7 Pentecost

July 27, 2025

 

Luke 11.1-13

 

+ So, let’s start with a hard question.

 

Are you ready?

 

OK.

 

How many times, through the entire course of your life, have you prayed the Lord’s Prayer?

 

Just think about it for one moment.

 

Do you have an answer?

 

Can you answer it?

 

Or. . . is the answer something like, “as many stars as in the sky.”

 

If that’s your answer, that’s a good answer.

 

Because, let’s face it, we pray the Lord’s Prayer a lot.

 

We will do it today in a few moments.

 

We pray it almost every time we gather in church.

 

We pray it at every wedding we do.

 

We pray it at every funeral.

 

We pray it at the graveside when we bury our loved ones.

 

Many of us pray it on our own every day.

 

For those of us who pray the Daily Office, we pray it at least twice a day.

 

But, as much as we pray—maybe because we pray it so much—we sort of take it for granted.

 

We pray it without thinking about it. 

 

It is an important prayer for us, so important in fact that it is the actual answer thot her question Jesus receives from those disciples asking him how to pray.

 

Now, I love the Lord’s Prayer.

 

I hope we all do.

 

But let’s face it, so many of us take for granted.

 

But if you ever really study it, you will see it really is the very perfect prayer.

 

And it definitely has its roots in classic Judaism.

 

Last week I talked about the Shema—the summary of the Law, which is basically, Love God, Love others as yourself.

 

Every Jewish male prays that prayer twice a day, once upon awakening, once upon going to bed.

 

But there is another prayer that is  required to prayed three times a day in Judaism.

 

It is called the Amidah.

 

The Amidah is the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy.

 

And it was so important that is was prayed three times a day every day since the First Century.

 

Jesus’ prayer—the Lord’s Prayer—is essentially a summary of the Amidah.

 

And early Christians, who were closer to their Jewish roots than we are, actually prayed the Lord’s prayer three times a day every day, like the Amidah was prayed three times a day in Judaism.

But, let’s take a moment to actually look at this pray we pray all the time.

 

It begins, as we all know, with

Our Father.

 

Jesus sets a tone here.

 

God is not being referred to as Lord, or Yahweh or Holy One.

 

Jesus refers to God on intimate terms.

 

God is our Father, our Abba, our Parent.

 

He then references that fact that God is in heaven.

 

Pretty straightforward.

 

Hallowed be your Name.

 

That’s a very Jewish way of praying.

 

Blessed is your Name, O God.

 

Your Name is holy and blessed.

 

Your name, O God, is sacred.

 

Then we come to your Kingdom come.

 

In this we know that God’s Kingdom is what w are striving for, and that it is our goal as followers of Jesus to bring that Kingdom into our midst, now—not just later.

 

God’s Kingdom comes into our midst when we love God and love others as we love ourselves.

 

Your will be done.

 

This is our completely surrender to God.

 

It’s not our will that we are trying to accomplish in prayer.

 

It is God’s will.

 

And one of the hardest things we can do as followers of Jesus is to accept God’s will.

 

We know that all prayers are answered, as you’ve heard me say many times.

 

The answer however is just not always what we might want to hear.

 

Our God is not Santa Claus in heaven, granting gifts to good children, nor is God a projection of our own parental expectations (to which many of us act like spoiled children).

 

God always answers our prayers, but sometimes the answer is “Yes,” sometimes is “not yet,” and, sadly—and we have to face this fact as mature people in our lives—sometimes the answer is “No.”

 

And I can tell you from my own experience, the greatest moment of spiritual maturity is accepting that “no” from God.

 

But, that is, of course, the petitionary aspect of prayer, and very rarely do most of us move beyond asking God for “things,” as though God is some giant gift-dispenser in the sky. 

 

(I am telling you this morning, in no uncertain terms, that God is not a giant gift-dispenser in the sky. Sorry!)

 

That’s what it means to be pray for God’s will to be done, not only here on earth, but also in heaven.  

 

Then we get to the part about bread.

 

Give us today out daily bread.

 

In Jewish culture, bread is the essence of our wellbeing.

 

It is what sustains us and feeds.

 

And it is so vital, so holy, that bread should never be discarded, it’s believes, because it shows ingratitude to God.

 

Bread here means more than just a loaf of bread.

 

It means all the blessings and sustenance we receive from God.

 

Give us, we pray, what we need to sustain us, to keep us vital and doing what we must do to love and serve God.

 

Forgive us our trespasses.

 

We of course need repentance.

 

We know we fail sometimes.

 

We know we fall short.

 

Those are our trespasses.

 

And when those things happen, we need to ask forgiveness for them from our God (and from those we “trespass” against).

 

And it’s not just enough to ask forgiveness for ourselves.

 

We also must forgive those who trespass against us—who fail us, who hurt us, who wrong us.

 

This is important.

 

It’s hard to forgive.

 

I sometimes don’t want to forgive those who have wronged me.

 

But it’s not healthy to carry around those grudges.

 

It’s not healthy to be angry and bitter about past hurts.

 

Because pain like that festers.

 

We must forgive others as well.

 

Then we get to this kind of elusive petition.

 

Save is from the time of trial.

 

Trial?

 

What does that mean?

 

Well, trial is a tome of resting, or temptation.

It is the moment when we find ourselves on the “left hand of God,” as you’ve heard me talk about regularly through the years.

 

In this petition we acknowledge that we are often weak and vulnerable.

 

It is God who is the one who can save us from the dark moments of this life.

 

Finally, we get to evil.

 

Deliver us from evil.

 

This one you might think is an easy one to figure out.

 

And it kind of is.

 

But it’s also hard.

 

The Hebrew word for evil is ra.

 

Ra means danger or misfortune as well as evil.

 

When we ask God to deliver us from evil, we are not just thinking here of the so-called “Devil” or sin.

 

We are also asking God to deliver us from misfortune, from a bad person, or a bad injury, or illness or doubt.

 

Deliver us from all the bad things that happen in this life.

 

As we can see, the Lord’s Prayer is really kind of the perfect prayer.

 

It encompasses every thing we need to pray about.

 

The point of all of this, of course, is that Jesus is making clear to us how important it is to reach out to God regularly in prayer.

 

In prayer we come to a meeting place with God.

 

And in that place of meeting, we come to “know” God.

Jesus is clear that prayer needs to be regular and consistent and heart-felt.

 

Certainly, prayer is essential for all of us as Christians.

 

If we do not have prayer to sustain us and hold us up and carry us forward, then it is so easy to become aimless and lost.

Prayer essentially is simply about us opening ourselves to God, responding to God, seeking God and trying to know God.

 

Prayer doesn’t need to be hard.

 

We do not do it only when we are pure and holy and in that right spiritual state of mind.

 

We pray honestly and openly when it is the last thing in the world we feel like doing.

 

We pray when life is falling apart and it seems like God is not listening.

 

And we pray when we are angry at God or bitter at life and all the unfair things that have come upon us.

 

So, let us go hear what Jesus says to us our Gospel reading for today.

 

Let us be mindful of this incredible prayer he taught us.

 

Let us actually pay attention to those words and petitions we find in the Lord’s Prayer.

 

And let the prayer become the prayer always being prayed withing our hearts.

 

Through prayer, let us go to meet God.

 

Through prayer, let us seek God.

 

And definitely, through prayer, let us strive to know God.

 

God is breaking through to us, wherever we might be in our lives.

 

Let us go out to meet the God who is our father, our Abba, our Parent, who feeds us, who sustains us, whose Kingdom we long for and who delivers us again and again from the evils that sometimes assail us.

 

When we do, it is then that we truly come to know our God.

 

Amen.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 Pentecost

July 20, 2025

Colossian 1.15-28, Luke 10.38-42

 

+ If you’re anything like me, you are sometimes not all that proud to call yourself a Christian.

In this day and age, the very term “Christian” sometimes means something diametrically opposite of what we actually believe and practice.

The term has been highjacked and made into an ugly word, associated with such things as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

There’s a lot of talk recently about “Christless Christianity.”

And boy! Do I see that on a regular basis!

Many of us find ourselves trying to skirt the identification as “Christian.”

We say, instead, “I’m Episcopalian.” Or “I’m Anglican.” Or “I’m a progressive Christian.”

We add often, “we’re not like those Christians.”

I often say I’m a liturgical Christian, hoping that helps (it often doesn’t).

But, one of the things I love about being a liturgical Christian, especially in the Episcopal Church, and here at St. Stephen’s is  that we worship with all our senses here.

We worship with our ears—with music and bells.

We worship with smell, with the incense we use at our Wednesday evening Eucharist.

We worship with taste, with the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

We worship with sight, with the beauty of the art on our walls and in our altar and in the hangings here.

Even in baptism we use our senses—with those basic elements of water and fire (in the candles) and oil. 

And in our icons and religious art.

And in this way, we are paying special homage to the Eastern Orthodox roots within our church.

In Eastern Orthodoxy, icons take special place in the worship service.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, ikons are pictures which are sacred because they portray something sacred.

They are a “window,” in a sense, to the sacred, to the otherwise “unseen.”

They often depict Jesus or Mary or the saints.

But they are seen as something much more than art.

They are seen as something much more than pictures on the wall.

They are also “mirrors.”

And that is important to remember

That term Ikon is important to us this morning because we encounter it in our reading from Pauls’ Letter to the Colossians.

In that letter, in the original Greek,  Paul uses the word “eikon” to describe the “image” of Christ Jesus.

Our reading this morning opens with those wonderful words,

“Jesus is the image of the invisible God…”

Image in Greek, as I said, is eikon.

But eikon is more than just an “image”.

Ikons also capture the substance of its subject.

It captures the very essence of what it represents.

For Paul, to say that Jesus is the ikon of God, for him, he is saying that Jesus is the window into the unseen God.

In fact, the way ikons are “written” (which is the word used to described how they’re made), God is very clearly represented.

But not in the most obvious way.

God is represented in the gold background of the ikon, which is the one thing you might not notice when you look at an ikon.

That gold background represents the Light of God.

And that light, if you notice permeates through the faces of the subjects in the ikon.

So, when we look at any ikon, it our job to see God in that ikon.

God shining through the subject whose face we gaze upon.

God, who dwells always around us and in us.

For me personally, I do need things like icons in my own spiritual life.

I need help more often than not in my prayer life.

I need images.

I need to use the senses God gave me to worship God.

All of my senses. 

I need them just the way I need liturgy and scripture and incense and vestments and bells and good music and the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

These things feed me spiritually.

In them, I am actually sustained.

My vision is sustained.

My sense of smell is sustained.

My sense of touch is sustained.

My sense of taste is sustained.

My sense of hearing is sustained.

And when it all comes together, I truly feel the holy Presence of God, here in our midst.

I have shared with you many times in the past how I have truly felt the living presence of God while I have stood at this altar, celebrating Holy Communion.

I have been made aware in that holy moment that God is truly present and dwelling with us.  

The Sacred and Holy Presence of God is sometimes so very present here in our midst.

I can’t tell you how many times I have gazed deeply into an icon and truly felt God’s Presence there with me, present with a familiarity that simply blows me away.

And for those of us who are followers of Jesus, who are called to love others as we love our God, when we gaze deeply into the eyes of those we serve, there too we see this incredible Presence of God in our midst.

In other words, sometimes the ikons of God in our lives are those who live with us, those we serve, those we are called to love.  

This, I think, is what Paul is getting at in his letter.

We truly do meet the invisible God in this physical, visual, sensory world—whether we experience that presence in the Eucharist, in the hearing of God’s Word, in ikons or the art of the church or in incense or in bells or in those we are called to serve.

For years, I used to complain—and it really was a complaint—about the fact that I was “searching for God.”

I used to love to quote the writer Carson McCullers, who once said, “writing, for me, is a search for God.”

But I have now come to the realization—and it was quite a huge realization—that I have actually found God.

I am not searching and questing after God, aimlessly or blindly searching for God in the darkness anymore.

I am not searching for God because I have truly found God.

I found God in very tangible and real ways right here.

I found God in these sensory things around me.

Certainly in our Gospel reading for today, Mary  also sees Jesus as the eikon of God.

Martha is the busybody—the lone wolf.

And Mary is the ikon-gazer.

And I think many of us have been there as well.

It’s seems most of us are sometimes either Marthas and Marys,

But, the reality is simply that most of us are a little bit of both at times.

Yes, we are busybodies.

We are lone wolves.

But we are also contemplatives, like Mary.

There is a balance between the two.

I understand that there are times we need to be a busybodies and there are times in which we simply must slow down and quietly contemplate God.

When we recognize that Jesus is truly the image of God, we find ourselves at times longingly gazing at Jesus or quietly sitting in his Presence.

But sometimes that recognition of who Jesus is stirs us.

It lights a fire within us and compels us to go out and do the work that needs to be done.

But unlike Martha, we need to do that work without worry or distraction.

When we are in God’ presence—when we recognize that in God we have truly found what we are questing for, what we are searching for, what we are longing for—we find that worry and distraction have fallen away from us.

We don’t want anything to come between us and this marvelous revelation of God we find before us.

In that way, Mary truly has chosen the better part.

But, this all doesn’t end there.

The really important aspect of all of this is that we, too, in turn must become, like Christ, ikons of God to this world.

In that way, the ikons truly become our mirrors.

When we gaze at an ikon we should see ourselves there, reflected there.

We should see ourselves surrounded by the Light of God.

We should see the light of God permeating us and shining through us.

We should become living, breathing ikons in this world.

Because if we don’t, we are not living into our full potential as followers of Jesus—as unapologetic Christians.

So, let us also, like Mary,  choose the better part.

Let us be Marys in this way.

Let us balance our lives in such a way that, yes, we work, but we do so without distraction, without worry, without being the lone wolf, without letting work be our god, getting in the way of that time to serve Christ and be with Christ and those Christ sends our way.

Let us also take time to sit quietly in that Presence of God.

Let us sit quietly in the presence of God, surrounded by the beauty of our senses.

Let us be embodied ikons in our lives.

Let us open ourselves to the Light of God in our lives so that that Light will surrounded us and live within us and shine through us.

And, in that holy moment, we will know: we have chosen the better part, which will never be taken away from us.

 

5 Pentecost

Good Samaritan Sunday

 

July 13, 2025

 

Luke 10.25-37

 

+ I have shared with you many times that I am no natural-born preacher.

 

I have never felt like I’m a very good preacher.

 

This was only confirmed by a near-apocryphal stories we all know here at St. Stephen’s:

 

Donna Clark shares that on her first Sunday at St. Stephen’s some ten years ago, after Mass, she was down-stairs at coffee hour in the undercroft.

 

A parishioner who has since moved out East (one who I knew well and was close to their family) say down at her table and announced: That was the worst sermon I’ve ever heard in my life!

 

I don’t doubt it.

 

But, for all my homiletical lacking, let’s face it: I’m a consistent preacher.

 

For those of you who listen or read my sermons week in and week out, you know that my “themes” are pretty basic and consistent.

 

Yes, there might be variations on those “themes,” but, in their core, there is really only one main “theme” to everything I preach.

 

Love God. Love others. That’s pretty much it.

 

Which is why our Gospel reading this morning is an important reading.

 

No, I’m not being emphatic enough.

 

It’s not just an important reading.

 

It is, in my opinion, the single most important reading for us as Christians.

 

And, for those of you who have known for me for any period, you know how I feel about what is being said in today’s Gospel.

 

For me, this is absolutely  IT.

 

This is the heart of our Christian faith.

 

This is where the “rubber meets the road.”

 

When anyone has asked me, “What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?” it is this scripture I direct them to.

 

When anyone asks me, must I do this or that to be “saved,” I direct them to this reading.

 

This is what it is all about.

 

So, why do I feel this way?

 

Well, let’s take a look this all-important reading.

 

We have two things going on.

 

First, we have this young lawyer.

 

Lawyer here meaning a interpreter of Judaic Law—the Law of Moses, found in the Torah.

 

He comes, in all earnestness, to seek from Jesus THE answer.

 

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

 

What must I do to be “saved?”

 

This, after all, is the question we are ALL asking, isn’t it?

 

And, guess what?

 

He—and all of us too—gets an answer.

 

But, as always, Jesus flips it all around and gives it all a spin.

 

Jesus answers a question with a question.

 

(A very rabbinic thing to do)

 

He asks the lawyer, “what does the law say?”

 

The answer is a simple one.

 

And, in Jewish tradition, it is called the Shema.

 

The Shema is heart of Jewish faith.

 

It is so important that it is prayed twice a day, once in the morning, once at night.

 

Jesus himself would have prayed the Shema each morning upon awakening and again before he went to sleep at night.

 

I do it. I pray the Shema in the morning on waking and before I go to sleep at night.

 

It’s very good spiritual discipline.

 

It is important, because it is the heart of all faith in God.

 

So, what is the answer?

 

The answer is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, , and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.”

 

Our heart.

 

Our soul

 

Our strength

 

Our mind.

 

In other words—our very essence.

 

And additionally, “and [love] your neighbor as yourself.”

 

Then, Jesus says this:

 

“do this, and you will live.”

 

I repeat it.

 

Do this—Love God, love your neighbor—and you will live.

 

This is what we must do to be saved.

 

Now that sounds easy.

 

But Jesus then complicates it all with a parable.

 

And it’s a great story.

 

Everyone likes this story of the Good Samaritan.

 

We even commemorated it in our very first stained glass window. 

 

After all, what isn’t there to like in this story?

 

Well…actually…in Jesus’ day, there were people who would not have liked this story.  

 

In Jesus’s day, this story would have been RADICAL.

 

The part of this story that most of us miss is the fact that when Jesus told this parable to his audience, he did so with a particular scheme in mind.

 

The term “Good Samaritan” would have been an oxymoron for those Jews listening to Jesus that day.

 

Samaritans were, in fact,  quite hated.

 

They were viewed as heretics, as defilers, as unclean.

 

They were seen as betrayers of the Jewish faith and Jewish Law.

 

(Remember, he’s speaking to a lawyer---an interpreter of Jewish Law).  

 

So, when Jesus tells this tale of a Good Samaritan, it no doubt rankled a few nerves in the midst of that company.

 

With this in mind, we do need to ask ourselves some very hard questions.

Hard questions we did not think we would be asked on this Good Samaritan Sunday.   

You, of course, know where I am going with this.

So, here goes:

Who are the Samaritans in our understanding of this story?

For us, the story only really hits home when we replace that term “Samaritan” with the name of someone we don’t like at all.

Just think about who it is in your life, in your political understanding, in your own orbit of people who you absolutely despise.

Think of that person or persons or movements that simply makes you writhe with anger.

The Ice Agent

The thief.

The homophobe.

The transphobe.

The libtard

The adulterer

The drug addict.

The snowflake.

The MAGA/Trumper

The communist

The white supremacist.

 

The atheist.

The nazi.

The socialist.

The fascist.

Whoever may be the current President of the United States.

Those are your Samaritans!

Now, try to put the word “good” in front of those names.

It’s hard for many of us to find anything “good” in any of these people.  

For us, to face the fact that these people we see as morally or inherently evil could be “good.”

We—good socially-conscious Christians that we are—are also guilty sometimes of being complacent.  

We too find ourselves sometimes feeling quite smug about our “advanced” or “educated” ways of thinking about society and God and the Church.  

And we too demonize those we don’t agree with sometimes.

As you all know, I, for one, am very guilty of this

It is easy for me to imagine God living in me personally, despite all the shortcomings and negative things I know about myself.

 

I know that, sometimes, I am a despicable person and yet, I know that God is alive in me, and that God loves me.

 

So, why is it so hard for me to see that God is present even in those whom I dislike, despite those things that make them so dislikeable to me?

 

For me, this is the hard part.

 

The Gospel story today shows us that we must love and serve and see God alive in even those whom we demonize—even if those same people demonize us as well.

 

Being a follower of Jesus means loving even those we, under any other circumstance, simply can’t stand.

 

And this story is all about being jarred out of our complacent way of seeing things.

It’s also easy for some of us to immediately identify ourselves with the Good Samaritan.

 

We, of course, would help someone stranded on the road, even when it means making ourselves vulnerable to the robbers who might be lurking nearby.  

 

Right?

 

But I can tell you that as I hear and read this parable, I—quite uncomfortably—find myself sometimes identifying with the priest and the Levite or Lawyer.

 

I am the one, as much as I hate to admit it, who could very easily, out of fear or because of the social structure in which I live, find myself crossing over to the other side of the road and avoiding this person.

 

And I hate the fact that my thoughts even go there.

 

See, this parable of Jesus is challenging and difficult.

 

But…

 

Something changes this whole story.

 

Something disrupts this story completely.

Love changes this whole story.

 

When we truly live out that commandment of Jesus to us that we must love God and love our neighbor as ourselves, we know full-well that those social and political and personal boundaries fall to the ground.

 

Love always defeats our dislike—or hatred— of someone.

 

Love softens our hearts and our stubborn wills and allows us see the goodness and love that exists in others, even when doing so is uncomfortable and painful for us.

Now I say that hoping I don’t come across as naïve.

 

I know that my love of the racist will not necessarily change the racist.

 

I know that loving the homophobe will not necessarily change the homophone.

 

I know that loving the Nazi and the Fascist are definitely not going to change the Nazi and the Fascist.

 

And I was to be VERY clear: love does NOT mean acceptance.

 

It does not mean accepting their hatred and their bigotry.

 

Trust me, I know that loving certain politicians (whose names I will not mention, despite the fact that the IRS has now given me permission to do so) is not going to change those politicians!

 

But you know what?

 

It does change me.  

 

It does cause me to look—as much as I hate to do so—into the eyes of that person and see something more—despite their shortcomings, despite their hatred.

 

It does cause me to look at the person and realize that God does love this person despite their failings and their faults—just as God loves me despite my failings and my faults.

These are the boundaries Jesus came to break down in us.  

 

And these are the boundaries Jesus commands us to break down within ourselves.

 

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” the lawyer asks Jesus.

 

And what’s the answer?

 

Love is the answer.  

 

We must love—fully and completely.

“Do this,” Jesus says, “and you will live.”

 

What will save us?

 

Love will save us.

 

Love of God.

 

Love of one another.

 

Loving ourselves.

 

Loving what God loves.

 

Love will save us.

 

Love will liberate us.

 

Love will free us.  

 

Jesus doesn’t get much clearer than that.

 

Because let’s face it.

 

We are the Samaritan in this story.

 

We are—each of us—probably despised by someone in our lives.

 

I know I am!

 

We, to someone, represent everything they hate.

 

The fact is, God is not expecting us to be perfect.

 

God worked through the Samaritan—the person who represented so much of what everyone who was hearing that story represents as wrong.

 

A friend of mine once shared a story about how he was in Memphis when he came across a church that met in an old movie theatre.

 

On the marquee was written:

 

IF GOD CAN SPEAK THROUGH BALAAM’S ASS, GOD CAN SPEAK THROUGH YOU.

 

If God can work through the Goos Samaritan. let me tell you, God can work through you and me.

 

We do not have to be perfect.

 

Trust me, we’re not perfect!

 

And we will never be perfect.

 

But even despite this, God’s light and love can show through us.

 

So let us reflect God’s love and light.

 

Let us live out the Shema of God—this commandment of God to love—in all aspects of our lives.

 

Let us love.

 

Let us love fully and radically and completely.

 

Let us love God.  

 

Let us love each other.

 

Let us love ourselves.

 

Let us love all that God loves.

 

Let us love our neighbor.

 

Who is our neighbor?  

 

Our neighbor is not just the one who is easy to love.

 

Our neighbor is also the one who is hardest to love.

 

Love them—God, our neighbor—and yes, even ourselves.

 

And if we do that, you and I—we too will live, as Jesus says.

 

And we will live a life full of the light we have reflected in our own lives. 

 

And that light that will never be taken from us.