Category Archives: sermons

Illness & Healing

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We live in an accomplishment-oriented society.  Our identities are wrapped up in what we do in our jobs, what we can produce, how we “contribute to society.”  There’s a lot of ego wrapped up this lifestyle–one that tells us that we know who we are because of what we do.  Depending upon and feeding our egos, allowing our lives to be ruled by how many people like us, or how much money we make creates an environment of anxiety and fear.

This is an illness.  This is not how we’re meant to live.

We learn in Scripture that our identity is not based on our egos, our abilities, or our status.  Though we’ve been confused almost from the beginning of time, hiding ourselves, covering ourselves up with fig leaves when we sense God nearby, our confusion is not a permanent condition.

The truth is, God already knows everything about each one of us–as the prayer for purity at the beginning of an Episcopal church service affirms, “to You all hearts are open, all desires known, and from You no secrets are hid.”

“Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’” Matthew 9:35-38

As God sees and knows us, he does not condemn us; he has compassion for our struggle and desires to lead us safely, like a shepherd, into healing.  God’s light, God’s presence, is healing–it is the only place we are fully seen, fully known, and fully accepted.

“though Jesus was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.” Philippians 2:6-7

Our worth is based in the reality of God; we are so precious that God seeks to dwell in each of our hearts, to be so close to each of us that we become like one being.

When we are healed from wondering and worrying about our own abilities and contributions to society into knowing that our worth comes from being God’s precious creation, from being fearfully and wonderfully made, we are truly free.

By losing our lives–refusing to be identified by our job title or bank account–we lose our egos, and we move into the light, into God’s presence without shame.

No Longer a Trickster – Sermon

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In honor of the day for tricksters; First preached at Christ Church, Cooperstown NY, around October 2010.

“Then the man* said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,* for you have striven with God and with humans,* and have prevailed.’” Genesis 32:28

Names today aren’t quite as socially important as names were in Old Testaments times, but we understand how meaningful it is to name a child after a loved one or to carry a name that holds a particular weight. My middle name is “Rose,” which is also the name of my great-grandmother, who is one of the people most dear to my mother—my great-grandma Rose is still alive, so I take it as good luck that I, too, carry her name. In today’s Old Testament lesson, Jacob’s name is changed after a great struggle.
When Jacob was born, hanging on the heel of his older twin brother Esau, he was named as “the one carried on the heel” which was a figure of speech in ancient times for “supplanter” or “deceiver.” Jacob sure lived up to this name, stealing the blessing meant for the first-born son from his brother by tricking their father, and later, stealthily building up his flocks out of his father-in-law Laban’s animals, agreeing to be paid only in livestock. In ancient literature, and even in some stories today, there’s a character role that Jacob is fulfilling in Genesis—he’s the “trickster.” This sort of character shows up in Greek and Roman myths, in Native American myths, and even in children’s stories. The “trickster” is a rule-breaker, but he does it purposely, to get ahead of the game. A trickster doesn’t have a black-and-white conception of right-and-wrong, but instead tends to judge situations based upon his personal interest at the time. In stories about animals, the fox and the wolf are often cast as tricksters, like in Little Red Riding Hood, where the wolf pretends to be the girl’s sick grandmother. Jacob is part of this family of trickster characters, which makes his name especially appropriate, and which makes his re-naming in our lesson so important. After Jacob outsmarts his father and brother in obtaining the special blessing, he leaves town. That’s the last time he sees his brother before the meeting talked about in the passage this morning.
No wonder Jacob was so nervous. He’d grown up enough in the interim, having been tricked himself by his father-in-law, to understand the import of what he had done to his brother as a young man. Unlike most tricksters in ancient literature, though, Jacob exposes that he has a sense of right and wrong. This is one way that shows how the stories in Genesis are different from classic ancient literature—our trickster has a heart, and struggles with himself. The Bible’s famous trickster isn’t like other tricksters; while this was a story that would have been familiar to ancient people, they would have been able to identify Jacob as the trickster immediately by his behavior, if not just his name, they also would have seen that this wasn’t the way a trickster was supposed to act. A trickster doesn’t ever grow a conscience—the point of being a trickster is to always be a bit of an outsider, albeit a financially successful and very clever one. In this story, we see as we do many times in these patriarch narratives that God uses deeply faulted people—real people. We know that God uses people like us, God uses US, to enact His will in this world.
Let’s look more closely at the re-naming piece now. In verses 22 through 30, Jacob is wrestling. We find out at the end that he’s wrestling with God. This trickster doesn’t want to continue in that life-path, but it’s hard to derail years of clever circumventing of the rules. Jacob is wrestling with getting off that train, so to speak, and setting a new course for the rest of his life, starting with facing his brother again. This intimate look at Jacob’s rough night give us a window into our own struggles—just as Jacob wrestled with God over his knee-jerk tendency to promote himself at other’s expense, we have inner struggles. We tend to have short tempers or tell lies much faster than the truth, or struggle with addiction or faithfulness to our spouses—those habits that we try to hide from others. These trappings of faulted human life are the sort of thing that we might wrestle with God about at night, like Jacob.
In the morning, we see, Jacob is given hope—God not only blesses him, but changes his name. What a startling and freeing step for Jacob—to no longer hear “deceiver” any time his name is spoken, but instead to be reminded that “God strives” each time he’s called. In verse 28, “the man” blesses and re-names him, dubbing him “the one who strives with God.” The newly-minted “fighter” fords the river to face up to his brother, knowing that God has blessed him.
In chapter 33 of Genesis, directly following this story, Esau and Israel come face-to-face. For a moment, let’s think about what Esau must have felt, having been warned the day before that his younger brother was approaching. They hadn’t spoken since decades earlier when wily Jacob had taken Esau’s rightful older-brother-blessing. Indeed, Esau’s last recorded words, in chapter 27 of Genesis, verse 41, were “Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, ‘The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”” Of course, their mother intervened and Jacob survived and fled, but that had been the tenor of their last interaction. As they approached each other, Esau knew nothing of the night before, he didn’t know that Jacob’s name was no longer “deceiver,” but “the one who strives with God”—the one who, by God’s grace, becomes a man of character.
In chapter 33 of Genesis, verse 4, “Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.” Esau, though he had known his brother better than anyone as children, knew that during their time apart, Jacob may have changed. Esau let go of his violent, rightly-placed anger during the intervening decades and gave Jacob space to be a new person when they met again. Esau knew that God could change Jacob, just as Esau surely had been changed, and so, when they met again, instead of continuing with the plan he’d had years ago, Esau didn’t assume that he knew Jacob and could predict the way he would behave based on their past. Esau looked to the future and was open to be blessed by the new family member that Jacob, now Israel had become.
Israel teaches us that no one is stuck being a trickster for his entire life, and Esau teaches us that the greatest blessing among friends and family is being given the space to develop from being a trickster to becoming one who reminds us that God strives. Amen.

Watch Yourself.

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Romans 11:13-24

“13 Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry 14in order to make my own people jealous, and thus save some of them. 15For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead! 16If the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; and if the root is holy, then the branches also are holy.

17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, 18do not vaunt yourselves over the branches. If you do vaunt yourselves, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. 19You will say, ‘Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.’ 20That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. 21For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you. 22Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity towards those who have fallen, but God’s kindness towards you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. 23And even those of Israel, if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. 24For if you have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree.”

There was an article in Foreign Policy magazine this week revealing the March Madness irony of Americans’ stubborn hatred of Duke basketball–you see, in the world of international affairs, the United States is Duke.  There’s a reason the U.S. is called a superpower, why we’ve got a bad reputation throughout the world, why Europeans are sometimes storied to turn up their noses at people with American accents.

Both Duke and United States have an attitude of Manifest Destiny, both have been rather successful despite their pride.  Like Duke, like the United States, so are 21st-century Christians, especially us in the West.

It’s as if Paul is standing before us today!  We are Gentiles.  We are wild olive shoots.  We’re wise to remember that none of us is here on our own merit or because of our own resourcefulness.  Listening to these words rubs me the wrong way a little bit–“the root supports you,” “perhaps he will not spare you,” and “do not become proud.” How can someone else, someone like the Apostle Paul, tell me that I’m not exceptional?  Like the United States, like Duke, I have an attitude that I’m somehow an exception to the wisdom of Scripture; I’m not under judgment because I’m a 21st century Christian.

Of course, the truth is that we are.  We are grafted into an olive tree that’s thousands of years older than we are, that’s weathered hundreds more storms than we can imagine, that’s survived droughts, floods, scorching sun, erosion, brutal pruning, and frigid frosts.  The root, Paul says, is what keeps the olive tree alive; the root of God’s people is Jesus.  We’re physically connected to the Almighty through Jesus–our brother in humanity, our true nourishment in the Eucharist, and our pure lamb of sacrifice, slain for our shortcomings, our sin.

What we do when we come to worship, when we pray, when we study Scripture and listen–it’s nothing new.  We’re imbibing the root’s nutrition, which God has been providing for us through the Holy Spirit for thousands of years.  Being grafted in, added on to an already-thriving, already-healthful tree, we’re fortunate to benefit from the “rich root” of the olive tree.  We’re receivers.  Part of the reason that we worship the way that we do, and that we care about and bother to remember people like Thomas Cranmer, whose feast we celebrate today, is because we recognize that the Church, God’s people, have been around for a long time before we came along, and Lord willing, will be around for a long time after we’re gone.  We are not the trunk of the tree.  We aren’t in charge; it’s not our job to change the course of history–God already has.

As master gardener, God has taken a great risk in allowing all these wild, scrappy, untested shoots onto his one precious olive tree.  Not only could the wild bits wreck havoc on the tree, but the wild bits themselves may die–grafting is a tricky business, uprooting and cutting off bits of a perfectly happy plant and sticking in onto another, after cutting into that plant, too.  We’re grateful that God is as masterful as a gardener can be; if anyone can keep those wild shoots alive and thriving, it’s Him.

As part of this cultivated, long-established olive tree, we wild shoots may feel uncomfortable at times; it’s not our show, it’s not our game, not our “natural” home.  Becoming part of this tree means that we aren’t wild anymore; we’re under the care of a gardener, being protected from wild elements, but also being pruned and trained to grow in a way that makes us better, even though it may feel uncomfortable, or even painful.

Therefore, let us “not become proud, but stand in awe” (v. 20) of the tree to which we’ve been added.  Because of God’s kindness, as Paul puts it, we’ve been made to belong as God’s people.  Let us not take that title as an opportunity to boast, but as an invitation to humble, holy living, full of listening, full of flexibility, full of awe.

(from Friday, March 21st, 2014 – preached at Seibels Chapel, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Columbia, SC)

The Woman at the Well – Sermon

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“Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city.  She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!  He cannot be the Messiah, can he?'” (John 4:28-29)  “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony…  So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them…  And many more believed because of his word.” (John 4:39-41)

Last weekend, Jordan and I went to the mountains outside of Hendersonville; there’s a cabin up there that we love to stay in with our dog, Ben, and the land and air up there rejuvenate us.  The first time we went there was back when we lived in Durham, before we even got Ben.  We’d never been to Western North Carolina before, and for spring break decided to try something new; we visited St. John’s in the Wilderness in Flat Rock, and Connemara, Carl Sandburg’s mountain home, and what has become my favorite antique store in the world–Jane Asher Antiques.  I didn’t know that we’d ever go back–what a glorious realization last summer when we moved to Columbia that we were hardly two hours away from that dear place!  We were so excited to go back, and to bring our dog, Ben, to camp and hike and “see” the sights with us.

What are places, or people, or events in your life that you think of being eager to share with others?

I remember when we were planning our wedding, I thrilled at the thought of my friends from my Upstate New York internship meeting Jordan’s family from North Dakota.  My dear friend Dan, from high school, who I hadn’t seen in years, would drive up form South Carolina; my friends from summer camp in Ohio would be the ushers.  We were so excited to invite all these people from different moments in our lives to be together at the same time.

Are there any places in your life or memory that you love so much that you want to share them with others?  Are you a sort of evangelist for a particular resort or city or restaurant?  Is there somewhere that you’ve got to go to eat every time you visit Charleston, or New York?

The Samaritan woman in our Gospel lesson today had an experience like that when she met Jesus.  There at the well in the heat of the day, though she’d expected to be alone–that’s why she went when she did–there was someone else sitting there, and she joined him in conversation.  It didn’t take long for her to realize that he was not the standard-issue man-sitting-next-to-a-well.  Though it’s a long Gospel passage (John 4:5-42), theirs is a relatively short conversation, and yet it completely changed the course of this woman’s life.  After talking with Jesus, even though she didn’t quite understand everything he said–I don’t understand everything Jesus has said to us, either–she was so taken that she went back to her town and told everyone that they had to come and meet this guy.

She witnessed to them.  She had encountered Jesus, she had been changed by this personal encounter, and so she went and told others about it, about Jesus.  She wanted others to experience the same thing that she had–the freedom, the peace, the joy, the honesty that she knew through this God-man, she hoped for everyone to taste the same transforming water that had quenched her thirst.

Just like Jordan and I were eager for our dog Ben to experience the waterfalls, hiking, and beautiful nature of Western North Carolina, this woman knew that meeting Jesus would change each person’s life, and she didn’t want them to miss out on it.  Just like Jordan and I were excited to bring together all the wonderful people we knew from various parts of our lives to meet each other and enjoy each other at the wedding, this woman told others about this person, Jesus, whom she’d met, and brought them to him, so they could meet him themselves.

Jesus is here, my friends.  That is why we come here every Sunday.  If Jesus isn’t here, there’s no reason for you to come.  If God is not present and transforming in this place, there is no reason for you to show up.  But if God is here, if God reveals himself to you through your quiet prayer, or through the bread and wine, or through the music, or preaching, or teaching, or through each other, then why not tell someone about it?  If your life has been changed, transformed, made new and different by God in Jesus Christ, I challenge you, tell others to “Come and see.”  We are promised that the harvest is plentiful and that many more will believe because of God’s Word.

Amen.

Nic, the Nighttime Visitor – Sermon

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It’s sort of like the jock surreptitiously talking to the geek in the locker room after everyone else has changed for the day.  The jock glances around to make sure the coast is clear, he cautiously steps over toward the geek’s locker, and says, “Hey.  I’ve just sort of realized that I’m not going to make a sports scholarship for college, and I’m surely not going to be able to play professionally, so I think I need to rethink how I’m going about life here.  You know stuff, you’re going to do well in life, I can tell.  I think I need your help.”

The wise geek is willing, but the jock isn’t quite finished drawing the boundaries, “So, no one can know anything about me asking for your help; don’t get me wrong, I know I need a major overhaul on my life to be able to make a living, but it’s got to be secret.  I have a reputation to uphold, and I can’t be seen even talking to you, you know?”

If life is high school, then Nicodemus was a jock.  Nicodemus—let’s call him “Nic,” for short—was a Pharisee, one of the religious rulers of the Jews, as the first verse of our Gospel lesson outlines for us today.  I don’t imagine that he was a bully, indeed, as he shows up a few more times in John’s Gospel, we get to see that he’s really a gentle, sincere sort of person.  So this compassionate, questioning man, fighting against his reputation and his responsibilities, comes to Jesus under the cover of night.

In the verses just after our lesson (John 3:1-17) ends, Jesus offers an interpretation of what’s going on in Nic’s life; through the these verses, we can see much more clearly what Nic’s struggling with, and perhaps what we, too, might be struggling with here today, in Lent, and in our lives:
16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’

Nic comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness, he’s too afraid or too ashamed to approach Jesus in the light of day.  Partially, he’s looking out for his reputation, but maybe another part of him is afraid of Jesus seeing him in the full light of day.  In verse 2, Nic says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.”  He recognizes who Jesus is, or he at least sees Jesus more clearly than most of the other jocks—I mean Pharisees—of his day.  Knowing that this man, or this God-man, has special power to heal and teach and convict and cleanse, Nic might be afraid of facing him when the shadows can’t help cover up some of the shortcomings Nic sees in himself.

Lent is the set-aside season of the church year when we look especially hard at ourselves in God’s mirror.  We peel away distractions in order to listen to God better, and perhaps we take on a practice or commitment that demands more of us—it makes us see how much we depend on God.

This week, I was talking to a friend of mine who was reflecting that Lent had turned out to be a lot harder than she’d counted on—she’d decided to give up worry this year.  It was a sort of relief at first—“No one by worrying can add one hour to his life,” so Matthew and Luke’s Gospels tell us, but when the novelty wore off, the hard, daily, hourly work of resisting worry set in.  She discovered that worry had been a sort of security blanket,  a way to escape the present by concentrating on the future and giving us a sense of power over a given situation.  Though worry, with its hand-wringing and stomach-tightening and worst-case-scenario-making seems unpleasant, it’s often a tool that lets us stay alone in the dark just a little bit longer.

In the dark, Nicodemus is still counting on the security of his own reputation; he’s curious about Jesus, but not curious enough to risk his social reputation or his hard-earned place of respect.

God sent Jesus into the world not to condemn people who are stuck in the dark, but to save them—to save us.  Clinging to worry and reputation, our back-up plans or our carefully-constructed public image, keeps us in the dark, unable to learn from God the way that the first disciples of Jesus did.

Peter’s always shooting his mouth off in broad daylight, the sons of Zebedee are grasping for places of honor in God’s kingdom—they’re just as faulted as NIcodemus, but they’re humble enough to follow Jesus in the broad light of day.

What if we talked about Jesus as if he was actually still here?  What if Jesus is still here with us through the Holy Spirit?  What if we lived every day knowing that God sat next to us, supporting us, loving us, always ready to pick us up if we fall?

God so love the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Amen.