companion here, receives authentic consolation here. In Christ I do not throw down my grief, no longer heartbroken: that is a false fantasy. Instead I throw open my grieving heart, to embrace another grieving person, to endure the sight of the wounds that mark us both, to trust that we will not weep forever in a graveyard, but step first into and then beyond our heartbreak and become wise healers, together, in a world shattered by loss and death. Power is made perfect in weakness; joy is made perfect in grief.

Power is made perfect in weakness; vindication is made perfect in guilt. The Risen One confronts his betrayers and his political enemies in their guilt, not with an easy message of cheap forgiveness—for that would gravely dishonor their victims, of whom Christ is only the first—but with the restorative power of justice. This means our deepest guilt is healed by Christ, if painfully, in conversation with our own holy work of authentic remorse. I am sorry for what I have done that I should not have done, and in my remorse the risen Christ is present, first confronting and then, with sweet relief, forgiving me. I then go on to work as an apostle of restorative justice for others. Power is made perfect in weakness; vindication is made perfect in guilt.

And finally, the witness of our patron Paul: Power is made perfect in weakness; victory is made perfect in failure. Paul returns again and again to the theme of his old accomplishments and abilities, and how finally they added up to nothing at all. He was the last and least of the apostles, not just a denier like Peter or even a betrayer like Judas, but a persecutor, a zealot for the wrong cause, a perfect failure in his effort to do the right thing, to be the righteous person, to succeed, to win. Flat on his back on Damascus Road, gasping for breath, unable to see, unable to speak, unable to stand: in this moment of extreme vulnerability, Paul loses everything. He loses his friends, his job, his vocation. He loses his sight, his confidence, his power. He is as good as dead. But all of this is restored by Christ, but never again for Paul’s own honor or glory. All of his abilities are returned to him, this time even stronger and better, but he is the last and the least, the failed runner in a race won by Christ, the patron of all who are knocked to the ground, all whose ambitions are crushed, all who lose. Power is made perfect in weakness; victory is made perfect in failure.

Are you grieving? Are you guilty? Have you lost?

Are you on the brink of despair? Are you certain nobody wants you, what with all your warts and weaknesses? Do you believe the winning team won’t ever pick a loser like you?

Then praise the Risen One, whose heart holds all our grief, and who sends us to embrace our grieving neighbor. Praise the Risen One, who appeared first to the wrongdoers, and teaches restorative justice to this world gone mad. Praise the Risen One, who wins by losing, and lives by dying, and chooses heartbroken guilty losers to be a mighty fellowship of apostles and prophets and martyrs.

This is what we Christians mean when we sing our sibling Paul’s great refrain, “Power is made perfect in weakness.”

Monsters

Preached on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany (Year B), January 21, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

Jonah and the Whale, by Anonymous 18th century

Everyone knows there is no monster under the bed. Come now, you are sensible: you know that monsters are only a harmless metaphor. Same with demons. People aren’t possessed by demons; we all know that. Our ancient forebears did not know about mental disorders caused by chemical processes in the brain. They didn’t know that everything can be explained, in due course, by sound research and careful study. 

The medieval Church, led by shrewd theologians like Thomas Aquinas (who read his Aristotle with understanding), slowly created what we know as the university: a center of study and inquiry that teaches us to trust the ready evidence of our senses. When I worked as a therapist I often reminded myself that all behavior — no matter how awful, strange or exasperating — all behavior makes simple sense. If a couple’s marriage is collapsing around them, their dilemma was caused by ordinary circumstances and events, not mysterious or monstrous forces. If a person seeking therapy is depressed, and another one is anxious, and yet another has anger problems, all three have readily explainable challenges, not demons. They’ll benefit from realistic and skillfully designed therapies.

In short, no, there is no monster under the bed.

So why do we insist on opening a book that assumes the existence of monsters and demons? We read again and again that Jesus exorcizes demons. We read of a person swallowed up by an enormous fish. Holy Communion, the central ritual of our faith, implies something that sounds a lot like grotesque cannibalism. And in our anguished psalms of lament, we sing of dogs and bulls attacking us, and we view our enemies as monsters: in one of our psalms, we want God to throw the children of our enemies against a rock. One doesn’t do that to a human being. That is the fate of a monster.

And so, if we are determined to open this book and to be formed and guided by what we read there, we should understand that even in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, we do believe in monsters. We think about monstrosity, and reflect on it, and worry about it, and grapple terribly with it. We recognize around us, if not literal demons, powerful demonic forces at loose in the world, and even inside ourselves. 

I have witnessed rage erupting in persons of faith over the past few months. Righteous, honorable, holy rage! Rage that seems, that feels, that is a response to evil monsters, real or perceived. And I am sorry to say it is usually real, this evil. It is evil to slaughter children: evil to do so in southern Israel on Simchat Torah, but also evil to do so in Gaza City, in hospitals, in buildings holding refugees who have nowhere to go. It is evil to rape people, to step on the necks of people in a street gutter, to incarcerate people in cages along the border, to strip people of their humanity in any of the countless ways our species has invented.

Are we monsters? No. We are made in the image of God, bearing God’s own graceful shining face in God’s creation; and we are made in the likeness of God, called to govern and nurture creation as God would do, as God does do. 

But are we monsters? Yes. Each of us is capable of dreadful evil, from a cutting insult to brutal homicide. The monstrous, the demonic: it can rise within us and ravage our neighbors. This is something every human being has in common. My dog Keiko was rescued from a dog-meat market where she witnessed the slaughter of her kind: she is now wary of all humans, and behaves as if we should not casually be trusted. She is quite right.

So let us open our holy book once again and consider all the monsters that lurk there. Generally speaking, our faith tradition approaches monsters in one of two ways: we trivialize and tame them; or we watch as God defeats them in mighty battle.

Jonah’s encounter with the great fish is an example of the trivialization or taming of the monster: the great fish — in Hebrew, the dag gadol — is pointedly not called a sea beast. He is just a fish, albeit a huge one. Then, once he has swallowed up Jonah, in the Hebrew text she becomes a dagah: a feminine fish. Her belly, then, becomes a womb as Jonah is reborn and resent by God to do his mission. This is all vividly bizarre, but also quite lovely. The great fish, no longer a monster, readily obeys God, and helps save wretched Jonah from himself.

In Psalm 104, God creates the sea beast just for fun, so that it can happily frolic in the ocean: this is another example of defanging the monster. When God creates the heavens and the earth, God proclaims everything good, and on the sixth day of creation God says that the animals and creeping things and human beings are very good. Some creatures may be startling, but ultimately everyone submits to God’s wisdom and power. In the end, or in our essence, we are very good.

And today we hear about another monster God defangs and tames: Nineveh, that great city. Nineveh is the capital of the Assyrian Empire, and the Assyrians are evil monsters. Who compares to them, in our day? Oh, we can think of a few examples. The governments in several modern cities would qualify. Do they condone and even encourage the slaughter of children? Then they’re a lot like the Assyrian Empire. But in the story of Jonah, Nineveh immediately repents. The monster surrenders.

But God’s forgiveness of them scandalizes Jonah, who wanted deep in his heart for these monsters to be slaughtered. And why shouldn’t he want this? They are murderers, rapists, terrorists, tyrants. They are evil. But Nineveh goes the way of the great fish: Nineveh sets down the mask of the monster; Nineveh reforms.

But Jonah remains enraged. Still wrestling with his own monster within, Jonah fumes that God was so merciful. Jonah prefers the second way our faith tradition treats monsters: God slays them in battle, remember? God smashes the head of the beast; Mary stands on the moon, crowned with stars, and crushes the head of the serpent. Evil is soundly defeated. We keep that one most problematic psalm in our holy book, Psalm 137, the one that voices an explosion of righteous outrage. We keep these verses in our book:

O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay you back
what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!

When the psalmist screams this in fury, I can hear Jonah turning to her and saying, “Girl, same.” And today, all these centuries later, many of us feel this. When one group oppresses another and justice is denied, do we mind if their own children are destroyed? How do we really feel when their villages are attacked? I think we understandably want God to smash the monster; we want Mary to crush its head beneath her heel. That’s the second way our tradition deals with monsters, after all. It’s legitimate. Isn’t it?

Well, Jesus ingeniously finds a third Way, something of a both-and approach. We hail Jesus as the new Jonah who slays the monsters of Sin and Death in his three-day sojourn in the tomb/womb of the fish. And in John’s Gospel we sit down by the sea for breakfast with the risen Jesus, who is cooking a fish on his charcoal fire: he has slain the sea beast, and we eat its flesh in the triumphant Easter dawn. But — the slaughtered sea beast is a fish again! A dag, or a dagah, a humble creature at the center of breakfast on the seashore. And most importantly, at that quiet breakfast, Jesus does not slaughter Peter, the monster who denied him: he repairs his relationship with the repentant Peter.

And Peter and all the others: they are fishermen, not beast-slayers; they mend their fishing nets; they ply their careful trade. Yet at the same time, these mild workers become mighty apostles and martyrs: they perform acts of tremendous courage; they enter the arena — sometimes literally — to battle the monster. And even if the monster tears them to pieces, they praise God’s triumph over evil, because even though we die, God in Christ has smashed Death’s power over us.

It’s a jumble, really, the Way of Jesus that prepares us to either battle or tame the monsters without and within. Sometimes we confront them with the truth, but mercifully: we challenge the monstrous person or the monstrous government to reform, and sometimes they do just that. Other times, we ride to war. And finally, there are times when it is not one or the other, but both: 20th-century Germany was defeated twice in bloody battle, but in the wake of their own evil atrocities, they have become a great fish, conscious of their own capacity to be monstrous, and determined not to repeat their dreadful history.

Jonah sulks in the desert as he contemplates this mess of options, and the maddening persistence of evil in God’s good world. The disciples, in contrast, put down their nets and follow the One who approaches the monster without fear, and attempts to save not just the monster’s victims, but the monster itself.

What would you like to do, as, even now, Jesus pauses by your boat and says, “Follow me”?

Water both delightful and dreadful

Preached on the First Sunday after the Epiphany (The Baptism of Our Lord), Year B, January 7, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11

Eleanor’s baptism on this feast day in January 2023.

Water is delightful and dreadful. Water makes life possible, but water kills. Water bathes, but water drowns.

We are made mostly of water. It roils within us, flows with purpose through our arteries and veins, surges along countless labyrinthine pathways that lead everywhere inside our bodies, carrying nutrients, carrying oxygen, carrying life.

And God’s Spirit hovers above the water, including the water inside us. She hovers; she broods; then she plunges. She swoops down, and with the Word of God she stirs the chaotic water into order, into rhythm, into beauty, into life.

We enter this community by water – water that is both delightful and dreadful. 

Since 2011, this parish has enjoyed living water — that is, water that moves — at the entrance to our sanctuary. We placed our new font there because, again, we enter this community by water. We can dip our hands into this moving pool of water, this miniature ocean, and remind ourselves of our Baptism. One of our theologians in residence, Eleanor Bickford, was baptized on this feast day last year. Now three years old, Eleanor still touches the water each and every time she passes the font. She continues to teach us this key insight: We enter by water, by water delightful, by water dreadful.

Dreadful water … deathly water … water that kills … I want to delve deeper into this upsetting idea. We hear this fairly often at church, that Holy Baptism is not just a light party, that the baptismal water changes us in sometimes terrible ways. Maybe we hear it so often, it loses its power. And so this week I did some unscientific, highly qualitative research. I asked a couple of other Episcopal preachers, and one lay leader in this congregation, “What do you think it really means, that we are baptized into Christ’s death? What do you think it really means, that the baptismal water is dreadful?”

I heard some good answers. One preacher said, “Well, my husband would say that in Baptism we die to the powers and principalities of this world.” This is quite true. (And by the way, I like that this preacher listens to other voices, the mark of a curious faith leader.) Yes: our baptism into Christ’s death forces us to die — to die painfully, to die dreadfully — to the “powers and principalities,” to the easy answers and facile solutions of our political world, the world that divides people into allies and enemies; the world that breezily assumes that economic inequality is natural, even virtuous; the world that builds a shrine not to the God of the Liberated Slaves, but to the false gods of capitalism, of cutthroat competition, of self-interest above all. We die to all of that, in Baptism, and this is dreadful because it costs us: it costs us friends, it costs us money, it costs us the privilege of leisurely indifference.

But I replied to my friend, “That’s good, but I think Saint Jonathan Myrick Daniels would challenge us to be much more literal when we say we die with Christ in Baptism. I think Jonathan Myrick Daniels would say we need to take the bullet — the literal bullet — so that another person is not killed.” My friend readily agreed.

Daniels did just that on August 20, 1965, when he stepped in front of a gunman and saved the life – he saved the young Black body – of 17-year-old Ruby Sales. Daniels had already been a powerful witness for civil rights. He had already articulated eloquently, ahead of his time, how our faith demands that we go to war against racism, and begin that war by confronting our own complicity in white supremacy. But then, in a critical moment, he closed his life just as he lived it. The dreadful waters of Baptism drowned Jonathan Myrick Daniels on August 20, 1965. And by doing this, Daniels transformed a gunman’s dreadful violent act into a prophetic proclamation of justice. By the power of God, even a hate crime can be transformed into a life-giving event that stirs the conscience of a nation.

Another friend of mine was more reflective, more systematic. He did a little bit of big-picture theology when I asked him what he thought “baptized into Christ’s death” means. For this friend of mine, Christ’s death and resurrection “underpins the cosmos.” Christ’s death and resurrection is at the heart of all that is. We die for others, and in this dying, the universe rises to life. We give all of ourselves away in self-giving love, and in this giving, the universe is infused with grace, and we are given a new heart and a new spirit. I yield to you in love, and in that yielding, your life is preserved, and my life is restored, and given new meaning. The cosmos flourishes.

Yet another writer, Andrew Sullivan, put it this way some years ago, in this approximate quote: “At the heart of the universe is caritas.” At the heart of the universe is caritas: Caritas is the spirit and practice of self-giving love that lies at the root of the words ‘charity’ and ‘caring.’ Life is triumphant in the universe because life first submits lovingly to death. A parent gives their whole being away in their effort to raise a child. A friend labors tirelessly to help someone in extreme need. An ally jumps in front of a teenager and dies so that she may live. This is how the universe works.

And finally I asked a lay leader here at St. Paul’s, “What do you think it really means, that we are baptized into Christ’s death?” (Full disclosure: I asked Andrew, my husband.) Andrew said that for him, this is merely one part of a larger idea: we are baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ. Therefore, being baptized into Christ’s death is part of the great hope at the center of our faith, which is that death does not have the last word. Well … that’s pretty good. I fully agree.

And that is the great hope that fills us today, as we sing with awe and pray with wonder at the bank of the River Jordan — a river, incidentally, that currently runs through a land ravaged by human atrocity and human suffering. Today we sing and pray as the Spirit broods over that muddy river, then swoops down and carries from the torn heavens God’s thunderous message: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

But wait: I want you to notice something here. Curiously, in the evangelist Mark’s report of this scene, we do not know whether anyone but Jesus hears God’s voice. After all, God speaks directly to Jesus: “You are my Son,” God says. Not “This is my Son.” Why? Why do we not know whether anyone else heard this message?

Well, consider again how terrible the call of Jesus is. He is God’s Beloved, which sounds (and is) delightful, but this identity will take him to the cross. This identity will take him along the dreadful journey of the prophet, who speaks truth to power and is subsequently crushed by that power. This identity will carry him into the crosshairs of the gunman. This identity will cost him everything, fusing his future to that of the whole cosmos itself: as God’s Beloved, Jesus will not live before he dies. He will not enter glory before being crucified. Recall our solemn prayer on Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion:

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

That’s intense. So maybe that’s why Mark leaves it unclear whether anyone but Jesus heard God speaking to him that day, at the delightful but dreadful river. Maybe Mark understands that this path of death and resurrection — a path that our sibling in Christ, my husband Andrew, assures will lead to great joy — is nevertheless not a path for everyone. (St. Paul later calls it a stumbling block to some and a folly to others.) Holy Baptism is never just a soothing hot bath with aromatic soap and warm lighting. (And I say this as one who adores hot baths.) Now, Baptism is warm and soothing! We sing together here at church until we choke with emotion; we dwell in silence here at church until we hear the music of the spheres; we embrace here at church when our aching limbs are crying out for connection, and reconciliation. We eat the bread of caritas; we drink the cup of blessing.

But we also … well … we also die here at church. We die to powers and principalities. Sometimes we literally die so that others may live. We give everything away, training our patterns of life to the rhythms of the grace-infused cosmos. We drown.

But in the baptismal life both delightful and dreadful, we are God’s beloved. In the giving and losing of life, we are God’s beloved. In all of this delight, and in all of this loss and death, we sing with the ancient singer of psalms. We sing along as they proclaim their mighty ballad:

Adonai sits enthroned above the flood; Adonai sits enthroned as Sovereign for evermore. Adonai shall give strength to us; Adonai shall give the people the blessing of peace. And in the temple of Adonai, all are crying, “Glory!”

We were born of God

Preached on the First Sunday in Christmastide, December 31, 2023, 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

My parents, Nancy and Gary Crippen.

“…[We were] born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of [humanity], but of God.”

Here is another way this verse has been translated and proclaimed:

“[We were] born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a [person]’s decision, but of God.”*

In short: We were born of God.

In being born of God, we belong to God. And we belong to God first: our belonging to God supersedes any claim we may have on ethnic or genetic heritage, or any privilege we enjoy in this divided and unjust world; our belonging to God runs deeper than any human affairs or accidents that brought us to this place and time; our belonging to God explains our very existence, far more than the decision a parent made to have a child, far more than any human decision, any human cause, any human circumstance, that gave rise to you, or to me.

We were born of God.

And so, once again, at the dying of another year, in the season when we contemplate God appearing alongside and among and between us, in Christmastide when we glimpse the divine veiled in human flesh — in this moon of wintertime, we perceive our deepest identity. We discern the most profound meaning of our existence. We discover who we are, no matter what we’ve been told about ourselves by our parents, by the dominant culture, by all of the powers of the world. Today, on the seventh day of Christmas, we acclaim that no matter our origins, no matter our histories, and no matter what happens next, we were born of God.

These profound contemplations come from just one short verse in a soaring and glorious hymn, a majestic poem, a solemn, ancient text that could be chiseled on a granite frieze above the entrance to a castle, or carved along the rotunda at the crossing of a cathedral: this is John’s Prologue, a grand new proclamation of the creation of the world. Like the first book of the Torah, John launches into his song by singing the words, “In the beginning…”. And like Genesis, John begins with the Word of God; but in this creation narrative, the Word not only creates light, the Word is light. 

And then, a little later on in this grand poetic text, John builds further on the Genesis vision of God creating the universe, and John sings of God making a home in this created world, a home right here, just here, in human community. When we sing John’s Prologue, we sing about our wondrous birth as God’s own children, as God’s beloved. We are where God dwells. God does not merely form us from clay and blow God’s Spirit of life into us. God takes on human flesh: God dwells here.

We — we who were born of God — we are those among whom God makes a home. The Word becomes flesh not only in a long-ago baby; the Word becomes flesh here and now, in us.

This week I focused on one of my less ultimate identities: ‘member of a human family.’ This is a powerful identity, surely! But it can’t compare to my identity as one who was born of God. I went home to be with my family of origin, the family that lends me my ethnic and genetic heritage; the family that gave birth to me in the ordinary rising and falling of generations; the family formed by my parents, who consciously chose to have children. 

It was good to see my kin. It often is good to see them. We can skip over so much and just begin talking. I can instantly read subtexts and non-verbal messages. It is sometimes delightful to find overlaps, places where I recognize parts of myself in others: my niece Natalie, for example, likes to wander into mischief, much like me. My nephew William reminds me of our shared lightness of heart. 

But there are awkward and unpleasant overlaps, too. Sometimes I see in my closest relatives the very things I wish were different about myself. You know how families are: they often hold up a mirror, an honest mirror, and that can be sobering.

As I’ve said many times now, the cause for all these home visits was my father’s death on November 30. Now, I am born of my father: I am his son. But his death reminds me, even if I don’t need or want the reminder, that I am not ultimately born of him: I am ultimately born of God, who conquers the grave, and abides with me — and abides with you — eternally.

And so I accept — consciously — the faint melancholy that accompanies many of these family visits. (And sometimes the melancholy is not faint at all.) We broke bread together this past Monday in what we call the “sibling dinner,” a once-a-year holiday gathering of all seven of us children of Gary and Nancy. It was a fine enough dinner, but it wasn’t the Feast to come. It was not the meal I share at this altar, this cosmic Table where all souls are offered a seat. I love them dearly, but my kinfolk are not where it all begins and ends for me.

And this takes me back to John’s Prologue, perhaps the most sublime work of literature that survived antiquity and has been handed down to us. To be “born of God,” for those who first sang this Prologue: this truly was good news of profound comfort and relief for them, because they had just been thrown out of their synagogues, cast out by their clans, rejected by their families. As followers of the Risen One, their new ideas were too much for their human families to bear: it was all a step too far.

And this is often how it goes, as we struggle in this mortal, melancholy arena. We struggle apart and together, with family, with friends, with coworkers, with neighbors, with those we call our enemies, with those who see us as their enemies. I love my family beyond my own ability to understand, let alone describe, and yet there are missed connections, neglected opportunities, lost chances.

As I shared with most of you on Christmas Eve and Day, I went home in part to sort through old letters written by my parents. I ran across an old journal of my mother’s, and wondered whether any of us should read it, let alone share its contents widely. But I think I can ethically share one small entry she made. It was 1974: I was four years old, and she paused to reflect on me, how I was doing, what I might need at that time, and what I might need specifically from my mother. She endured several hard years of back surgeries to treat post-polio syndrome, and she lamented her inability to interact freely with family due to her severe physical limitations. But she was able to walk short distances. She wrote: “Perhaps Stephen and I should walk together each day and talk.” 

I have uncertain memories of those years, so we may have had one or two walks of that kind, but I do not believe that we did. It is hard to calculate the immense weight of responsibilities and hardships my parents were facing. It is fully reasonable to conclude that my mother simply was not able to grant herself, or me, that lovely wish for us. Human birth, human identity, human family: these are lovely blessings, but they are bound by finitude, by the frailty of our bodies, by the swiftly changing years. Only our birth in God endures beyond these limitations.

And so my mother and I, we will have those walks. In my ministry alongside you, here and now, I take steps on the path we all share as God’s beloved people, we who were born of God. My mother, who dwells forever in the Communion of Saints, joins us every time we gather here, to walk, to wonder, to work, to pray, to sing. I carry her desire to walk with her kinfolk, and I received from her the assurance that God in Jesus weaves all human persons into one clan, one people, one Body.

And I even hold firmly in my heart a fierce hope that I will one day walk with my mother along that other shore, where we will have much to discuss. Oh, we will have so much to discuss.

Be assured, then, good friends in Christ, that as this year dies, and as all our ties of family and friendship succumb to the finitude of this world, we nonetheless are forever the children of God, given birth by God to abide with one another, and with God, in all times and places. 

I pray for a blessed and happy new year for you, and for all of us. Perhaps we should walk together each day and talk.

***

*Translation taken from The Revised New Testament – New American Bible, in Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel and Epistles of John: A Concise Commentary (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1988), 23.

I want to be with family this year

Preached on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2023, 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

Peter embraces Andrew. Iconographer unknown.

I want to be with family this year. You likely understand this feeling. My father died less than a month ago, and while his death was a holy one — he was full of years, and he died with great dignity and serenity, despite a grave illness — I am grieved by his death; and though the great St. Francis rightly teaches us to greet death as our graceful sibling, and though our faith rightly teaches us that death has lost its sting, it is still … well …

I want to be with family this year.

And so I had a quick reply when my sister Sarah texted me and my younger sister Elizabeth the other day. She wrote, “Anyone interested in an afternoon or evening at my house, in my front closet, going through Daddy and Mother’s correspondence box?” I answered instantly, with two words: “for sure,” except of course I’m still relevant and hip, so I spelled them “f-o s-h-o.” Fo sho, I’ll be there in that front closet, with family, looking through old letters.

It is instinctive, the desire to be closer to my kin, not just to mark the departure of my father, but for other reasons, too. This is a bone-wearying hard time in the world. This is a scary time. I’m in personal grief, but you and I, I think all of us, can feel how rough everything is, everywhere, right now. I want to be with family this year. And so, for the fourth time since mid-November, on December 26th (the feast of Stephen), I’m traveling to Minnesota to see them, in the land where the snow lays roundabout, clean and crisp and even. I’ll miss my family here, though. I’ll miss you. I want to be close to everyone, you included.

Drawing close to family: this is not just the plot of a holiday movie. Our faith holds ‘drawing close to family’ at the center. The incarnation — the revelation of God’s presence and power; heaven torn apart by angelic cries of joy; the nativity of Jesus Christ; God’s mighty, cosmic arm contained in the little space of a baby’s tiny limb, reaching for the face of their mother: in all of this, family draws close together.

Joseph of Nazareth essentially gets a notice in the mail: register your family, by orders of the emperor. So he helps his fiancée get everything packed, and they move south-southeast, from the northern hill country of Galilee to a southern suburb of Jerusalem, where his extended family lives. North moves to south: I think of Psalm 133, the one where Aaron’s beard drips with fragrant oil — Aaron, that great sibling in our faith tradition who loved his younger brother Moses, breaking the violent tradition of sibling rivalry begun by Cain and Abel, continued by Jacob and Esau, and then Jacob’s twelve contentious sons. Aaron embraces his brother — Aaron draws close to family — and Psalm 133 says that this is “like the dew of Mount Hermon falling on the hills of Zion.” Mount Hermon is in the north; Zion is in the south. North and south are reconciled: family comes together.

This north-to-south journey taken by the Holy Family — by Mary, Joseph, and their infant — is still possible to take today. You could start in the Israeli city of Nazareth, and travel south-southeast to Bethlehem. Hermon to Zion. Except there’s a problem: as you likely know, today, Bethlehem is in the West Bank, behind a huge concrete wall. So north reconciling with south is … fraught, in our time. Maybe we should stick with vague metaphors and assume that Christmas isn’t about modern Nazareth and modern Bethlehem.

But no, we really shouldn’t do that. Christmas is exactly about Israel and the West Bank, and Christmas has always been about such things. Remember, Aaron was noteworthy because he did something the rest of the siblings in the Hebrew bible didn’t do: he embraced his sibling. And if you like you could pray before a Christian icon of sibling reconciliation, an icon of Peter and Andrew, the two fisherman siblings, embracing in sweet peace. That icon is noteworthy because it symbolizes western Christianity  in Peter, who went west to Rome, and eastern Christianity in Andrew, who went east into Syria, perhaps as far as the Black Sea. Their embrace guides our prayer that west and east, divided for a thousand years, might one day reconcile.

If Christianity is not about this — if Christmas is not about reconciliation, about siblings embracing, about family coming together, about Peter and Andrew, about Aaron and Moses, about Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, about Russia and Ukraine, about all the families on earth driven apart and driven insane by war — if it’s not about this, then Christmas isn’t worth celebrating.

When my father was first hospitalized and it became clear that his condition was serious, two memories flashed in my mind: the two or so years of family schism and angst that followed my mother’s death, in 1996, and another disruption in the wake of our uncle’s 2015 death. Both times, when a close member of the family died, the family struggled. As I flew to Minneapolis to see my father, I steeled myself with a resolution: not this time. I even shared this resolve with a few of my siblings. “If this is leading to his death,” I told them, “I am not permitting myself to fight with anybody.” 

Sure enough, there were a few moments when I stood at the brink. Death is wrenching and even traumatizing. Tempers wear thin. Eating junk food in a hospital lounge doesn’t help. But so far, so good: it’s still early, but I’ve held to my resolution pretty well. (Thank you for your prayers.)

We celebrate Christmas, then, for two reasons: first, God calls us to come together as a human family, in a bond that runs deeper than clan and nation, deeper certainly than social constructs like race or religious identity, deeper than all the myriad reasons we humans invent to make wretched war with each other. God becomes flesh in the land of the Holy One to build a just peace, from south to north. God calls the west to embrace the east. God gives me wisdom to embrace my siblings, of course, but ultimately God calls everyone in the world to stop killing each other, for the love of God. (Really: for the love of God.)

So that’s the first reason to celebrate Christmas — that God comes in Jesus to teach us the way of justice, the way of peace, the way of that beautiful sibling in the faith, kind and good Aaron. And second, we celebrate Christmas because all of this is exceedingly difficult. Sometimes reconciliation simply can’t happen. Other times, when someone simply cannot be safe, or simply remains unwilling to reconcile, it shouldn’t happen. It’s difficult! I have to resolve not to get into quarrels with family as we cope with grief together. I can’t just wing it. And a cursory glance at the news will tell you how hard this is, writ large. And so, at Christmas, we are not naïve: we do not celebrate perfect reconciliation everywhere. Sometimes what is broken stays broken. And sometimes that’s the healthiest path. But we celebrate that God still comes to us, faithfully, to teach us how to embrace one another.

It’s difficult, but it’s not complicated. Christmas is about God breaking into our conflicts, our wars, our easy habits of destruction and violence, but God in Jesus breaks in with a straightforward, uncomplicated mission: Jesus simply teaches us how to be kind. Sometimes we call it lovingkindness — in Hebrew, the word is chesed. Lovingkindness is the very nature of the one God. Jesus teaches us how to be kind, for that is how we find justice; that is how we make peace.

I want to proclaim a portion of a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American poet. Here is the final stanza of one of her poems, the one she titled, simply, Kindness. In her poem, Nye does not lie to us: she knows kindness and sorrow are siblings; a daughter of a Palestinian, she surely knows the cost and cruelty of war; she knows how difficult everything is. But she sings a hymn to kindness, all the same. Here are her words:

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

What song will you sing?

Preached on the Fourth Sunday in Advent, Year A, December 24, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Laurel Tallent.

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Psalm 89:1-4, 19-20
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

The Annunciation, by Henry Ossawa Tanner

Today we witness a short, intense vignette: An unexpected guest, a dramatic announcement, a young woman’s simple question, punctuated by her agreement to participate in a divine plan that will turn the world on its head. Like a purposefully vague but intriguing opening scene to a movie, this scene isn’t providing us much information. Why does she agree so quickly? Her only question is an essentially logistical question: “How”. In Luke’s account, Mary doesn’t ask “why” this plan should be put into motion, or even what the plan implies for the world. I believe that Mary must know more. 

I do not like the Christmas song “Mary did you know”. It was released to the masses in 1991, written by Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene of the Gaither Vocal Band. Since then it’s topped Christian Music charts, and been covered by many, many other artists since. The song asks a series of patronizing questions. “Mary did you know that your baby boy will give sight to the blind” “Mary did you know that your baby boy will calm a storm with His Hand?” No. No she didn’t.

I’m not alone in my annoyance. Others have also pointed out its inherent sexist underestimation of Mary - a pitfall for many artists throughout the ages. Mary is often depicted innocent and unknowing because of her youth and virginity, As a Baptist theologian put it “Could you imagine a song asking Abraham 17 times if he knew he’d be the father of a great nation?” 

In order to understand the scene between Mary and Gabriel, to understand what Mary knows, we must consider the two events that Luke sets around it: Gabriel foretelling the birth of John the Baptist to Zechariah, and the song Mary sings when she is greeted by a pregnant Elizabeth. 

Let’s turn to the passage before Gabriel meets Mary. This is the beginning of Luke, before we ever meet Mary: a righteous, established, childless priest, Zechariah, is selected by lots to enter the temple and offer incense as a crowd prays outside. While in the temple, Gabriel surprises him, and tells him the good news: Your wife, Elizabeth, who has never conceived in the years - perhaps decades - you have been married, will give birth.

Gabriel says this baby will be a personal joy and delight to the older couple and their community. (I’ll note here that Mary was not given this comfort) Their son John will prepare the people, returning them to their God. This should be unparalleled good news. Could a man dedicated to righteousness receive a bigger blessing than this? But Zechariah questions Gabriel. Similar to Mary, he asks “How”. In response, Gabriel silences him, and Zechariah emerges from the temple unable to speak. Why is the same question met with different consequences? We may hear part of the answer in Mary’s song. 

We return to Mary, having quickly traveled through hill country to visit Elizabeth. The two women, relatives and miraculous parents-to-be, reunite with joy. The impossibility of prophecy and biology are coming to fruition through them. This is where Mary tells us what she knows, what she knew, when Gabriel came to visit. She is bursting at the seams, elated. She sings about her new, unexpected promise of a legacy: “He has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant, surely all generations from now on will call me blessed”. She continues, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty”. Her child will subvert existing systems of power. God is keeping a promise to God’s people, and Mary has accepted a pivotal role in the promise’s fulfillment. 

The song “Mary did you know” asks Mary “did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters? … That the baby boy will one day rule the nations?” Luke’s account shows us that Mary not only knows, but can also sing a more articulate and powerful song on the meaning of her pregnancy and parenthood. 

If we can suspend our own knowledge of what will happen, those “did ya know he’s gonna walk on water” questions from the song, perhaps we can join Mary in this moment: Unaware of the particulars, but awake to the glorious disruption that her child will incite. 

In other words, *this* is the beginning of Luke: two women, pregnant by miraculous means, understand an angel’s message, while the priest, the person who should have understood immediately, is silenced until he is prepared to participate. 

This is not a story about how “God asks us to do hard things sometimes”. This is the story of a young woman who understood and said “yes” to God’s plan of justice faster than the person who should have understood it first. It is the first role reversal of Luke’s gospel, foretelling all of the reversals to come; the child teaching at the temple, the sinners welcomed to the table, the unclean cleansed, the sick healed. The beatitudes begin here, with the song of a young woman one step into a life-long undertaking. 

Mary’s immediate understanding and Zechariah’s period of imposed silence resonate with me because it all feels cathartic. When we look for someone who understands the condition of the world today, who says “yes” to God’s intervention in the world, whom do we look to? As it was in the beginning of Luke, so it is now: the young, the very old, the insignificant, the marginalized, are still the first to understand how systems of oppression operate. They are the first to identify bold, transformative solutions. They are the first to articulate the consequences of action and inaction. Meanwhile Zechariah, by no means an antagonist, but not the herald he could be, holds back from joining by asking “how? How?”. Happily, Zechariah provides us with a redemptive example himself: when given the opportunity, he echoes Mary’s song with his own. Even late, and even after many months of silence, it is a welcome song. It is a good and powerful song. 

What song will you sing, when God greets you unexpectedly? What song will you sing, when God calls you to join them in something different, something new?

Oaks of righteousness

Preached on the Third Sunday of Advent (Year B), December 17, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Psalm 126
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8. 19-28

Rejoice! We have been set a daunting task. Praise God! Our job is difficult. Alleluia! We face a strong challenge in our life of faith, one that will demand much from us: it will exhaust our intellects; it will wear out our bodies; it will break our hearts. But we are glad about this, because what’s worse than having no purpose, feeling underemployed, lacking direction? Happily, that is not our fate. We are delightfully busy with an immensely important mission.

And even better, we know that we can rely on one another, passing the tasks back and forth, spotting each other, caring for each other. And of course we do everything with the great benefit of God’s power.

Now, there are many different kinds of tasks in our mission. Some of them are practical ones, like filling snack packs and stocking the Little Free Pantry. Some of them are more, well, literary — joining or leading faith formation events, writing for the newsletter to define and support our various ministries. Some are technical, like auditing our finances or working with vendors to renovate our mission base. And all of us are called to the mighty task of prayer: holding on our hearts all the people who call this their spiritual home, and all the people we serve. In our prayers, we join the Body of Christ world round whose prayers rise like incense before God. And so we have many tasks, from deeply contemplative prayers to lugging wagons around the neighborhood. And as you can see, I am excited about all this. I hope you can join me as I rejoice.

All of our spiritual work grows from our particular identity in the dominion of God. The prophet Isaiah tells us that when we join the tradition handed down to us, we become “oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display God’s glory.” Isaiah says that we will “build up the ancient ruins, [and] raise up the former devastations; [we will] repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.”

An “oak of righteousness” is strong, but strong for a purpose: oak wood forms floors, walls, and ceilings for the unhoused; oak branches provide shade for those who swelter in the sun; and the acorns of the oak of righteousness can be ground into flour for the hungry. 

As oaks of righteousness, we do not “display God’s glory” simply by being beautiful. In fact our beautiful liturgy is never only beautiful, as if we could adore God simply by dancing gracefully before God’s altar. Oaks of righteousness do not just stand in the field, or along the river bank, looking lovely. God is a subject, not an object: God is a subject of creation and formation, not an object of passive adoration. God is dynamic. God is dynamism itself, and yet always more than that, too. When God tells Moses that God’s Name is “I AM,” the Holy Name defies easy translation: we know God is not just saying that God merely is, that God simply exists. We know that God’s Name also means that God abides with us and is faithful to us; that God is active, and provocative; that God is beyond our safe grasp; that God is creating, eternally.

And so we, in turn, do not simply exist. Our faith is not about mindlessly adoring God. Our faith is not about contentedly resting in God’s inert presence. Our faith is not about passively basking in God’s glory while the world burns. No. We say a firm No to that lackadaisical understanding of faith. If we were to practice our faith that way, our righteousness would merely be window dressing: we would set a modest “outreach” budget, and trust that because we’re throwing a few dollars toward charity, we can rest comfortably inside a small “church bubble,” enraptured by the insular beauty of our prayers, closed off from God’s good world. 

No, we are oaks of righteousness, through and through. We do not do so-called “outreach,” because that word completely misunderstands both us and our mission. Reducing our faith to mere charitable “outreach” fails to recognize that we are all recipients of God’s lavish grace. Note well that Isaiah’s oaks of righteousness are the same people as those who were oppressed, brokenhearted, and held captive. We always, always share what we first have been given.

We do not feed the hungry; we eat with them. We do not “reach out” to those in need; we welcome them authentically into the center of our life, and we recognize that every human person has deep needs. We do not do charitable acts as afterthoughts of our main task; we understand that acts of justice are the whole point of our faith.

In short, we claim John the Witness as the sibling in Christ who teaches us how to practice the faith. John the Witness: this is an odd title for the one we usually call John the Baptist. (The Lutheran pastor and scholar Karoline Lewis gives John this new title.) It may sound odd to call him this, but if you read the fourth Gospel carefully, you’ll see that in this version, John the Witness does not baptize Jesus. And because he does not baptize Jesus, we do not then experience the thundering voice of God, as we do in the other Gospels, just after the baptism. In the other Gospels, as Jesus comes out of the water, God tells us who Jesus is. But in this version, John the Witness tells us. John the Witness “testifies to the Light.” John — not God — tells people who Jesus is. And for his part, Jesus says nothing.

But who exactly is this witness? “Who are you?” the authorities ask him. He assures them he is not the Messiah. “What then? Are you Elijah?” “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” “No.” The authorities are reaching the end of their patience. “Who are you?” they ask again. “Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

John answers them by evoking Isaiah, borrowing an image from Isaiah chapter 40: John is the voice crying in the wilderness, the one who calls out to God’s people to make a straight path, to follow a royal road, to God’s realm of justice and mercy and peace. In doing this, John also evokes for his listeners the post-exile Isaiah, the one who sings in chapter 61 about all the things we do as oaks of righteousness, along that royal road: we bring good news to the oppressed, we bind up the brokenhearted, we proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, and we proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor — a jubilee of liberation for all who are crushed under the heel of the emperor. 

So… no theophany in this version of the story of John the Witness. No pierced clouds and descending dove, no thunderous voice, no wondrous vision of God’s power breaking into our mundane world. No, in this version, we oaks of righteousness are the vessels of God’s wondrous presence. We bear on our own shoulders God’s devastating, liberating power. We testify to the Light.

We are the miracle.

This is part of what we mean when we say that God in Jesus “becomes flesh.” God does not just become a human person, though of course in Jesus of Nazareth God did do exactly that. But our theology of the Incarnation proclaims more: God “becomes flesh”: God is present in my human body and in yours; God is present in the elbow grease of our labor; God is present — and vibrantly powerful — in all created life. God dwells even in inanimate objects: God pulses through our SPiN wagons, and makes a tabernacle in our Little Free Pantry; God’s power runs along a surgeon’s scalpel and a poet’s pen; God even rises up powerfully from the outstretched hand of a child, reaching for their parent: God dwells in our bonds as kinfolk. 

And so, again, we rejoice. In a world gone mad, a warming world, a world where the human race fails to learn even the easiest, most ancient lessons (basic lessons like, “Share” or “Try to get to Yes” or “Practice gratitude”) — even here, even now, we rejoice that God forms us into oaks of righteousness, holding and nourishing the soil, blessing the landscape with delicious shade; cleaning the air with green leaves; anchoring a garden that nourishes the desert.

Are we the Messiah? No. Are we Elijah, or the prophet? We are not. Who are we, then?

We are God’s oaks of righteousness, testifying to the Light. We are the miracle. We embody the Good News that God is on the move; that God is coming soon; that even now, in this dire hour, even now, all is not lost. We are here, manifesting the presence and power of God. And we have much to do.

Shall we get back to work?

Turn back!

Preached on the Second Sunday of Advent (Year B), December 10, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by the Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

St John the Baptist drinking water from a spring, by Guercino

Turn.

Turn!

Turn around. Go back. Take yourself off this path. This way lies destruction, even death. This is not the path of life.

Turn from the path of anxiety, the path of depression, the path of despair. On this path, you are likely to throw up your hands in helpless exasperation. On this path, you will read about war, seemingly endless war, and you will start to feel numb. The news will stop informing you for action, and simply dull you into defeatism, into complacency, and finally into quiet collusion with the very forces of dreadful violence that you once found so outrageous. Turn from this path. This is not the path of life.

Turn toward a better path, a lively path, a verdant and hopeful highway, a rising and royal road. On the better path, you don’t stop reading the news or listening to others, but you listen for insight, you search for solutions, and yes it has become something of a cliché, but you look for the helpers. On this better path, you understand that anger and anxiety are helpful emotions, but only when they are acute. When they become chronic, they lead you back onto the dreadful path. So pace yourself; breathe; embrace and give voice to your good and righteous anger, but do not let it destroy good things, or good people; clasp the hand of another person, even a bitter enemy; and remind yourself that few good things have been accomplished by one person alone. 

When it rains in Seattle so relentlessly, I run on an absurd and literal “path” that is not a path, really, as much as a human-sized hamster wheel: I run indoors, warm and dry, on a treadmill. But even on that bizarre machine, even there, I can ride the waves of my emotions, and even there, the metaphor of “path” or “Way” — a metaphor beloved of the prophet Isaiah —  still goes to work on me. As I run on the treadmill, running and running but never getting anywhere, I notice my progress on the path. I notice that my pace quickens unwisely when I am upset, and my footfalls are more aggressive (and harder on my knees) when I am angry. I notice that if I am sad that day, or fruitlessly anxious, I get sluggish, and my feet start to scrape each other.

But then I notice once again that my treadmill is located in a small gym crammed with ten other treadmills, and that means I have friends. I am not alone. Now, I also confess that, due to my own personality that was forged in a large family, these companions on their nearby hamster wheels inevitably become my competitors. But even when I am competing against a complete stranger, running flat out just so that I can edge ahead of her in mileage, heart rate, or some other absurd metric, even then, I feel better knowing that I am not alone.

And these friends remind me, in turn, of a more subtle drawback of the dreadful path, a problem that we might not easily notice, because when we’re on that awful path, we’re usually preoccupied by all of our deep, and deeply miserable, feelings. On the path of death, we might not realize it at first, but we have no neighbors. Others may be on the path, but they’re always up ahead, over the next hill; or they’re always lagging far behind, at best a dot in the dust of our own wake. The Anglican writer C.S. Lewis imagines hell as a vast, lonely, gray town: vast because nobody in hell can stand to have neighbors, so everyone builds their hellish little house miles away from the nearest person. 

And yet, from the perspective of heaven, that whole gray town of hell is no bigger than a speck, a tiny, nearly microscopic smudge of gloom at the far edge of God’s lush Paradise, where hordes of pilgrims climb the mountains together, rejoicing, as the sun is about to rise.

Oh, do not take up residence in that dull, tiny-yet-vast, hellish gray town! Turn. Turn! Turn around. Go back. Take yourself off that path. That way lies destruction, even death. That is not the path of life. Turn back toward Paradise. Turn back toward God’s snow-capped mountains.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to John the Baptizer, the forerunner, the cousin of Jesus of Nazareth who bears on his rough shoulders the vocation of the prophet Isaiah. John calls out — or maybe screams out — a dreadful warning to turn, to turn around, to turn away from the path of death and destruction. I encourage you to listen to John, but first you may have to work out where he is in relation to you. He may not immediately be easy to identify.

John comes to you from the “wilderness,” the wild land that stands beyond whatever you perceive as your safe civilization. John is a wisdom source from somewhere just outside your comfort zone, somewhere beyond your area of expertise, somewhere you feel awkward, or frightened, or helpless.

Speaking only for myself, I have noticed a couple of these wilderness zones in recent weeks, encroaching on my consciousness. When she learned that my father died, a friend of mine texted, quite gently and in an authentically lovely way, a grim but empathetic message. She said, “Welcome to the club.” She was referring to my new status as a middle-aged adult whose parents have both died. I had shared with this friend in past years about the deep pain she and I had suffered when our mothers had died, but when her father then died some years later, I did not notice or appreciate how, for my friend, one plus one equals wilderness: one parent dies, then the other parent dies, and you found yourself in a brand-new experience of disorientation and discomfort. On top of your sweet grief for each parent’s departure from your earthly life, you perceive a new layer of existential anxiety. It is still early for me: my father has only been gone a little over a week; but I think I am slowly beginning to discover this wilderness for myself.

John the Baptizer may appear in that wilderness, for me. If so, I can hear him saying, “Turn! Turn from all that would isolate you further, or delude you into thinking that nobody else understands what you’re feeling. Turn from easy entitlement that could lead you to harm others by wallowing in your grief, or denying your grief. Turn back. Turn toward life.”

But all of this is happening while I wrestle in another wilderness these days, one where I have found a few of you, too. The war in the Land of the Holy One has opened new fissures in what I had casually assumed were solid rocks. This is true for many people in many walks — on many paths — of life. College students and faculties are grappling with new dilemmas about free speech and campus security as protests get intense, and tempers flare. Trust is fraying between lifelong friends, between neighbors who had marched together for the same causes, between people of good conscience who find themselves on opposite sides of a terrible line in the sand.

If you are in this wilderness, listen for John the Baptizer. “Turn!” he cries out to you. “Turn back! Turn from all that would isolate you further, or delude you into thinking that nobody else understands what you’re feeling. Turn from easy entitlement that could lead you to harm others by indulging only your own perspective, or deciding self-righteously who is good and who is evil. Turn back. Turn toward life.”

Now, please understand: John the Baptizer is no pollyanna. Nobody who tells the truth will try to sell you on a path of life that contains no pain, no anguish, no anxiety. If I turn from the dreadful path and embrace my friend who, like me, has lost both of her parents, I will still be left with deep grief for my mother, and for my daddy; and I will still slowly — ever so slowly — take my place as a member of the oldest living generation. And if I resist easy answers and futile fights, and delve more deeply into the vexing dilemmas of a terrible war, I will most certainly be choosing to enter into conflict. We preach Christ crucified: our faith is not a picnic in the park. 

But I am not alone. You are not alone. On the path of life, we enjoy the embrace of Christ when we break bread alongside one another. On the path of life, you will often feel sorrow and fear, but mercy and truth will meet together; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. On the path of life, your heart will be riven by conflict, but righteousness shall go before you, and peace shall be a pathway for your feet.

We are all wizards

Preached at the Ordination of Six Deacons on the Feast of St. Nicholas (transferred), December 9, 2023, at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

1 John 4:7-14
Psalm 145:8-13
Mark 10:13-16

I love wizards. The wizard archetype, that is: the elderly artisan at the edge of the village, the wise one, the skillful — and usually a bit odd — person who possesses great intelligence, but is also cleverly gentle, strategically kind, consciously tender. Think of the sages from the east, searching Judea for a small child because they looked up at the night sky and understood what they saw. Think of a grandparent who smiles warmly — and knowingly — allowing the smile to travel all the way up to their twinkling eyes. Think of an old woman with her long white hair braided in back, her ancient face alight with youthful wonder; or think of an old man with his long beard sewn with one or two dazzling gems: is he weird? No … Well, a little bit. But he’s also ingenious.

The wizard is wise and gentle, then, but they are also powerful: our fantasy stories vest wizards with magical abilities, and the wizard is so skillful at the magical arts that they have no need for simple charms or pedestrian wands: they can simply raise one hand and silently summon mighty forces to our aid.

The wizard is powerful, then, but she is also powerfully merciful: we hear of lion-hearted wizards whose dreadful yet pastoral job is to carefully pick over the battlefield after all the violence has ended, and dispatch dying soldiers in a coup de grâce, a final blow that eases their passing. A strong wizard is equal to this daunting and solemn task.

And finally the wizard is fierce: when they are riled up, fired up, seized with righteousness, they rise to a great height. Even the weather cooperates with a ferocious wizard: darkness falls around them while they thunder with terrible tidings of swift justice for the enemy, or a swift rebuke of the wretched wrongdoer who has crossed their path. (“Even the wind and the seas obey him,” we recall, in an astonishing story about our Wizard of wizards.)

Gentle but powerful, merciful but fierce: this is the wizard in the cultural imagination of many lands. And this is Nicholas, called a wonderworker in our tradition, an easier word than “wizard” for our liturgical calendars and hagiographies. Nicholas is particularly beloved in the east, but he is cherished worldwide.

Sadly, all too often, our veneration of wizards – including Nicholas – does not do justice to their majestic nature. We see them as gentle, which is true enough, but we often underestimate their power. We adore Nicholas in particular for his high regard for people experiencing extreme poverty, but we tend to paper over his ferocity about the social forces that damage and oppress the poor. Nicholas did not gently place gold coins in rows of children’s shoes; he threw gold through the window. He was a fearsome friend of God who fed the rich with justice. Did he lose his temper and get in a fist fight at the Council of Nicaea? Our tradition stops short of confirming this story, but part of me hopes it is true. I have attended church conventions. I have felt fierce feelings.

In any case, Nicholas is not just a sweet sugarplum saint for kids on a magical December night; he is hardy enough to be the patron of seafarers; and he is smart enough to know, like Jesus himself, how powerful and fierce children themselves usually are. “Let the little children come to me,” teaches the Wizard of Nazareth, “and do not stop them.” Why would he need to teach us this, if children were harmless, easy, frivolous beings? A wizard wisely appreciates the immense power and wisdom of a child.

And so we remember Nicholas as more than a jolly elf. We remember him properly as an unnerving and intimidating wizard-saint, a faith leader who is driven into the world on God’s errand. Nicholas was and is a warrior, a zealot, a prophet — Nicholas is a deacon and a priest and a bishop.

Today we will ask God to fill with grace and power – not just grace, but power, too – the souls and bodies of Phillip, Theresa, Lisa, Martin, Myra, and Robert. Grace and power. Today, a few months before the Church affirms God’s priestly call of these wonderworkers, today we will affirm that God is forming them first to be deacons. Could deacon be another word for wizard?

Deacons certainly are powerful. Deacons descend from the long tradition of fiery prophets in God’s Church. We remember generations of prophets, priests, judges, and kings in the First Testament, and we recall many stories of prophets in particular rising up in power, sometimes dreadful power, to goad and lead God’s people. 

But deacons are not just fiery prophets. They are also iconic servants, and if the word servant makes you think of a quiet waiter at an elegant restaurant, you’re not completely off the mark, but think again. Jesus himself is perhaps no more powerful than in that diaconal moment when he scandalizes his friends by washing their feet, and asks them that penetrating question: “Do you know what I have done to you?” A good servant is a powerful agent of action and leadership in any household, including a household of faith. And deacons are, again, iconic servants: they shine in their service; they glow with the servant heart of Jesus. They inspire others to point to them and say, “Oh, I want that. I want to do that, too.”

And finally deacons are charismatic Gospellers. They proclaim the Good News. The best wizards know that prophets who only shout in anger will be dismissed as tedious gadflies. They understand their call to fill God’s people with hope. And so, before long, all six of you will carry our Holy Book into the midst of the assembly and proclaim what you read there: you will be Gospellers. And when a deacon proclaims the Gospel, her diaconal vocation silently underscores how the Good News is itself prophetic, and how the Good News calls all of us listeners into lives of powerful service.

Gentle but powerful, merciful but fierce: this is the wizard; this is the deacon. When I first discerned whether I might be called to set aside some of the freedoms of the mighty order of lay ministry to serve under the orders of a bishop, I believed I was called to the so-called “permanent” diaconate. But “permanent” is a problematic word: it evokes the same meaning as a quote “terminal” degree: I would be ordained a deacon and stop there, with a thud. But this dishonors the sacred order of deacons, which enjoys full equality alongside the other three orders of ministry. The diaconate is not a six-month pit stop for some and an underwhelming destination for others. Have you met a deacon? Even the wind and the seas obey them! And while we’re on the topic, “transitional” is also a problematic word: the diaconate is not merely a way station on the road to a Real Thing.

No, anyone and everyone who is ordained to the diaconate is a vocational deacon; a deacon forever, yes, but more importantly a person who includes “deacon” as part of what Frederick Buechner famously defines as their vocation: “that place where a person’s deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” You six are priests, but your vocation is also diaconal. All priests are vocational deacons; all bishops are vocational priests; and all clergy are ordinary Christians focusing on particular dimensions of the larger baptismal identity that all Christians share. In short, it goes like this: in Holy Baptism, we are all wizards. 

God forms us all to be gentle, but also powerful; to be merciful, but also fierce. In a few moments, our friends will submit to the laying on of hands by a wizard, a wonderworker, who again will ask God to fill these prophets, these servants, these Gospellers with God’s grace, and with God’s power. I pray that God will fill them with gentleness, too, but also ferocity. Rise up, chosen deacons in the Church of God. Carry your diaconate into your priesthood, which even now is edging over your eastern horizon. Take up your calling. Rise up in power. Throw gold through windows. Go and be prophets, servants, and Gospellers of the One who leavens all creation with fierce wisdom, and gathers all people in powerful, wondrous mercy.

Evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn

Preached on the First Sunday of Advent (Year B), December 3, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

Keep Awake, by Lauren Wright Pittman

Jesus said, “Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.”

Evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn: four watches in the night. We could also be a little old school and call them Vespers and Compline, Matins, Lauds, and Prime: five of the nine monastic times of prayer that carry a religious community through a night and a day. Jesus tells us to stay awake through these wee hours. And then he goes on to meet us in each of them. 

Jesus meets us in the evening: soon after he gives us this warning about keeping awake, in the Good News according to Mark, Jesus gathers in the evening with his disciples, in a private room, and shares a meal with them. Then, as evening yields to night, he leads them to the garden, where he prays fervently, in agony, for the bitter cup to pass from him. And he tells his disciples, once again, to keep awake—but of course they don’t. They doze. Will we? Whatever we do, Jesus meets us in the evening: he meets us in our sundown gatherings, in our homecomings, in our slumbers, in our restlessness, in our private shadows, in our hauntings.

Then Jesus meets us at midnight. This is the dreadful hour of his betrayal and arrest, when Jesus enters the fray with us. He could have run from the garden before the betrayer approached: Jesus knows what is about to happen, what predicaments we face. But he stays with his beloved friends in the garden, and in staying, he is seized. He is indicted. He is in trouble. Jesus meets us at midnight: he meets us in our predicaments, in our deepest fears, in our traps and snares, in our jails and prisons—he meets us even in the anxious cages we construct for ourselves, the cages we lock from the inside. He steps into our crises, alongside us.

Then Jesus meets us at cockcrow, the bleary hour when the faintest gray is appearing along the eastern horizon, the hour when Peter denies his Lord—a desolate hour. Jesus meets us in our frailty, in our mistakes, and even in our worst offenses. Jesus meets us whenever we are discouraged by our faults or failures. And Jesus knows us in this awful hour: he is all too aware of our true story, the good with the bad, even as he meets us with mercy. Jesus meets us at cockcrow: he looks us in the eye, and we will endure his knowing gaze.

And then, finally, Jesus meets us at dawn. This is the hour when the authorities bring Jesus before Pilate: Jesus is our Victim, our Defendant, our Scapegoat, the one who bears away all our sins. “Jesus, Lamb of God,” we sing at dawn, “have mercy on us. Jesus, bearer of our sins, have mercy on us. Jesus, redeemer of the world, grant us your peace.” On Good Friday we ask God to set the cross between us and God’s judgment, between us and despair, between us and anything that separates us from God. Jesus meets us at dawn: he bears away every dreadful shadow.

But this disturbing dawn also foreshadows another dawn, a more triumphant dawn, a dawn that is just on the other side of the weekend: the dawn of Resurrection. And today, Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent—today is a dawning Feast of Resurrection, a morning celebration. Jesus does not remain a Victim forever, nor does our sleepiness endure the blaze of dawn: Jesus meets us at Easter dawn: Jesus is our Risen One.

Oh, how we need the Risen One to appear, at all hours of night and day. “Tear open the heavens and come down!” Isaiah pleads to Adonai, to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence-- 
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil-- 
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

Isaiah pleads with God to tear open the heavens: when he cries out like this, Isaiah consciously nods to the biblical image of a remorseful person tearing their garments. Tear open the heavens, Holy One! we cry, the way biblical figures in anguish would tear our own clothes. Tear the heavens in sadness, in passion; tear the heavens because of all that has gone wrong in this realm of earth. Tear the heavens and bring down the Dominion of God. Tear the heavens and be here with us.

But God in Jesus does not tear the heavens as much as walk quietly into our gatherings, into our embraces, and into our crises. He meets us gently, then bravely, then unnervingly, then mercifully. Evening welcomes Jesus our gentle companion, breaking bread, and praying fervently; midnight welcomes Jesus our brave defender, entering the fray, entering our predicament; cockcrow welcomes Jesus our unnerving judge, our Righteous One, the One who knows us best; and dawn welcomes Jesus our Merciful Victim, the Risen One who sets himself between us and all that convicts us, all that defeats us, all that terrifies us. 

And this is our Way. This is the Way of the Cross. This is how we cope with the world and all its grief, all its violence, all its despair. This is our Advent hope: Jesus, our nighttime companion.

Every Advent I sing in my private prayers an old Advent hymn written by Percy Dearmer, one of our grand Anglican hymn writers. It’s a good song for nighttime contemplations. I ask you to notice any resistance you might have to Dearmer’s old-school Jacobean English verse, writing as he did in the Victorian era, when that was in fashion. Let this Advent hymn guide you as you wait for the presence of Jesus in all times of day, but especially in the shadows of night. Here is Percy Dearmer’s hymn:

Ah! think not the Lord delayeth:
“I am with you,” still he sayeth,
“Do you yet not understand?”
Look not back, the past regretting;
on the dawn your hearts be setting;
rise and join the Lord’s command.

For e’en now the reign of heaven
spreads throughout the world like leaven,
unobserved, and very near,
like the seed when no [one] knoweth,
like the sheltering tree that groweth,
comes the life eternal here.

Not for us to find the reasons,
or to know the times and seasons,
comes the Lord when strikes the hour;
ours to bear the faithful witness
which can shape the world to fitness,
thine, O God, to give the power.

Who is most important?

Preached on the Feast of the Reign of Christ (Year A), Last Sunday after Pentecost, November 26, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Psalm 100
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46

Christ in Glory, from late 17th Century Ethiopian manuscript

It is often easy, when walking into a room, to notice, or guess, who the most important people are. If a newcomer walks into this room for the first time, who will they believe is most important to us?

They will be badly mistaken, but I suspect they’ll decide it’s the people up here in the altar area who are the most important. Here I stand on this little platform. I am raised above you primarily to make the most of good sight lines, but does this pulpit satisfy an all-too-human desire to put one person above the others? And all the people up front – we get to wear special clothes. We have copes, chasubles, dalmatics, and tunicles in our closets, grand names for grand garments. Priests wear the copes and chasubles, deacons wear the dalmatics, and the first lay Eucharistic minister wears the tunicle. We say that all four orders of ministry are equal – we insist that bishops, priests, deacons, and the laity are equal – but bishops wear shiny, pointy hats and hold splendid croziers. And even though the robe of Holy Baptism – the white alb – is something every baptized Christian can wear, only the up-front people actually wear them. Our fancy outfits belie our claims of equality. It seems as if the most important people are all up here.

But if Jesus of Nazareth walked into this room and looked around, I firmly believe that he would not identify us as the most important people in the room. He might look at the altar party, and speak to us, only after he has greeted nearly everyone else. 

He would behave the same way in other rooms. In the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., Jesus would not point to the members of Congress, naming them the most important people. In Vatican City, Jesus would not point to Pope Francis and his cardinals. The most important people in the White House are not Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, at least by the standards of Jesus of Nazareth. Are you a captain of your industry? If so, Jesus has bad news for you: you don’t come first. One of the members of St. Paul’s has what I believe is the most important job in his workplace, but lately I’ve noticed that he never features himself in his company’s promotions on social media. Ah! This person gets it. He’s at the top of the org chart, but he knows he is not the most important person.

This perspective of Jesus of Nazareth applies to family life, too. Would Jesus point to my father as the most important person in my family? Perhaps he would do so at this particular moment in my family’s life, but not because my father is our patriarch, and a great-grandfather, and the most senior living member of the family. No, Jesus might point to my father right now as the most important family member only because my father is gravely ill. His illness puts him in one of the categories Jesus of Nazareth has identified as markers of importance.

Jesus directs his favor to the people in his own time who were denied access to the Temple, because their problems or identities made them ritually “unclean.” And his followers discovered that just by following Jesus, they took on some of these “unclean” problems or identities themselves. And of course we still do this: it is all too easy for religious folks like us to identify who’s in and who’s out. So, here they are, the categories of outsiders who take first place with Jesus of Nazareth:

Are you hungry or thirsty? If so, Jesus points to you and says, “You’re more important than the well-nourished people.” Are you a newcomer here, who doesn’t know anyone? You’re more important than the rector. Are you wearing on your back all the clothes you own, and facing tonight’s weather without a jacket, and tomorrow’s job interview without a change of underwear and socks? If so, Jesus points to you and says, “You’re more important than someone with a full closet and a washing machine.”

Are you sick? If so, Jesus points to you and says, “You’re more important than the healthy people.” And if you’re sick, do you have the least number of visitors among the patients in the hospital? If so, Jesus is going to visit you first. (My father is further back in the line, in this respect: his ICU room overflows with visitors, most of them his many children.)

Are you in prison? If so, Jesus points to you, he utterly disregards whether you are guilty or innocent, and he says, “You are more important than people on the outside, than people who are free.” Look up “Sister Helen Prejean” to learn more about this. She ministers to death-row inmates, innocent and guilty alike, and she never fails to find Christ there.

Now, I wonder if this rankles you. You likely don’t have a problem with Jesus helping those in need, and teaching us to do the same, but we are well trained these days to pursue equality, always equality: “In the eye of God there is not one among us who is greater nor one who is less.” True enough. In fact, all of this beautiful vesture we wear in church is meant to symbolize how God has “wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature” – the dignity of all human beings, even if only a few of us wear the vibrant colors. And yet, despite the truth of our equality in God’s sight, Jesus borrows a page from the job description of an Emergency Medical Technician, who climbs aboard her ambulance to help not all the healthy people, but the one who collapsed, or the few who were injured. In short, Jesus does triage. Of course everyone is important! But Jesus is drawn first to the hungry and thirsty, first to the stranger and the unclothed, first to the sick, first to those in prison.

When Jesus visits the Gerasenes on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, he ministers first to the demoniac who is raving among the tombs. (The villagers are scandalized by this healing, and ask Jesus to leave their town: they are disturbed by the demoniac’s restoration, fully clothed and in his right mind; but maybe they’re also upset because Jesus put him before them.) Whenever Jesus enters any village or house, he begins his ministry there with acts of healing. Simon’s mother-in-law lay dying: nobody mattered more, at that moment. And when Jesus preaches to a crowd, he pressures his followers to focus first on the crowd’s need for something to eat. And finally Jesus was himself an incarcerated defendant, a victim of a sham trial, a dead man walking who was executed by the state: he doesn’t just visit prisoners, he is one of them. 

And that’s the key to understanding how Jesus identifies who’s most important. He searches for the people who most resemble him. He sees himself in the hungry, in the impoverished, in the stranger, in the sick, in the prisoner. Their plight marks them as most important. Their hunger is their royal robe, their poverty a cope of crimson velvet edged in splendid ermine. Their illness is their scepter; their prison sentence is their crown. These are the royalty among us, the ones who reveal to us the face of Christ our Sovereign.

Today we hear about the Last Day, the Day of Judgment, a day of dreadful anxiety. If you visit the Sistine Chapel, you can view Michelangelo’s wondrous and unnerving fresco of the Last Day, and you can begin to appreciate the hold it has on the Christian imagination. And if you listen to Mozart’s Requiem, you’ll hear the unsettling text of the Requiem mass. Here’s a portion: 

Day of wrath! … [dissolving] the earth in ashes … What dread there will be when the Judge comes to strictly judge all things … A trumpet, spreading a wondrous sound through the graves of all lands, will drive humankind before [God’s] throne … Sovereign of awful majesty, who freely saves the redeemed, save me, O Fount of Goodness … Place me among your sheep, and separate me from the goats, setting me at your right hand …

And on it goes. But the point of Matthew’s description of the Last Day is not to terrify us. That is incidental, a byproduct of the true mission of Jesus: He wants to get our attention. He wants to startle us so that he can radically reorient us. He wants to tell us something about the here and now, not about the end of time. He wants to give us new eyes to recognize those among us who most closely resemble Christ himself. It is all too easy for us to see a human being dressed in the robes of privilege and mistakenly revere them as the one God favors.

It is far more difficult for us to look up at the cross, and see hanging there all who are hungry, thirsty, unclothed, sick, or in prison. It is far more difficult for us to see them, recognize their ultimate importance, and bow to the presence of Christ that pulses through their bodies, the presence of Christ that claims our attention, that forms us to love, that forms us to serve, as the dominion of God begins to dawn upon this war-ravaged land.

These are our sovereigns; these are our royalty; these are those to whom we bow, in the splendid but upside-down reign of Christ.

This is what you must do

Preached on the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, November 19, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Laurel Tallent.

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18
Psalm 90:1-8
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

The Three Servants, by Kazakhstan Artist Nelly Bube

Today we are tasked by our Collect read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest instructions from two community leaders on catastrophe, a distraught song calling out for comfort, an emotionally charged parable that is difficult to separate from its illustrations of slavery and finance. The parable also happens to feature my family: The Five Talents. I won’t be trying to pull too much meaning out of that. 

Zephaniah, Paul and Jesus are instructing their communities on how to be, work, maintain their unity, and ultimately… survive in a time of turmoil. Jesus and Paul, and less directly Zephaniah, urge the people they love to be ready, to be careful and to deftly navigate the systems that constrain their survival. “Our survival - your survival - is imperative, it is my deepest hope. This is what you must do'' they say. 

How must they survive? In part through vigilance, nimble action, wise use of resources and preparation. The apathetic, those who say “God will do neither good nor harm” in Zephaniah are dire threats to the community. The “sleepers” in Thessalonians, community members in Christ who refuse to engage in the watchfulness that Paul urges them to take up, are also a threat to the safety of their community. 

I don’t think the elders providing this instruction relished giving their loved ones these bitter and unyielding codes of conduct. I assume there is tenderness undergirding the steely directives. We hear that affection and tenderness most clearly to the Thessalonians, “For you, beloved…” Paul addresses them. 

Jesus’ recommendations are more abstract, to my ears at least. Jesus uses a framework of a master and slaves, money, investment and interest that is so, so easy to take literally. But with context, we can save Jesus from being dubbed a “finance bro”: 

The parable of the Five Talents is his penultimate parable before the plot to kill him is put into place. Being in Jerusalem, surrounded by powerful and hostile leaders, he may have decided to utilize the language of power to communicate a subversive message; for his followers to continue their work with attention to the long-term.

This message itself is challenging, even if we untangle it from its metaphor. It is tempting to limit the parable to something along the lines of: “only be generous if it will pay out later”. Instead, we could choose to hold the story loosely, and listen for the loving desperation of Jesus saying “survive with your wits. survive by understanding your situation, survive with your savvy and ability to act within the systems available” 

So what are we called to, when we hear these passages? Zepheniah, Jesus, Paul, their historical contexts and the loved ones they were trying to protect passed on generations ago, but we continue to revisit their warnings year over year, whether or not we are experiencing similar existential threats. 

When I hear these passages I feel a call to pick up these survival tools again and use them. Due to my current time, place and privilege, I am in no immediate personal danger, but my days are laced with reminders that others - people I love, people like me and unlike me, people I do not know but am called to love - are suffering, are threatened, are experiencing untenable living conditions. I suspect that many of you can relate to this both as fellow humans and as a collective called to ministry, action and justice. 

We are certainly not alone. I am reminded of the community organizers dedicated to justice, access and equity. Their preparedness, ability to leverage what power they have and their nimble action remind me of today’s readings. I think of social workers and - even more so - those who navigate welfare and social services on their own. Their savvy within broken and discriminatory systems reminds me of these readings. 

The authors of this advice surely knew that being vigilant, unsleeping, prepared and street-smart is not a humane way to live eternally - it is a means to an end. This is why social workers and organizers are admonished by their modern-day elders in many, many workshops and seminars to know when their rest will come, and where it will come from. Although the realities of actually accomplishing this are complicated, especially for those who must simply carry on because of the existential threats they face. 

If we take up the tools of survival for our own cause or anothers’, what happens when we do not - or can not - rest? In my experience, it can turn life into an unforgiving, unending watch as those sleeping around us become a nagging source of disdain. How dare they sleep when I am unable to put down my vigilance? Don’t they care about our ministry? Don’t they watch the news? We become unforgiving of ourselves and others, not allowing for the slightest slip. This is a hard place, it’s a place where there is no space for learning, growth, re-consideration or mistakes. There is only the watch. 

When we do not rest, or are unable to, God themselves is irritating - their eternality stands in sharp contrast with our short time to accomplish so much. As the Psalm cries out, God seemingly swats away our lives saying return to the earth; the cycle of life will begin again without your efforts. How is it then that the Psalm begins with “In every age, Oh Lord, you have been our refuge?”

Psalm 90 takes us through a journey, from that grand statement of trust and solace in God, to irritation with God, to lashing out at God, to reasoning with God, finally ending with resolve: Teach us to number our days so we can apply our hearts to wisdom. In my short tenure in social services, I found comfort in this hymn. Its emotional arch was a more eloquent, poignant reflection of my own feelings. Singing and contemplating the Psalm reminded me that my work, my watch, was finite, and that it was not a solo endeavor; God’s eternal work of restoration will continue with or without me, I will not finish it all. Not as an individual, not as a single generation, not even as a single community over many generations. I’ll admit that from here it seems logical to jump to nihilism. I would rather wrestle with the mystery of Psalm 90 and take morbid comfort in the fact that my lifetime of work will be a human lifetime amount of work on an eternal project. 

Our second source of comfort is in each other. Our calling includes the comfort of reminding each other of our lives in Christ together. We can provide mutual reminders that those “sleeping around us” as Paul dubs those who do not participate - share in that life. Yes, we will be called and call each other to watch, and to be vigilant, nimble and savvy. We must also rest and seek refuge. Deciding when it is time for which is the work of our community over the span of many lifetimes. 

May we continue to encourage each other, as we are already doing.

Wisdom is seated at her gate

Preached on the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 27A), November 12, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16
Psalm 70
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13

“Wisdom is radiant and unfading, and she is easily discerned by those who love her… One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty, for she will be found sitting at the gate.”

We have constructed a new light-green gate to the garden at St. Paul’s. It is simple, yet also a little bit grand. It rolls gently but heavily, along a track laid down upon a new slip of concrete. When it arrives in the fully-closed position, it readily submits to a strong padlock. If you like, you could clamber over this gate and get inside, but that would be awkward, and somehow the gate quietly discourages you from doing this. It is elegant but heavy; it is permeable but strong: it is a substantial metal fence. The gate seems to say, without words, “Respect my boundary; yield to the limit I place upon you.”

I invite you to place yourself, in your imagination, at this gate. It is of course just a physical object that functions practically to strengthen security on our campus, but this gate is more than lovely enough to become your metaphorical gate – to aid you in your spiritual contemplations. Imagine yourself at this gate, and as you contemplate this image, let your heart seek Wisdom, the one who sits at the gate. Let your every thought discern her, for she takes up her post at all of the marked boundaries of our lives.

The boundary is often where we say – and hear – the word “No.” At our new gate, there is to be no entry after hours, because we do not want anyone to be in danger, and that includes those who have malign intentions when they enter gardens. If you are not able to behave safely in our garden, then you yourself are among those who can be harmed. This insight — that the wrongdoer is among their own victims — it hit home for me this summer when a person was suspected of dealing fentanyl at the edge of our property, at the very spot where the gate now stands. In the days when I intervened repeatedly to interrupt and prevent this person’s unsafe actions, I included this person in my prayers, and I continue to do so. He is desperately vulnerable. And so I realized once more that the word “No” is often the beginning of Wisdom, even for the one who wants to hear it the least.

May I do whatever I like? No.

But the word “Yes” also belongs at the boundary, at the gate, at the seat of Wisdom. She will say “Yes” to many things. Yes, you may come inside to say your prayers, and to walk the path of discernment on our labyrinth. You can come in springtime to stand under the snowfall of our cherry blossoms, or you could come in any season to help our gardeners tend this edge of God’s verdant Paradise. 

Wisdom, on her seat at the boundary, offers a particularly prophetic and full-hearted “Yes” to those who are different from one another, and want to embrace across that difference. Wisdom teaches us to approach the boundaries between cultures and peoples, to notice the tension that runs along those boundaries, and to speak across that tension, to speak peace, to speak the truth, to seek – and receive – understanding. Can you name all the boundaries in this weary world that are riven by war, or slammed shut by walls and garrisons? But at Wisdom’s gate, her wall is perforated with openings to let people through, to let light shine through, to say “Yes,” even when that “Yes” is fraught with anxiety. If I say “Yes” to someone different from me, I stand to lose: I may not emerge from the experience with as much certitude as I had before; I may even be asked to set aside privileges. Just like the word “No,” the word “Yes,” at Wisdom’s gate, is not always simple and straightforward.

And finally, today, as we linger at Wisdom’s gate, we hear a story of ten people, five who were welcomed across the boundary, and five others who were turned away. You may feel a reasonable, understandable revulsion as you hear the harsh “No” spoken at the gate by the Wise One, the bridegroom in the parable, the One who marries us, the One who welcomes us – at least, those of us who are ready – to walk through the gate, to enter the fold, to join the celebration. The bridegroom offers a delightful “Yes!” to the five wise ones who were ready, approaching the boundary with their oil lamps full and burning; but the bridegroom abruptly shuns the foolish ones, saying, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.”

Ouch.

But before you cast aside this parable as unnecessarily judgmental and harsh; before you reject another religious teaching that condemns some while welcoming others; before you throw up your hands in frustration with yet another nasty story from church; recall that Wisdom, sitting at her gate, says both “No” and “Yes”, and both judgments administer God’s grace. And though we might assume that the “Yes” answer is lovely, even Wisdom’s graceful “Yes!” could startle us, especially when she says “Yes” to people who — let’s be honest, now — we would really prefer were kept outside the gate. And we’ve already been told that the “No” answer is necessary, often enough, to protect the health and safety of the community.

The preacher and professor Matt Skinner says that the harsh rejection of the five foolish bridesmaids makes sense — or at least it seems less awful — when we consider the damage that unprepared people can inflict on their community. In their action — and in their inaction — they reveal their lack of concern, their lack of commitment, their lack of love for their people. The wedding in this parable is not just a romantic sweetheart ceremony for two lovebirds. It is the reconciliation of a whole community. It is a tremendous visitation of God’s justice and peace on the face of this battle-scarred earth. And so, if I am unprepared, if I did not bother to do my part, if I did not rise early (figuratively or otherwise) to meet Wisdom at her gate, or hear her voice in every thought, then I need to hear that terrible yet just boundary judgment: “No.” 

So is that it, then? Do the foolish bridesmaids stagger away in despair, fade to black, roll the credits? If I blow it, am I done, banished, condemned? Definitely not. God in Jesus goes all the way to hell itself to persuade every last soul to approach the gate again, but to be ready this time: ready to hear a new teaching; ready to accept correction; ready to “mortify” — to put to death — all that is deathward within.

And it is here that I want to direct your attention to the future tense that Jesus employs when he gives us this difficult teaching. “The kingdom of heaven will be like this,” he sings to us. God always, always opens up a future for every human being God has so lovingly made. Which bridesmaid do you want to be when you next approach the gate? Wise, or foolish? You’ll have another chance.

There’s a story that Bill Wilson, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, begged for a drink at the very end of his life, as he lay on his deathbed. In fact they say he made four separate appeals for a glass of whiskey. The assisting nurse evidently did not grant his request. She spoke with Wisdom’s voice, it seems, when she said “No”, and Bill died a sober man. I hope so, for his sake; and whatever actually happened, the official story of his sober death – his holy death –  is reassuring to the countless addicts who have been inspired and guided by Bill for nearly a century. But if the nurse ever did reveal — in a newly discovered diary, say — that Bill died under the influence, that’s okay. It really is okay. He may just be standing on the “No” side of the gate for a little while longer, that’s all.

“No,” says Wisdom, when we are not ready to cross the gate safely, to tread the border safely, for the life and health of the community. “No,” Wisdom will say to me, if I am not ready, if I am dangerous. If I focus on myself before others, if I mulishly resist God’s compassion for those who suffer, if I continually fail to open my heart and mind — then I will remain a person who harms the community. But no matter how long I struggle with all of that, I affirm that one day – when I am ready – I will hear the glad, lovely “Yes.”

We Protestants tend to stop short at theological concepts like Purgatory, rightly viewing them with a critical eye, understandably wary to imagine a complicated and judgmental cosmology in which people have to be cleansed or reformed before they can stand in the presence of God. It’s not like that.

It’s more like Wisdom sitting at her gate, saying “No” when that is the wise answer, and saying “Yes” when that is the wise answer. And so, in a few moments, after we pray for the world – that is, after we pray for all who are thronging both sides of the gate – we will gather at this Table, we will sing our triumphant songs of thanksgiving, and we will tear apart a loaf of bread, bread from heaven, bread from the “Yes” side of the gate. We will share this bread so that we might be nourished and strengthened: strengthened to get ready; strengthened to repair (always with God’s help) all that we have damaged; strengthened to meet Wisdom behind our every thought; and strengthened, finally, to hear Wisdom pronounce her unimpeachable judgment upon us. Even today, even now, we are invited to perceive Wisdom turning toward us, and saying, with God’s own grace and gladness,

“Yes.”

"O may thy soldiers faithful, true, and bold..."

Preached on the Feast of All Saints (Year A, transferred), November 5, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 34:1-10, 22
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12

All saints, by Emilia Misiura

I was talking to myself the other day. (I like to talk to myself; I am one of my best listeners.) “Stephen, I think you need to talk to the parish a little,” I said, quietly, in my heart. “I think you need to talk to your folks about two big things that happened this week. These events affect them; they affect our life together here. Fill them in,” I finished, in my little self-talk. “Let them hear from you.” And so I will.

I begin with something difficult that happened to one of us, and I am choosing carefully, and cautiously, to call him by name. I want to respect his personal privacy, and most importantly I do not want to establish a double standard where we discuss some of us by name – usually those of us who lack a particular privilege – while being diplomatically circumspect about others. In this case, the privilege this person lacks is wealth privilege. But the events of recent days compel me to speak with responsible candor. And so will I do that, with exceeding, anxious care.

This week I initiated the relocation of Houston, a member of St. Paul’s who camped on our parking strip. Now, please hear me: Houston remains one of us, and I believe he has a future with St. Paul’s. He pledged to our capital campaign, and he met that pledge; he was a presenter at the Celebration of New Ministry this past February; for years now he has volunteered a lot of time to help us with safety and maintenance in and around our garden. But Houston’s arrangement with us became problematic, and though Houston was but one participant in that arrangement, he unfortunately bore the brunt of the consequences. Speaking only for myself, my learning curve is steep in the work of ministering alongside our neighbors. It is a complicated ministry.

I deeply respect and care for – indeed I love – Houston. I pray for him regularly. I think you should pray for him, too. Pray for Houston: he is your sibling. He now lives nearby, but not on our block. He expressed deep dissatisfaction with his church home, and I understand why. I truly understand. 

“Blessed is Houston, who is one of those who mourn,” our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ proclaims today, in my hearing. “Blessed is Houston, for he will be comforted.” I believe that Houston mourns. In my experience of him – and please hear me say that I am sharing my experience; I am not speaking for him – in my experience, Houston bears up beneath a deep and debilitating sorrow. He is a powerful, resourceful survivor, but Houston is deeply grieved, striving to survive in a city that cares very little, if at all, for his welfare. I experience Houston, who like all of us shines with God’s image and likeness, as one of all too many in Seattle who cry a silent yet poignant lament of grief. 

If Houston does mourn, he is far from alone. We are surrounded by grieving humans. They sit in these pews. They camp on that parking strip. They stand in this pulpit. I, too, am mourning. I believe that I am not a fraction as wounded and vulnerable as Houston, but I am lamenting this world so harshly riven by seemingly intractable conflict.

And that brings me to the second big thing that happened this week, that led me to tell myself, “I think you need to talk to the parish a little.”

I published a blog post with my thoughts about Gaza and Israel. I did so with trepidation, but I think with too little trepidation, given some sharp responses I received. This is a dreadfully polarizing topic, but I felt I had to address it, as a public faith leader, and as a friend and family member of people who are closely involved.

My position is complicated. I share in the depths of my being a passion for peace with justice for all people in what we problematically call the “Holy Land,” and I pray for the Palestinian people in particular, again and again. But I also have family and friends who are in Israel right now, and I understand some of the political choices Israel has made, both in recent weeks and across seven and a half decades. I appreciate the predicaments everyone in the region has faced since Israel’s founding, and I believe that right now Israel is faced with a small number of terrible choices. And while I harbor grave concerns about the Israeli government, I have many of the same concerns about my own government, and I am outraged by the actions and statements of Hamas.

But more personally, and more viscerally, I empathize deeply with residents of Gaza who live in such chronic and desperate peril, but I also empathize with Israelis who have seen their children slaughtered and their family members abducted by terrorists. And while I pray for a peaceful and just ceasefire, I also struggle to imagine how any nation could not respond to a terrorist attack with some form of military retaliation. And finally we arrive at the most critical dilemma in all of this: all military action, all violent political action, destroys innocent life.

All of this takes me back to the list Jesus gives us of those who are “blessed,” or in some translations, those who are “happy.” Happy are those like Houston who mourn, for they will be comforted. There are countless desperate mourners in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Israel, throughout the Middle East, across the whole war-torn world. But Jesus also says, “Happy are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

I want to be a peacemaker. I want to be a peacemaker when I am working with a few of you to move our sibling in Christ from his dwelling at the edge of our property, while keeping him secure at the center of our hearts; and I want to be a peacemaker when he understandably rises up in anger when we do this. I want to be a peacemaker when I pray for family and friends in peril, and I want to be a peacemaker when I confront more anger, this time against me personally for comments I made about a dreadful war. I want to be a peacemaker who understands another peacemaker’s critique of my position.

Now, I want more than to be a peacemaker; I also want some arguments: I want to persuade others to share my views. (And not to digress too much, but I have an argument or two with Houston as well, who inspired conflicted feelings in me and others, and did not just feel them himself.) But more deeply I want true, and just, and lasting peace – peace between me and the persons upset by my Gaza/Israel post, peace between all of us at St. Paul’s, peace between those who are dismayed by the Israeli government and those who work in and for that same government, peace that rises beyond human understanding, peace that comes only from the Holy One. That is what I most want.

And so now, as we begin another week on this troubled block; another week in this grieving city; another week on a planet deeply wounded by war, atrocity, terror, and rage; as we begin another week here, we pursue peace by … baptizing. We will lead our sibling in Christ, Michael, to the font of Holy Baptism, to the roiling waters over which the Holy Spirit hovers, to the river where the Word of God is heard, and we will baptize Michael in the holy name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Michael plunges into the cruciform life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; Michael wades safely through the waves that cast the horse and rider of oppression into the sea; Michael joins us in God’s mission to liberate all of the oppressed – all of them, even those, including us, who are complicit in the oppression of others; Michael takes his place at this Table of Thanksgiving, where he is strengthened boldly to enter a new week, and then another, and then another, alongside us.

In Holy Baptism, Michael becomes a “soldier, faithful, true, and bold,” to quote today’s grand entrance hymn, For All the Saints. A soldier: now that’s a potentially troubling image. I know and have known soldiers, good ones, yet I expect some of you find their vocation disturbing. Militant imagery is especially dangerous to use in any religious context, and as more than one person has said, all wars are crimes. So why do we use the image of “soldier” when we talk about all the saints? 

Because we are fighting, that’s why. We are fighting the force of death that bears down upon so many neighbors, many of them unhoused, in our immediate midst. We are fighting the force of fear that prompts us to recoil from the world’s problems rather than face them together. We are fighting the force of discord that tempts us to argue about false dichotomies rather than grapple with the complexity of a wretched catastrophe that kills children on all sides. We are fighting the force of despair that could drown Houston, and me, and you, and Gaza, and Israel, and the entire human family, if we do not rise up and join God’s mission of hope, God’s promise of peace with justice. We are fighting on many fronts.

And in all of this — all of this sadness, all of this anger; all of this anxiety, all of this terror; all of this conflict, all of this death; in all of this, I want you to know, my friends, that you are stitched on my heart, forever, and I love you. As my mentor Kate Sonderegger told you earlier this year, I “join you in your common life before God, and array my strength in your cause.” And finally I am fiercely confident, I am certain, that God the Father rides before us in cloud and brightens our path with fire; that God the Son, the firstborn of the dead – who once was an innocent Jewish Palestinian – God the Son walks reliably beside us; and that God the Holy Spirit fills us with power to meet the manifold challenges of these perilous days.

Come forth, then, good saints, good soldiers, faithful, true, and bold. Come forth and join this mighty battle.

Moshe was kissed into eternity by the love of his life

Preached at the 5:00pm liturgy on the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25A), October 29, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington, by The Reverend Stephen Crippen. This was a short homily designed to prompt shared reflections from others in the assembly.

Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46

Rabbi Yehiel Poupko, teaching in Jerusalem, January 2020.

I would like to share not my own interpretation of today’s first reading, but an interpretation by an Orthodox Jewish rabbi from Chicago by the name of Yehiel Poupko. In 2015 I traveled with an interfaith group to Israel that was co-led by Rabbi Poupko. He is a friend of Christians, yet he is firmly and happily Jewish, and I often turn to him for insights about the Hebrew Scriptures, which we Christians have been opening for only twenty short centuries as part of our Holy Book.

As it happens, the story of the death of Moses appears in autumn on the Jewish lectionary calendar, too, and this year that festival, scheduled for October 7th, was marred badly by the terrorist attack in Israel. Since October 7th, of course, the war in Gaza and Israel has only worsened, and we hold in prayer all innocent life in peril, including citizens of Gaza (most of them children) and the Israeli hostages and their terrified and grieving families. As that region continues to suffer the ravages of war and injustice, I invite you to hear a Jewish reflection on the death of Moses, as we join countless people of all faiths who pray to God for peace, and for justice.

Here is Rabbi Poupko’s interpretation. I have changed some of the Hebrew words and names to help this be easier to understand in our hearing, but left others, most notably the Hebrew pronunciation of Adam, a-DAHM, and the non-Anglicized Hebrew name for Moses, which is Moshe. Rabbi Poupko writes:

“The [Torah reading on the Jewish calendar] enables an unusual meeting this week. Adam and Moshe, these two who begin and end the Torah, will have their once a year reunion. With the conclusion of the Torah reading cycle on Simkhat Torah [the Day of Rejoicing in the Torah, an autumn holiday], we focus not just on the loss of Moshe, but we review his whole life. Indeed, there was once a time, which has now been lost, when Simkhat Torah was both a happy and a sad day. It was a day when following the Torah reading, [poems] that extolled the greatness of Moshe, that reviewed his life accomplishments, and that lamented his passing were known, read, and chanted in the synagogue. Sadly, there are few synagogues left in which these [poems] are known, let alone read. No sooner do we finish reading about the death of Moshe than we begin the Torah reading again and we meet the first person, Adam. These two, Moshe the last person of the Torah meets up with Adam the first person of the Torah. These two have an enormous amount in common. Given what they have in common there are also some equally enormous differences.

Adam and Moshe are the two loneliest people in the Torah. By the time Moshe dies Aharon and Miriam have preceded him in death. His wife and two children have slipped into oblivion. He is all alone on [Mount Nebo].

However, his greatest friend, the love of his life, is with him, the Kadosh Barukh Hu [the name for God which means ‘the Holy One, Blessed Be He’]. Moshe is kissed into eternity [by God]. When Adam, fashioned by the very hand of the Kadosh Barukh Hu, is kissed into life he is utterly and absolutely alone; except of course for the presence of the Kadosh Barukh Hu. For this first person of the Torah, the Kadosh Barukh Hu provides the kindnesses of food, companionship, and clothing. For Moshe, with whom the Torah closes, the Kadosh Barukh Hu performs the kindness of clothing him for burial and is his constant companion. Whereas Adam is told that he will eat lehem – bread – by the sweat of his brow, Moshe tells us that when he was forty days with the Kadosh Barukh Hu, he did not need lehem – bread. Both Adam and Moshe want to know everything that there is to know. That of course is what it means to be a person possessed of an element of the divine intellect. Adam wants to know all there is to know and so he eats of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, asserting that he knows what the Kadosh Barukh Hu knows. Moshe also wants to know everything there is to know, and so he asks the Kadosh Barukh Hu, ‘Let me see Your very Being.’ The Kadosh Barukh Hu tells him that is not possible. Moshe accepts that. [We heard that story last week.] Moshe is then given the gift of the Name. Adam does not possess the Name. [And so] the Kadosh Barukh Hu addresses the loneliness of Adam by creating a partner for him. The Kadosh Barukh Hu addresses the loneliness of Moshe by becoming his companion.

It is Adam who is given Eden and then expelled. It is Moshe who first restores Eden in the [Tabernacle]. (Please recall that there are kruvim – cherubs – only at the gateway to Eden and in the [Tabernacle] above the Ark; that the Tree of Knowledge is realized in the tree shaped Menorah; that one of the rivers that flows out of Eden is Gihon, which then lends its name to the spring below the Temple Mount. Adam spends most of his life east of Eden looking back on what was lost. Moshe arrives just east of Eden and spends an eternity there looking over the river in the knowledge that he has brought the Jewish people to the restored Eden, the Land of Israel and Jerusalem. Moshe restores what Adam squandered. And we are still in [the Garden of] Eden. The tragedy is that we do not know that.”

I invite your reflections on the death of Moses, the provocative words of Jesus of Nazareth, who for us Christians is sometimes called the New Moses, this season of autumn, or this perilous time in world history; and I invite any other ideas, questions, or insights that the Spirit may have given to you.

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Source: Torah Matters, a weekly emailed reflection on the Torah passage, by Rabbi Yehiel Poupko, October 11, 2017.

Stunned silence

Preached on the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25A), October 29, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46

Earth, from a distance of 3.7 billion miles.

“No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

Carl Sagan was a popular 20th-century writer, astronomer, and exobiologist. He cultivated an infectious enthusiasm for popular science, and he encouraged people to ask big questions about the universe, and humanity’s place in the universe. Sagan was the one who persuaded NASA to turn their Voyager 1 space probe around to photograph Earth from a distance of 3.7 billion miles, giving humanity the astonishing image of a “pale blue dot,” our tiny home, aloft and alone in the vast preserve of outer space. Years before that, Sagan led the development of the Golden Record, an artifact placed on board that same Voyager probe (as well as Voyager 2), containing information about us and our planet for potential discovery by extra-terrestrial species, who might one day intercept our wondrous inventions.

In Carl Sagan’s book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, he writes, “There are naïve questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.”

“Every question is a cry to understand the world,” says Carl Sagan. “There is no such thing as a dumb question.”

And yet our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ seems to be silencing all who have questions. In today’s encounter he asks a provocative question of his own, but “no one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

Why did they fall silent? Let’s begin reflecting on this by accepting Carl Sagan’s assertion that “there is no such thing as a dumb question.” This is self-evidently true: every question is an attempt to learn something. Think of a small child acquiring language and asking question after question: “Why is the sky blue? Why does the dog chase her tail? Why is that bald man always wearing a black shirt with a white collar?” These are not dumb questions. They readily lead the questioner to their straightforward answers. Perhaps the questioner is inexperienced in the field about which she is asking; but asking questions is an intelligent thing to do. She asks naïve questions, but they are not dumb questions.

But these are not the questions the challengers of Jesus are asking. The Pharisees were naïve about many things – something we can truthfully say about every human person who has ever lived, or ever will live – but their questions were not part of their quest for new knowledge, let alone wisdom. Their questions were hostile. In Carl Sagan’s list of less-impressive questions – remember, he said “there are naïve questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, [and] questions put after inadequate self-criticism” – the Pharisees are asking questions with too little self-criticism. They are not looking honestly at themselves before asking a hostile question of their political opponent.

And that is what Jesus is, to them: he is a political opponent. He threatens their firm hold on authority in their society and culture. But we tell their stories of failure in debates with Jesus not just because they are fascinating characters from a story, and definitely not just to stroke our own egos under the assumption that we’re better than the Pharisees. We recall their questions and failures because we, too, stand to lose politically if we follow Jesus, and we, too, stand to lose a lot even if we merely question him. Jesus threatens whatever firm hold we may have on our world, on the means of production, on our control of other people, on our safe and self-satisfied beliefs and attitudes. He is our political opponent.

To follow Jesus means to surrender to a worldview that clashes with many things we unconsciously accept as good, and even necessary: things like capitalism, which involves private ownership in a market economy. While I doubt I will ever live without a bank account and retirement funds and real estate, following Jesus makes me chronically uncomfortable with those arrangements. The longer I walk in the Christian Way, the deeper I am bothered by the profound injustice of the world that so frequently benefits me, privileges me, ensures my own comfort and safety at the expense of others. I can afford to watch the Gaza-Israel War from a safe distance, with only one member of my family directly in harm’s way. I can form opinions about that war – and of course opinions about your opinions about that war – without the threat of airstrikes flattening my own house. When I follow Jesus, I can’t help but notice that disparity, and I must awkwardly wrestle with it.

This helps me understand more deeply why the Pharisees stopped asking Jesus questions. His answers were unsettling, even upsetting. He didn’t just defeat them in their petty attempts to embarrass and discredit him in the eyes of the people, though that was bad enough. He was also correct about things that deep down they wished he were wrong about. 

I can behave like this. I want to say – and believe – that the money I earn is my money, and therefore it belongs in my bank account, and can rightly be invested by my financial representative, and therefore can earn even more money that will become my money. And all of that is true, by the rules of our economic system. My money is my money. But Jesus is right when he points to the manifest injustice of that system, and then turns his finger toward me, inviting me to step into the discomforts of my conscience, and work for a system that feeds, clothes, and houses everyone in peace and dignity. But that new system – it’s going to cost me. Do I dare ask Jesus questions, even well-intentioned (if naïve) questions? If I do question him, his answers will make me deeply uncomfortable, and end up costing me wealth, ease, and safety.

But other people in the Holy Book bring home this problem in even more profound ways than the Pharisees. The Pharisees ask hostile questions, questions that reveal their hypocrisy, questions that lead to awful answers that challenge and repel them. I get that! But other people ask Jesus a different question, a heartfelt and honest one. They ask Jesus, with sincere curiosity, “Who are you?” They ask this in various ways, and the questioners are diverse, from rural fisherfolk all the way up to the regional Roman governor. And several times in the Good News we see Jesus evading this question, or answering it but telling them to keep quiet about it. In biblical studies they call this “the Messianic Secret,” the habit Jesus had of strictly ordering his friends not to tell people that he is the Messiah. 

And here is why Jesus does this: Jesus does not want to answer the “Who are you?” question until he is nailed to the cross. When the centurion sees Jesus on the cross he puts it all together and says, “Truly this man was God’s son!” The cross is the place where the answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?” becomes clear: his grievous, humiliating death; his whole life poured out in love for others; his life, death, and imminent risen life — all this reveals to the whole world that God in Jesus is transforming all people into a new dominion; God in Jesus is mending the world; God in Jesus is routing the powers of sin and death, and making all things new. But always at great cost.

And so, finally, we encounter even more people who stand mute before Jesus, not just the Pharisees. They stand at the cross and are struck speechless by both the wonder and the horror of who Jesus is, and what his identity implies for all who follow him. On Good Friday, Christians look back at the prophet Isaiah, who spoke to a different generation that did not imagine or anticipate Jesus of Nazareth. But Isaiah’s words, written in a different time and for a different purpose, somehow, centuries later, speak eloquently to us Christians about Jesus on the cross. Isaiah sings:

See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high. Just as there were many who were astonished at him — so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals —so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.

“Kings shall shut their mouths because of him.” More stunned silence, more fear to ask any more questions, more anxiety about who Jesus is, and what will happen to us if we listen to him, and follow him.

You may not like his answers, but I encourage you to approach Jesus in your prayers, and ask him your questions. “Who are you?” That’s a good question. “I am the Crucified One,” comes his answer, and that is a hard teaching, for it compels his followers to live costly, cruciform lives. “Why is there innocent suffering in the world?” That’s a question I like to ask Jesus. His answer? He answers by entering into that suffering himself as one of the innocent victims. We find him among the Gazan children, and also among the abducted Israelis. We find him among the slaughtered in our own nation, so overrun with guns that I almost didn’t notice this week’s mass shooting in Maine. Jesus compels his followers to enter that suffering too, and to relieve that suffering among those we call our neighbors.

Your questions for Jesus will give you uncomfortable, challenging, even vexing answers. If you listen to them, and if you still choose to follow Jesus, that will cost you a lot. But you will have many friends here alongside you, if you choose to follow. And here in this community of faith, we ask the hardest questions, remembering our sibling Carl Sagan’s wisdom:

“Every question is a cry to understand the world.”

God takes a long time

Preached on the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24A), October 22, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen. This liturgy included the marriage of Liz and Laurel Tallent.

Exodus 33:12-23
Psalm 99
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22

Christ and Pharisees, by Gia Loria

It is all too easy for us to perceive the absence of God, and even to feel despair about that absence.

It is all too easy for us, looking at ourselves and the world around us through our post-modern, apocalyptic, existential lenses, to see all that has gone wrong, all that is terrible, all that seems to be pitching everyone over the cliff, dooming everyone to a meaningless death. “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,” Jesus tells us today. Well, that part is easy enough: we readily perceive the presence and power of all who can fairly be called “emperor,” and we readily perceive the dreadful imperial damage done to humanity and the earth.

But how do we give to God the things that are God’s, when the very idea of “God” can elude our most basic belief? And even if we could manage to allow for the existence of God, it remains hard to perceive God’s power. It is hard for us to find ourselves not only safely tucked into a cleft in the rock, but placed there by God, so that we might glimpse not God’s face, but just the edge, or the back, or the faintest hint of God’s presence. 

The tangible presence of good in the universe eludes us. Why does God hide God’s face from us?, we might ask – we might scream. (If we do scream this, we will only echo several people in the Bible, including Jesus of Nazareth.) But some of us all too easily abandon that question altogether, concluding with ashen resignation that it is not that God hides God’s face from us; it is that there is no God, there is no face of God, there is no glory of God, there is nothing but this wretched world we see and hear, this sorrow-filled world we touch and taste … and that taste is bitter.

If this is where you find yourself today, then I have some Good News for you. Today we can see God’s goodness, if not God’s face; today we can perceive God’s grace, if not God’s tangible presence; today we can glimpse the edge of God’s glory, right here, in this room, in this couple, in their love, in the power and beauty they create as they celebrate the sacrament of Marriage in our midst, supported by our prayers.

Today God tucks all of us in a cleft in the rock, where we can shield our faces from the bright effulgence of God’s glory, and glimpse all the light we can tolerate as these two souls grasp one another and become entwined.

God can be exasperating, dwelling everywhere in a universe pulsing with God’s power, yet always just out of sight, just out of reach. Yet isn’t this what it’s like to interact with Liz? Liz is subtle, quiet, sharp but contained. More than once I’ve texted Liz to get a read on her, to find out her thoughts after a vestry meeting or some other encounter, because Liz has a masterful poker face. And yet Liz is good. Liz is just. Liz is powerful.

Meanwhile, Laurel is perhaps more easily accessible than Liz, but Laurel moves quickly, leaping from one thought to the next, creatively interjecting yet another thought or idea into the discussion, laughing at their own bright insight for a brief maddening moment before they share it with the group. Laurel radiates God’s glory, but in a way that is, in their own distinctive style, also out of reach, just a little beyond our grasp.

Together, this couple is alight with God’s elusive energy, God’s intriguing mystery, God’s enigmatic yet good and nourishing power. And today, right here, in front of all of us, Liz and Laurel will celebrate the sacrament of Marriage.

The sacrament of Marriage: an outward, visible sign of God’s inward, spiritual grace. And there it is again — in the sacraments, God is out of reach, God is just beyond our sight, God is too bright and too overwhelming to be seen full-on; so God must tuck us in the cleft of a rock so that we can ever so hesitatingly turn to the side and glimpse just the edge of God’s glory. This is how sacraments work. This is what Liz and Laurel are up to this morning.

Sacraments: A morsel of bread, not a table laden with splendid foods. A sip of wine, not a giant Jereboam-sized bottle that pops open with fizzy champagne cascading everywhere, filling every glass to the brim. A little splash of water, not a flood or a tide that would drown us beneath its mighty crash. Sacraments are subtle.

The sacrament of Marriage, then, is subtle. The sacrament of Marriage reveals itself slowly. And this makes marriage a perfect fit for the inward genius of Liz and the delicate wit of Laurel. Marriage is not a bonanza of joy unfolding all at once, even though, often enough, we design weddings to pretend to that kind of theatrical grandeur. No, marriage deepens over years, sometimes over the better part of a century. Couples sometimes wake up, look around, and discover that they haven’t really been married, even though they’ve been together for half a lifetime; or sure, of course they’ve been married, but they’re still in the shallower end of a vast pool, with much more to explore together in their work of intimacy, in their labor of love.

But this, I say again, is how all the sacraments work. A morsel of bread and a sip of wine this morning, and next week the same modest repast; and then, decades on, we discover how deeply we have been nourished at this Thanksgiving Table. A splash of water and a dollop of oil, and then, years away, we have yet to climb the high country of our baptismal identity, claiming not just one happy moment of initiation into Christ’s Body, but a lifetime of often-painful incorporation into that Body, our whole lives giving witness to what the mystery of Holy Baptism really means.

Sometimes it takes a century for God’s glory to be revealed. Would the people who prayed in this church one hundred years ago have been able to imagine that this congregation has become a queer space, where the sacrament of Marriage is celebrated by non-binary persons, where women and queer folk are sponsored for the priesthood, and where the community of the baptized that prays here is living out their sacramental identity by taking up the work of anti-racism and reparations? No, I think our forebears long ago would not have been able to imagine all of that, whether it would have delighted them or horrified them. 

It takes a long time because sacraments take a long time. And that’s little wonder, because God, the Source of all Being, the One whose grace is mediated to us in the sacraments, God takes all of history to reveal God’s self to all living things, and even on the Last Day, God will not fully submit to our understanding.

So, take your time, as you stand today and witness Liz and Laurel celebrating the sacrament of Marriage. Don’t try to understand it all right now. Some of the sight lines in this room are poor: maybe you’re partially behind a pillar, or someone in front of you is tall; oh well, you can’t see all that’s going on anyway. Neither can I, and I’ll be standing right in front of them! 

It will take Liz and Laurel a lifetime to reveal to us — and to themselves — all that this sacrament they celebrate today will mean, all that it will say about God, all that it will do to mend the world, all that it will stand for long after all of us, Liz and Laurel included, have died in the peace of Christ.

Marriage is a novel, not a short story; it’s an ultra-marathon, not a sprint; it’s an epic poem that never ends, but melts into another couple’s sacrament of Marriage, and theirs into another’s, and on and on, blending with the sacramental lives of individuals who are called to ventures other than marriage, blending with the sacramental missions we share as God’s people, until finally we, all of us, including our great great grandchildren, will lift up our heads, look around, and realize that God, the ever-elusive One, the Source of All Being, God has married God’s people, heaven has married earth, and all living things are flourishing beneath the Tree of Life.

On that day all people will sing together an ancient song, a song which we sang this morning, a song that is yet another subtle foretaste of the feast to come. All people will sing, for the umpteenth time, this great song of gladness:

Proclaim the greatness of the Lord our God and worship upon God’s holy hill; for the Lord our God is the Holy One.

The wedding banquet

Sermon given by Kevin Montgomery at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle on October 15, 2023, the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, at 8:00am and 10:30am masses.

Matthew 22:1-14

Matthew’s Jesus can be hard to swallow. This is supposed to be the Good News, but where is it? At this point in the story, he’s overthrown the money changers. He’s now denouncing the religious authorities to their faces, “Woe to you blind guides. . . . Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” and giving parables of judgment against them. Here we have the story of a wedding where those who decline the invitation are killed and their city is burned; and one person who accepts the invitation is thrown out for wearing the wrong outfit. Where’s the good news in that? Where’s the grace?

Well, let’s dive into this and see what’s with this wedding. At this time and place, the rich and powerful would throw a banquet or such to show off their wealth and status. They would then invite other elites with the expectation they’d return the favor in some way. It was also standard practice to send an initial announcement of the upcoming festivities, sort of like a “Save the Date” card today. When everything was ready, an invitation to come would be sent. That would also give the invitees a chance to see who was on the list. “So who else is coming?” Maybe the intended guests didn’t like who was going to be there. Maybe they didn’t like the king. Either way, to refuse the summons would be a grave insult. To kill the king’s servants? Well, that’s treason. That’s rebellion. An earthly king would have been expected to punish them severely. 

But we’re not talking about an earthly king here. This heavenly king does the unexpected. He doesn’t replace one set of elites with another. He sends his servants out of the city, to the highways and byways, the squares and the crossroads, to gather all those they find. These are the outsiders who are being brought in. Mind you, this is not about Jews being replaced by Christians or one chosen people being replaced by another. This is about opening up the feast, the messianic banquet, to those who otherwise would not have been able to come.These aren’t necessarily the people with wealth and status who can throw a party for the king or return extravagant favors. In Luke’s version of the parable, they’re the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. In Matthew’s, the servants gather both the good and the bad. By “bad” what do we mean? Morally? Sure. Prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners. Perhaps also those who might not fit into “polite society,” those who don’t quite “fit in,” those who just aren’t the “right kind of people.” And it might include some of us too. Being invited to a king’s party when you just might not deserve it, that sounds like a pretty nice gift. 

And we’re not just allowed in either. The king, the ruler, God sends servants out to bring us to the feast. Think of the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, the apostles of the church; and speaking through them is the Holy Spirit, the conveyor of grace. In the collect, we heard a request that God’s grace “may always precede and follow us.” Forgive me for going all Wesleyan on you for a second. (With my Methodist heritage, I can’t help it.) But one of the key points in John Wesley’s theology is what is known as prevenient grace. This is the aspect of grace that goes before us and provides a light for the path, that shows us the good and lets us want it. It invites us to come to the palace that we might never have thought we’d visit. It’s like the porch where we gather as we’re brought into the great house we never dared enter. There we’re greeted and declared worthy of coming inside. Put on the wedding garment of holiness and celebrate.

Oh, wait, what about the guy that didn’t have one? Well, it was not unusual at the time for the host to provide robes to guests who didn’t have them. And if all these people were brought in off the streets, how many of them would have been wearing their fancy dress? So perhaps everyone got a robe, but this person wasn’t wearing it. That means they refused the one that was offered or got rid of it. Why? Maybe it was a sign of disrespect to the host’s hospitality or just disregard of the dignity of the event and the other guests. Or perhaps the person already had clothes they thought were better than what was provided. They wanted people to see them and give them a place of honor at the banquet, to treat them with the respect they obviously deserved. Regardless, this person didn’t get it. They totally missed the point of the celebration. When called out on it, they couldn’t or wouldn’t give a response. No apology, no request for a new garment, silence. 

The really annoying thing about God’s grace is that just because you accept the invitation, that doesn’t mean everything’s all hunky-dory. There’s a cost. I’m not talking about returning the favor or having to follow an exacting set of rules. No, it’s about letting ourselves be transformed. To put on Christ is to become a new person who shows forth the fruit of new life. To put on Christ is to clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, as St. Paul writes. It’s not just to answer the call of God’s prevenient grace or accept the gift of justifying grace but to also open ourselves up to the work of sanctifying grace and cooperate with it. To put on this wedding garment is to accept that we are worthy to enter regardless of our place in life. To put on the garment is also to enter that banquet the same as everyone else, even if we think they’re the “wrong” people. But this choice has a cost. We risk making ourselves vulnerable, sitting down not just with those we don’t like but maybe even with those we hate. When we enter the banquet, we don the robe and put off body armor. We take up the food and drink of life and put down the weapons of death. In this time of hyper-polarization, conflict over resources, and especially now with the seemingly endless cycle of destruction in Israel and Gaza, we need to hear this message more than ever. Can you make that choice? Can I make that choice? With God’s grace and your help, I hope so. God, I hope so.