Easter 2B
+Thomas gets a bum rap. Not that he didn’t doubt, but his doubting wasn’t unique—the other disciples doubted too. Doubting must be an important part of our Christian story because why else would we read this story EVERY SINGLE YEAR on the Second Sunday of the Easter season? Clearly our forebears realized that doubting isn’t as much the exception as the rule. And that doubting, while normal, is something to pay attention to.
So yeah, Thomas gets a bad rap with the whole doubting thing while, in truth, doubt isn’t a uniquely bad thing, it’s just a common human thing.
Doubt is a moment in time, a step in a process. A time of bewilderment, a time of question---doubt comes when things aren’t clear---when all the evidence isn’t yet in or all the evidence hasn’t crystallized in our brains yet. Doubt happens when all that we know to be—the order of our world---is shattered.
On several occassions in my life, I’ve had the painful task of informing someone of an unexpected death. The first response of most people to such shocking news is disbelief—“No that cannot be.” Or “How can that be?” It’s too hard to comprehend the horror, so we deny.
But it’s not only bad news that can be met with doubt, good news can be equally difficult to fathom.
Whether it’s finding out the surgery was a success, or you’ve gotten the job of your dreams----good news can take some time to sink in.
Doubt buys us time for joy to fully engage; or time to gird ourselves against the bad.
Doubt gives us time to catch up to the reality of our lives.
In these early days of the Easter season, we have some catching up to do.
So did the disciples.
The king they loved; they’d denied, the rulers they feared; they’d defied. It wasn’t a good time to be one of Jesus’ followers…so when they hear from Mary Magdalene that Jesus is alive do they run out looking for him?
No, paralyzed by their doubt, immobilized by their fear, stuck in their shame, they stay behind locked doors.
He’s alive?
Uh oh.
But Jesus, instead of “How could you?” says, “Peace Be With You.”
He accepts their failings and loves them.
He rejects their fear and loves them.
He loves them. In spite of themselves.
This is shocking.
It takes some time to get used to!
Even though they’d heard it hundreds of times before, even though we hear it, week in and week out, this simple message of love, peace and forgiveness is difficult to understand and to accept.
Thomas, along with the other disciples, needed to see the reality of Jesus’ resurrection before they could "get it." Their doubt wasn’t a lack of faith, it wasn’t that they didn’t believe, they just didn’t comprehend.
Thomas’ doubt bought him time to wrap his brain around all that had happened, so that, when he saw Jesus for himself he would, at least on some level, “get it.” Thomas’s doubt gave him the time to move into a greater understanding, leading him to proclaim, “My Lord and My God.” Thomas’ doubt led his faith to a place of understanding. Thomas, given time, Got It.
Today, the emotional roller coaster of Holy Week is over, we’ve proclaimed Christ risen, we’ve shouted Alleluia, we’ve rejoiced in the new light of Christ.
This astonishing realization of what God always does, is shocking and takes some getting used too.
So this morning we begin clearing doubt from our hearts and minds and embracing the Truth as given to us through Jesus Christ:
To go into the world seeking and serving Christ in everyone we meet…
To not rest until everyone, everywhere knows the Love that is God…
To not run from fear, but to enter it courageously… [like the CORE initiative…]
To not deny doubt, but embrace it for what it is and see what’s on the other side…
To forgive ourselves for what we’ve left undone while redoubling our efforts to do more…
To see the Risen One and to call out My Lord! My God! My hope! My Savior!
We don’t need to understand or even fully comprehend it, we just need to enter this resurrection life and see where it takes us! Alleluia and Amen. The 23rd Psalm. Most people know of it, many people know it by heart, and more than a handful of people I’ve walked with, through their final days, have been comforted by hearing it recited.
The 23rd Psalm is part of the fabric of many lives.
But…when was the last time you REALLY listened to it, interpreted it in your own words. Well, lucky you, I did some of my own interpreting this week:
“I follow God, God will fulfill all my needs... When I feel depleted God will refresh and renew me. Even when I take a wrong turn, God will lead me toward the right road. No matter what the challenge, no matter how dark the night seems, this God whom I follow will be with me so I won’t let my fear derail me. You will push me when I lag and you will catch me when I stray and when those who wish me ill come calling, You will be right there, sitting at the dinner table with me. My gifts and joys will overflow and as long as i keep letting God Lead me, I’ll be ok.”
If I follow God. If I let God lead me, I will be ok.
To me that sums up this psalm. But something very specific about the psalm kept niggling at me all week. It’s the second half of the first line: I shall not be in want.
Like most people I always read this line as, “God will make sure that I have what I need,” but it doesn’t say that. It says, as the rest of the psalm supports, “I will never be alone in whatever befalls me and that all that I need is within my reach.”
If I reach for it.
The good shepherd, as described here in Hebrew scripture, and as outlined in John’s gospel tells us that the Lord will lead us and the Lord will seek us, the Lord may even grab us by the scruff of the neck to bring us back into the fold, but nowhere are we told that the Good Shepherd will lock us into the fold. The Shepherd will look for us, long for us, and will lead us home. But the shepherd can’t keep us there. The Shepherd can’t keep us from wandering and getting lost.
All the shepherd can do is find us, it’s up to us to stay.
We get lost all the time. And Jesus pursues us, invites us, even prods us to come home.
But after we’re found, no one can keep us from leaving again.
Except us.
This is where the “I shall not want” comes in for me.
I may want for all sorts of things….I may want to lose 30 lbs, but just wanting that without exercising more and eating better won’t get me anywhere.
I may want every congregation in our dioceses to be whole and happy and thriving but there are congregations who simply won’t do the needed hard work .We all want a lot of things. But…
What we want is not the same as being in want.
Being in want, at its core, is being without hope, without recourse, without anything that’s needed to sustain life.
This is what the psalmist is telling us: when we turn our hearts, minds and souls over to God we’ll never be without that which we truly need: hope, faith and love.
God won’t put butts in the pews on Sunday morning, God won’t make Christianity regain the glory it held in the public’s mind back in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, but God does equip every person who allows God to walk with them through life, the security of verdant pastures and still waters. Our job is to allow ourselves to be led by God, when we do that, we will not be in want. Ever.
Amen.
Easter 3B
Our Gospel reading for today is from Luke which is odd—we're in Liturgical Year B which means the bulk of our Gospel readings are from Mark (in year A Matthew, B Mark and C Luke) but here we are smack dab in the middle of year B, three Sundays into the Easter season, and we’re reading from Luke. The why for this is pretty clear, the designers of the lectionary want us to hear as many resurrection stories as possible. They want us to hear that the disciples—Jesus’s closest friends—were confused, disbelieving, terrified, unsure of whether this was really Jesus alive again, or a figment of their imaginations.
I think we hear all these stories because we need to be reminded that we aren’t alone in how unbelievable this whole resurrection thing is.
It’s one thing for us to believe what we’ve been told, but for Jesus’s friends it was to believe what they’re seeing. It wasn’t easy… so Jesus does all that he can to share with his friends physical proof that he’s not a mirage, not a ghost. He uses actions like touching, feeling, cooking, eating to show that he is, indeed, the one who was killed and buried, back to life!
Jesus knows that we need to know in addition to believing. And to know is to do, so he shares a fish breakfast with the disciples in today’s reading; in other post-resurrection stories he has Thomas touch his wounds, has the travelers on the way to Emmaus share dinner with him where, when he breaks the bread, his follower’s eyes are opened.
So…how do we get to the place of knowing— of really knowing— that Jesus is our Savior, our hope, our salvation?
How do we know that this God in the flesh did indeed rise from the dead?
We can believe what we’ve been told, but how can we know?
By having proof.
For the disciples Jesus is able to do human things—breathe on them, eat with them, let them touch his wounds.
But what about us?
How do we reach that place of physical knowing that Jesus died, was buried and rose again to walk the earth?
I suppose the easy answer is—knowing doesn’t matter, belief does—“I don't need proof, I just believe.” And for those of you who can be satisfied with that, great!
I’m not one of those people.
I like the tangible.
So how do I (and others like me) find tangible proof of resurrected life?
Right here.
For me the proof of resurrected life is the power in the community of faith in such a resurrected one as we have here. Look around—-remember the pain that many of you have endured or are enduring. Think of the joys, the great gifts, the seemingly unbearable losses, all brought here and laid upon this altar and each other. We’ve shared so much in our lives: births, deaths, graduations and so on. Some of us who've only been part of this community for a short while may not have all that to share but you’d be hard pressed to convince me that you didn't feel the power of our shared lives when entering these doors.
The power of our experiences bind us, the hope for experiences yet to come bind us, the belief in the resurrected one bind us and the tangible experience of walking together through whatever comes is the real and physical evidence of a truly resurrected Son of God, who, through us and with us, creates a new world, one group of faithful folk at a time. That, my friends is believing AND it is knowing…And for that we say Amen and Alleluia!!!!!
Easter 4B
The 23rd Psalm. Most people know of it, many people know it by heart, and more than a handful of people I’ve walked with, through their final days, have been comforted by hearing it recited.
The 23rd Psalm is part of the fabric of many lives.
But…when was the last time you REALLY listened to it, interpreted it in your own words. Well, lucky you, I did some of my own interpreting this week:
“I follow God, God will fulfill all my needs... When I feel depleted God will refresh and renew me. Even when I take a wrong turn, God will lead me toward the right road. No matter what the challenge, no matter how dark the night seems, this God whom I follow will be with me so I won’t let my fear derail me. You will push me when I lag and you will catch me when I stray and when those who wish me ill come calling, You will be right there, sitting at the dinner table with me. My gifts and joys will overflow and as long as i keep letting God Lead me, I’ll be ok.”
If I follow God. If I let God lead me, I will be ok.
To me that sums up this psalm. But something very specific about the psalm kept niggling at me all week. It’s the second half of the first line: I shall not be in want.
Like most people I always read this line as, “God will make sure that I have what I need,” but it doesn’t say that. It says, as the rest of the psalm supports, “I will never be alone in whatever befalls me and that all that I need is within my reach.”
If I reach for it.
The good shepherd, as described here in Hebrew scripture, and as outlined in John’s gospel tells us that the Lord will lead us and the Lord will seek us, the Lord may even grab us by the scruff of the neck to bring us back into the fold, but nowhere are we told that the Good Shepherd will lock us into the fold. The Shepherd will look for us, long for us, and will lead us home. But the shepherd can’t keep us there. The Shepherd can’t keep us from wandering and getting lost.
All the shepherd can do is find us, it’s up to us to stay.
We get lost all the time. And Jesus pursues us, invites us, even prods us to come home.
But after we’re found, no one can keep us from leaving again.
Except us.
This is where the “I shall not want” comes in for me.
I may want for all sorts of things….I may want to lose 30 lbs, but just wanting that without exercising more and eating better won’t get me anywhere.
I may want every congregation in our dioceses to be whole and happy and thriving but there are congregations who simply won’t do the needed hard work .We all want a lot of things. But…
What we want is not the same as being in want.
Being in want, at its core, is being without hope, without recourse, without anything that’s needed to sustain life.
This is what the psalmist is telling us: when we turn our hearts, minds and souls over to God we’ll never be without that which we truly need: hope, faith and love.
God won’t put butts in the pews on Sunday morning, God won’t make Christianity regain the glory it held in the public’s mind back in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, but God does equip every person who allows God to walk with them through life, the security of verdant pastures and still waters. Our job is to allow ourselves to be led by God, when we do that, we will not be in want. Ever.
Amen.
Easter 5B
+Have you been pruned? My most powerful pruning came on November 9, 2017, the day my wife of five and a half years died.
We
thought we had 20/30 years to be together. We laughed at how long it
took for us to find each other…we had plans, hopes, dreams…we thought
we’d get old together.
But cancer took it all from us.
For just
about a year we walked the walk familiar to so many of us…treatments,
surgeries, new treatments, more surgeries…we just kept waiting for her
to get better. Once she was better we would do this and that, we’d get
on with our lives.
But that’s not how it worked out.
Suddenly, after a promising report from the oncologist and a new treatment plan to hold the cancer at bay, she died.
I
felt like my legs had been cut off from me. My heart in a million
pieces, I was wracked with grief, exhausted, terrified, angry, lonely,
lost. I couldn’t pray, at times I couldn’t breathe.
But, I carried on.
Somehow, someway I got out of bed and did what needed to be done.
I learned how to be alone… by realizing that I wasn’t.
I asked for help, reached out, and accepted others reaching in.
I heal by feeling the pain, asking for help, sharing my grief.
By abiding in others and letting others abide in me. Including and especially God.
Jesus says abide in me as I abide in my father.
Endure with me as I endure you.
Hold onto me while I hold onto you
Love me while I love you.
Abiding,
my friends, is taking up residence with another’s sorrows and joys and
all that’s in between. Abiding is holding fast to another when your own
branch has been cut out from under you.
Abiding is being there when the pruning feels too severe, the growth too painful and the living too hard.
Abiding is being strong for others who are feeling weak. And vice versa.
Abiding
is being a community. Abiding is taking the example of God being within
Jesus, bearing all things that Jesus bore and doing it, right here.
Abiding is being the face of God to each other.
Abiding allows us to prune the vines of our own lives. To know what to hold onto and what to let go of.
Abiding helps us survive being pruned.
I was pruned when Pete died.
You’ve
been pruned through your individual losses, some we know about others
we don’t, as well as the losses you’ve experienced as and in community.
But here we are. Upright. Breathing and ready to keep on living.
How? Why?
Because
God abides in us and we abide in God. Because God cries with us, rails
with us, comforts us, and challenges us. Because God is in us and we’re
in God.
You don’t look like you did before this pruning, you don’t
think like you did. You don’t like all that’s happened, and you may
wonder about what will be, but together you’ve abided in love, light and
hope, even when the days seem dark, the love painful, and the hope
fleeting.
This is life…we have joys and sorrows…and in
between we have regular old life. The lesson of our readings is that
pruning happens and that pruning, no matter how painful, no matter how
much we pray it didn’t happen, does lead to growth, change, and new
life. The journey is arduous, the path not always straight, the way
often confusing but, as long as we abide in one another and in God
through Jesus Christ, we’ll survive the challenges and the worry.
Why? Because, as John says in today’s epistle: “God is Love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God abides in them.”
God is with us in the pruning, the growth, and the abiding. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Easter 6 B
Today’s readings are full of talk about commandments. Following God’s commandments, according to the author of the Letter of John, is how we show God our love. And in the Gospel, Jesus gives us a new commandment—to love one another as he has loved us. And that the disciples are his friends if they obey his command.
I’m not sure this is the greatest way to making friends, Jesus. I’ve never made a friend by commanding someone. It reminds me of Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory—Sheldon’s completely clueless about interpersonal relationships so when Sheldon makes demands and directs commands towards those he calls friends, it makes sense to us, but for Jesus to do it? He seems a little more socially competent than that doesn’t he?
So what’s with this command to love others otherwise we can’t be his friend or follower?
Well, as is often the case with scripture, it’s a translation issue. The Greek word translated to commandment in both our Letter of John and the Gospel of John is “entola.” There isn’t a good direct English translation for “entola,” … it means to teach, to direct one to follow an example. Jesus wants us to do as he’s done and at this stage of his life—the Gospel today is taken from that four chapter section of John called Jesus’s Farewell Discourse—— Jesus is pressured, anxious to have the disciples learn as much as they can as quickly as possible. Put in that context, the “command” language makes a little more sense to me—when feeling urgent our language can sound more like a command than a teaching, a desire to emulate, or a direction. It’s less, turn here and more TURN HERE!!!!
I like to think that I understand a little of Jesus’s mood—-when one has been the recipient of much Love it’s painful to see doubt, fear, confusion all fuse into the intolerance and hate which seems to be overpowering our daily lives.
Today is our Thanksgiving in May dinner. Why do we do this? To show others love and to offer thanks for all the love we have received. To me, the Thanksgiving in May event is Loving others as we ourselves have been loved, on a plate! It’s the perfect date for this event because 45 years ago today someone I had the privilege of loving and—more importantly—-being loved by, was born. My nephew, John. Born too soon and too quickly John was what we used to call a “blue baby.” Diagnosed at 3 years old with atypical cerebral palsy his wondrous heart and spirit trapped in an uncooperative and painfully crooked body did not sway his loving countenance. He couldn’t walk and he couldn’t talk. But man oh man could he communicate. And what did he communicate, what did he exude at all times and in all things? Love. When it came to following commandments John got this “Love one another as I have loved you” part down pat. On the day John drew his last breath I know that as he ran to outstretched arms of our Lord, Jesus exclaimed, “You did it John, you got it, you Loved as I loved you!”
When we accept love is it is so easier to love back —- I learned love from John. He loved so much and so well there was nothing to do but love.
May we —in all things and at all times—accept the love of others and love in return. Not because we’re commanded to, but because when we’re loved, how can we NOT? Amen.
And Johnzo? Happy birthday. I loved being loved by you.
Easter 7B/Sunday after Ascension
The quick answer is that I have no idea, but the more lengthy answer is this: I think Jesus walked the earth for a while after his resurrection and then physically and visibly “left,” for a very good reason. Us.
The resurrection of Jesus, while the major part of our Christian faith, can be a little tough to fathom... And yet, at least for me, I know it to be absolutely true. But what if I’d actually known the man? What if I was a contemporary of Jesus? What if I’d lived in 1st century Palestine and counted Jesus as one of my friends? What if I saw him take his final breath, saw his body removed from the cross and laid in a tomb. What if, a few days later, that same very dead friend calls me by name, places my hand in his wounds, joins me for a fish breakfast and preaches one more sermon?
How does one deal with it? Think about how utterly FREAKED out you’d be. Of course you’d like to think you’d be grateful, joyful and happy. But at first I think most of us would have FREAKED out.
So, I think I get why we have this span of time---40 days to be precise---between Jesus’ resurrection on Easter morning and the Ascension of Christ into heaven. We need some time to adjust.[1]So I believe the 40 days were, in many respects, a “do-over” for the apostles. They, with a resurrected Jesus by their side, get to revisit all the lessons he’d taught them before his death. Once again, they get to see that all things are possible through Him. they get to understand that all the crazy mind blowing things he said and did weren’t side-shows, they weren’t the work of a mad man. They were the work of a Savior, they were the work of a man sent by God, they were the work of God made human. They were the opening chords of a chorus of a new life. The apostles then and we now were granted some time to realize that God’s not kidding: Death is dead, darkness is defeated, loss is overturned, hate will not win, hope does live and God’s kingdom is a place where there is no longer Jew or Greek, Male or female, black white or brown, gay, straight, trans, rich, poor, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist or agnostic.
God’s not kidding.
But still, why the spectacle of ascending into heaven? Couldn’t Jesus just have said good bye and disappeared? Why the show?
Well, I don’t think Jesus ever did anything without a very good reason so we need to consider why a bodily, visible Ascension was necessary.
I think what Jesus is saying is, “I have to go, and I know that’s going to hurt you…it’s going to hurt me….but the reality is that if I didn’t go, you wouldn’t grow to be the people I know you can be. If I don’t go you won’t pick up the work you are called to do.”
When Jesus left he left his work behind for us to continue.
Are we?
How are we doing Jesus’s work here at St James, in the GRI, in the partnership dioceses? How are we doing that around our dinner table, in our families, neighborhoods, towns, regions? It’s now our work. How are we doing it?
It’s something to think about and if there is something we should be doing at St James’s—speak up. For discerning the work around us, is every bit as important as doing the work.
May we take up that work and do it with joy and praise.
Amen and Alleluia.
It means that Jesus’s departure isn’t absence. It’s freeing the spirit from her confines within Jesus to spread among and through us so that we all become clothed with the power of what our Presiding Bishop calls Love. The Holy Spirit is fueled by and through community and the Love which permeates through that community.
This is why we baptize within the context of the principal weekly service of the church. It’s why I’ll ask if y’all will do all in your power to support Tommy in his life in Christ? It’s why we all turn around and witness the action of sprinkling his head with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s why we are witnesses of Tommy being sealed with the oil of chrism, an oil only used at this liturgy and at the anointing of a body at death—- because today we celebrate what all of us already know just by being around Tommy— he is sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.
Just like we are. Just like his sisters, parents, godparents. Just like you and just like me. On this day we celebrate that the Holy Spirit is not a gift reserved for the few, but it is the gift promised to all. It is a gift that makes us risk things we never thought we would, it’s the gift that accompanies us as we endure things we thought impossible to endure, it’s the gift that enlivens us as a community of faith to show Tommy and all our kids within these walls and all the children of God outside of these walls that they are beloved of God.
Beloved— not tolerated, not dismissed, not rejected, not hated, not judged, not gossiped about but beloved. By God, By Jesus, By the Holy Spirit and by each and everyone of us here. If there are any people here this day whose love for Tommy or for anyone here is dependent on him (or any of us) acting a certain way, loving a certain way, living a certain way then I will pray for you as I escort you out of our community. For we are a tolerant bunch but we will never tolerate conditional love. never.
Tommy is going to be whomever it is God calls him to be and we—- all of us here and all of us yet to come—will be cheering him on, loving him as we ourselves are loved.
The disciples asked, what does this mean? I say what it means is that Tommy is beloved by us and by God. Always and forever.
Now… because it’s Tommy’s seventh birthday today AS WELL as his baptismal day—- let’s get on with it, shall we?
Alleluia Christ is Risen, the Lord is Risen Indeed. Alleluia. And Amen.
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