11 Pentecost

August 28, 2011


Matthew 16.21-28

+ Every Wednesday here at St. Stephen’s, we celebrate, as you know, the Eucharist at 6:00 pm. Also in that service we usually commemorate a different saint. We use, sometimes, some of the very amusing anecdotes from Fr. John-Julian, an Episcopal who is a member of the Order of Julian of Norwich, an Episcopal monastic community. Oftentimes the stories he shares are quite, shall we say, fanciful?

A few weeks we were commemorating the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I was sharing some interesting stories about the Virgin Mary—some of them quite fanciful stories. At announcement later in the service, our own Joanne Droppers was sharing about the brat supper and made a comment about inviting people to help out with brats, especially those you never want to see again. It took by such surprise that I started laughing and said, “Joanne, that is the funniest thing I have heard tonight.”

Without missing a beat, our own Thom Marubbio piped up from the back and said, “Well, it wasn’t as funny as what we heard in the sermon.”

Which also made me laugh.

But, on Wednesday nights, in addition to the fantastical stories of saints, we also very often commemorate martyrs. And I always like to ask, when we commemorate martyrs, What do you think of when you think of a martyr? No doubt we think of brave, almost legendary saints from other times who went to their deaths valiantly. We think of those stained glass windows, sort of like the one we have here, above the organ, of people like our very own St. Stephen the first Martyr who, as the Book of Acts tells us, was stoned to death for praying to Jesus. We then think of overly dramatic paintings and drawings of early Christian martyrs bravely meeting the lions in stadiums as they sing hymns and gaze off longingly toward heaven. And those are all valid images of martyrs.

But that seems like some other time and place for most of us. Very few of us could imagine martyrs in this day and age. And even fewer of us could imagine ourselves dying as martyrs. But the fact is, martyrs are not all from some other legendary time in history. And they are not all from some distant land. In fact, we have had martyrs from our own area.

I recently re-read a book called China’s Christian Martyrs. . I was surprised to find an account of a young man named Wilhelm Vatne. Vatne was born in 1890 to Norwegian-American parents, Mr. and Mrs. Tonnes Vatne, in, of all places, Cooperstown, North Dakota. At an early age, Wilhelm became a very committed Christian. He graduated from school early and became a school teacher at the age of 18 (they could do that in those days).

On September 10, 1910, Wilhelm left Cooperstown and went to Sianfu, Shensi, China, where he taught the children of missionaries serving there. One hundred years ago, in 1911, there was a fury of anti-foreign and especially anti-Christian protest in China. On October 23, 1911, a mob rushed the school Vatne taught in. The mob killed all the missionaries in it, including Vatne. He was only 21 years old.

The story is pretty typical to who and what martyrs are. They are ordinary people who are called to give the ultimate sacrifice for their faith in Christ. Martyrs are truly a unique lot among us Christians.

In the early Church they were viewed as heroes, similar in many ways to sports stars or movie stars in our own day. The word martyr actually means “witness” and they really were true witnesses to Christ, witnessing to Christ by their very deaths, by the actual blood they shed for Christ. Martyrs also challenge the rest of us Christians, as well. They challenge us, by their deaths, to ask ourselves that very important question: would we, under similar circumstances, be willing to give up our lives for our Christian faith? Would we be willing to die for Christ? If, for some reason, we were forced to either give up our faith in Christ and live or profess our faith in the face of danger and certain death, would we? Or, just as importantly, would we be able to stand up to the forces in the world that are in such direct opposition to our Christian faith, even if standing up in such a way would mean death? Would we be able to take to heart the words of today’s Gospel, when Jesus says, “those who lose their life for my sake will gain it.”

It might be easier to answer if we are talking only about our own deaths. But would we be so ready if the deaths involved our children or other loved ones?

I think it’s occasionally a good thing to ask ourselves these questions, because the fact is, as we’ve seen with people like Wilhelm Vatne, martyrs are not just fabled personages from the far past.

There are martyrs even in our own day and age. We all know about the German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed by the Nazis in 1945 for his stand against Hitler. Many of us can remember hearing about people like Archbishop Oscar Romero and Americans like Jean Donovan and the three American nuns who were brutally murdered with her in El Salvador in 1980.

Just a few months ago, several of us from St. Stephen’s went to see the wonderful film, Of Gods and Men, about the seven French Trappist monks who were kidnapped in March, 1996 in Algeria by extremist Muslims, who then preceded to behead each one of them.

And among Anglicans and Episcopalians we have lost some great modern people to martyrdom, people such as Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who in August of 1965, was shot and killed in Mississippi by a white shop owner for defending a young black girl during the darkest days of Integration.

Or Archbishop Junani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganada, who was brutally murdered by dictator Idi Amin in 1977 for standing up against oppression.

And some of us no doubt see martyrs even in someone who didn’t necessarily die for sake their faith, but simply died for being who they are, such as Matthew Shepeherd, a young, gay Episcopalian.

There are people dying for their faith, even right now, this morning. By one estimation, about 465 Christians are killed worldwide for their faith every few months. So, there are, no doubt, people dying for Christ and Christ’s message of love in our world even as we gather together this morning. There are people today in this world who are dying for Christ or are watching their loved ones die for Christ.

And suffering for Christ doesn’t just mean dying for Christ either. There are many people who are living with persecution and other forms of abuse for their faith. So, it is important to remember the martyrs of our faith. It is important to heed their witness to us.

Our Church has truly found its identity and spirit with those who, throughout two thousand years of Christianity, have suffered and died for their faith. There is a well-known motto of the Church:

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

Hopefully, though, few of us here this morning are being called to die as martyrs. For us who are maybe not led to die for Christ, we still have our own burdens to bear. And that burden, of course, is the Cross.

In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus saying to us:

“If any want to become my followers, let them take up their cross and follow me.”

Picking up our cross might seem like a vague idea for us. What Jesus is saying to us is that, being a Christian, as wonderful as it is, isn’t a rose garden. Being a Christian means facing bravely the ugly things that life sometimes throws at us. I don’t think I have to tell anyone here what those ugly things in life are. Each of us has had to deal with our own personal forms of the world’s ugliness. As we look around at those who are with us this morning, most of us here this morning have carried our share of crosses in this life. Most of us have shouldered the difficult and ugly things of this life—whether it be illness, death, loss, despair, disappointment, frustration—you name it.

The fact is: these things are going to happen to us whether we are Christians or not. It’s simply our lot as human beings that life is going to be difficult at times. It is a simple fact of life that we are going to have feasts in this life, as well as famines. There will be gloriously wonderful days and horribly, nightmarish days. We, as human beings, cannot escape this fact. But, we, as Christians, are being told this morning by Jesus that we can not deal with those things like everyone else does. When the bad things of this life happen, our first reaction is often to run away from them. Our first reaction is numb our emotions, to curl up into a defensive ball and protect ourselves and our emotions.

But Jesus is telling us that, as Christians, what we must do in those moments is to embrace those things—to embrace the crosses of this life—to shoulder them and to continue on in our following of Jesus. By facing our crosses, by bearing them, by taking them and following Jesus, we was able to realize that what wins out in the end is Jesus, not the cross. What triumphs in the end is not any of the other ugly things this life throws at us.

Rather, what triumphs is the integrity and the strength we gain from being a Christian. What triumphs is Jesus’ promise that a life unending awaits us. What triumphs is Jesus’ triumph over death and the ugly things of this life. What we judge to be the way we think it should be is sometimes judged differently by God. We don’t see this world from the same perspective God does. And as a result, we are often disappointed.

Yes, our burdens are just another form of martyrdom—another albeit bloodless form of witnessing to Christ. And, like a martyr, in the midst of our toil, in the midst of shouldering our burden and plodding along toward Jesus, we are able to say, “Blessed be the name of God!”

That is what it means to be a martyr. That is what it means to deny one’s self, to take up one’s cross and to follow Jesus. That is what it means to find one’s life, even when everyone else in the world thinks you’ve lost your life.

So, let us take up whatever cross we’re bearing and carry it with strength and purpose. Let us take it up and follow Jesus. And, in doing so, we will gain for ourselves the glory of God that Jesus promises to those who do so.

10 Pentecost

Matthew 16.13-20


+ Last Sunday, I shared with you a little confession about myself. I laid myself bare to some extent and admitted that I have a failing, which of course is my big mouth—the fact that I often say thing without thinking.

This week, I’m doing it again. I am again sharing a little secret myself form the pulpit. I must be a “confessional” state of mind lately or something. Now I know some of you are, at this moment, shifting uncomfortably in your pews as you wonder what else I could possibly confess to you. And let me tell you, pulpits are not the best places for confessions.

Well, what I’m going to confess is something most people can’t imagine hearing from a person dressed in a dog collar and the robes of the Church. But, the fact is (here’s my humble confession to you): I have always had … a love-hate relationship with the Church. By Church here, I mean Church with a capital “C”. I mean the organized Church. And “hate” might be a bit too harsh to describe what I feel. But the fact remains, I have had an emotional relationship with the Church that, at times, has been see-sawing at best. And I can tell you, most of us who are in any way active in the church, whether you are pastor or priest, or a lay person, there have been moments when every single one of us has been frustrated by the Church—capital C.

Probably most of us here would say we have felt the same way about the Church at times. There are days when we all groan when we see or hear other Christians get up and speak on behalf of the rest of us. There are days when we are embarrassed by what some Christians say or do on behalf of Christianity. There are days when we get frustrated when we hear clergy or other authorities pronounce decrees that, in no way, reflect our own particular views or beliefs. And there are times when we get downright mad at the hypocrisy, the homophobia, the misogyny, the ambivalence, the silence in the face of oppression and evil and war, the downright meanness we sometimes experience from the Church.

Most of us—idealistically, naively maybe—wonder to ourselves: wait a minute. The Church isn’t supposed to be like this. The Church is supposed to be a place of Love and Compassion. It is supposed to be a place where everyone is welcomed and loved. Knowing that and comparing the ideal view of the Church with its shortcomings only make us feel more helpless, listless, angry, and disgusted. And sometimes we might even find ourselves admiring those people who aren’t Christian, who aren’t a part of the Church or those Christians who have simply fled the Church.

I have talked many, many times about my best friend from high school (who is still my best friend) is a militant atheist. He has an almost angry ambivalence to the Church and the concept of God. He wasn’t always that way. When I first met him, his mother was a member of the First Assemblies of God. By the time I got to know him, he had long ago stopped attending church. He often used to tell me the story of how, when he was a young boy, his mother would drop him off at the church for Sunday School. He would then run right through the church, out the back door and run several blocks through fields back to his home. He says that it was on that run away from the church that he became an atheist.

What he was running away from is what many of us are tempted to run away from as well. What he was running away from was the close-mindedness, the fundamentalism, the—for him—scary Pentecostal displays of speaking in tongues, dancing in the aisles, waving hands in the air and literal interpretations of scripture. I think many of us have felt like that ourselves when it comes to Church. There have been times when we’ve all wanted to just run away from Church and everything we find here. And that’s all right.

I personally think that’s a somewhat healthy way of looking at the Church. Because we have to remind ourselves of one thing: What my friend was running away from and what we are tempted to run away from is not God, although my friend hasn’t quite come to the point yet in his own life. What we are running away from is a human-run, human-led organization. We are running away from a celestially planned treasure that has been run (and very often mis-run) throughout two thousand years of history by fallible human beings.

In today’s Gospel, we find this wonderful interchange between Jesus and Peter. Peter, when asked who he thinks Jesus is, replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” That’s a good answer. But, Jesus responds to this confession of faith with surprise. He responds by saying, “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

Of course, as you might know, Jesus is playing a little word game here with the words “Peter” and “rock.” In Jesus’ own language of Aramaic he would have said, “You are Kepha (Peter is also called Cephas at times in the Gospels) and on this kepha (or rock) I will build my church.” Now, depending on who you are, depending on your own personal spiritual leanings, this reading could take on many meanings. If you’re more Catholic minded—and especially if you’re more Roman Catholic minded—it certainly does seem that Jesus is establishing the Church on the Rock of Peter—and of course in that tradtion Peter at this moment becomes essentially the first Pope. For those who are more Protestant or Reformed minded—it could be said that the Church is being established not on Peter himself, but on the rock of Peter’s confession of faith.

Either way, Jesus is commending the Church to Peter and to his other followers. And this is important, especially when we examine who Peter is. Jesus commends his Church to one of the most impetuous, impulsive, stubborn, cowardly human beings he could find. Peter, as we all know, is not, on first glance, a wonderful example for us of what it means to be a follower of Christ. He is the one who walks on water and then loses heart, grows frightened and ends up sinking into that water. He’s the one who, when Jesus needs him the most, runs off and denies him not just once, not twice, but three times, and even then cannot bring himself to come near Jesus as he hangs dying on the cross.

But Peter is maybe a better example of what followers of Jesus truly are than we maybe care to admit. Yes, he is a weak, impetuous, cowardly, impulsive human. But who among us isn’t? Who among us isn’t finding someone very much like Peter staring back at us from our own mirrors? And the thing we always have to remember is that, for all the bad things the Church has been blamed for—and there are a lot of them—there are also so many wonderful and beautiful things about the Church that always, always, always outweigh the bad.

Obviously most everyone here this morning must feel that same way as well. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here this morning. Most of us are able to recognize that the Church is not perfect. And I think that, when Jesus commended his Church to people like Peter, he knew that, as long as we are here, struggling on this “side of the veil,” so to speak, it would never be perfect. But that, even despite its imperfection, we still struggle on.

I love the Church and I love the people who are in the Church with me, even the ones who drive me crazy. And I even love the ones with whom I do not agree. Why? Because that’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus. That is what it means to be the Church.

I am here in the Church because I really want to be in the Church. I am here because the Church is my home. It is my family. It is made up of my friends and Christ’s friends. I am here because I—imperfect, impetuous human being that I am—am part of the Church as well I am here because I love my fellow Christians, and I don’t just mean that I love Desmond Tutu and all those Christians who are easy to love. I am here because I love even those many outspoken Christians who bombard us on a regular basis with their rhetoric and views that fly in the face of everything many of us hold sacred and dear, even though they drive me crazy and frustrate me and sometimes make me want to leave the Church at times. I am here because I also love the hypocrites and the backbiters and gossipers. I love them because, let’s face it, sometimes we are those same people.

Sometimes we are the ones who drive people from the Church as well. And sometimes we ourselves drive our own selves away from Church. But as long as we’re here, as long as we believe in the renewal that comes again and again in recognizing and confessing our shortcomings and in professing and believing in and what it means to be a baptized Christian, then we know it’s not all a loss. As long as I know that I am struggling and working not to be the hypocrite or the backbiter or the gossiper, then it’s going to be all right.

As long as I struggle to not be the person who drives people from the Church, but works again and again in my life to be the person who welcomes everyone—no matter who they are and where they stand on the issues—into this Church, then I’m doing all right. Because the Church Jesus founded was a Church founded solidly on the rock of love. The Church’s foundation is the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God and the message to us as followers of this Son of the Living God, the Messiah—the bringer of freedom and peace—is that we must love God and love each other as we love ourselves.

But the Church that is firmly founded on the Messiah, the Son of the Living God and on the work of him to this world—when it founded deeply on that balanced love of God, of each other and of ourselves—then it truly becomes the Church Christ founded. If we are the Church truly built on a love like that then, without doubt, the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. And as long as I’m here, and you’re here, we are going to make the Church a better place. It will be a place where people like my atheist friend will be forced to reconsider his view of the Church. He will be forced, as he has been over the twenty some years he’s known me, to realize not all Christians are like the ones he ran away from as a boy and is continuing to run away from.

We need to be those kind of Christians. We need to be the Church from which no one wants to run away.

So, be the Church you want the Church to be—because that is the Church that Jesus founded. Be the Church that Christ commended to that imperfect human being, Peter. In those moments when you find yourself hating the Church, don’t let hate win out. Let love—that perfect, flawless love that Jesus preached and practiced—eventually win out.

We are the Church. We are the Church to those people in our lives. We are the Church to everyone we encounter. We are the reflection of the Church to the people we serve alongside. So be the Church, and if you are, you will find yourself in the midst of that wonderful vision Jesus imagined for his Church. And it will truly be an incredible place. It will truly be the Kingdom of God in our midst.

9 Petecost

August 14, 2011

Matthew 15.10-28


+ Sometimes it’s a good things to hear from your priest how they sometimes fail. Yes, even us clergy are not perfect—as hard as I know it must be to imagine. Of course most of you here this morning know full well that I have my faults, my failings, my quirks, my eccentricities.

And it’s good to be aware of these things in our lives. In my case, my biggest foible, my biggest failing, is this: I have a big mouth. Now, I know this probably does not come as a big surprise to some of those of you who know me. For the rest of you, this is not what you probably want to hear from a priest. And, to be clear, when I say I have a big mouth, I don’t mean that I have ever violated any confidences, nor I have I ever broken the seal of confession. I am also not saying that I have professed atheism or any intentional heresy (I think we might some times be guilty of unintentional heresy). I hope I am not guilty of having spoken true evil from my mouth.

When I say that I have a big mouth, what I mean is that, when I look back over my life, I realize have said some dumb things in my life. And when I look back a little harder over my life, I realize that the really bad things that have happened to me, that I myself am truly responsible for, can all find their root in something I have said. Or missaid. I am one of those people who, on a regular basis, wishes that, as the words are coming out of my mouth, I could grasp them in the air and stuff them back in.

My grandmother used to always reprimand me about how my big mouth was going to get me in trouble. She would say to me: “Jamie, think before you speak.”

And there’s the real source of my problem. I sometimes just don’t think before I speak. As I said, I have said some dumb things in my life, I have said things that I greatly regret and that I wish I had never said, as we all have at one point or another. And in addition to the dumb things, or the hurtful things I may have said to people when I was angry, I have also been somewhat opinionated in what I have said. Again, I know this is a HUGE surprise to some of you. But, I am a bit outspoken about things.

Sadly I’ve also been insensitive sometimes. I have given unneeded and unwanted advice to people when that advice hasn’t been sought. So, when Jesus tells his followers—and us—in this morning in our Gospel reading—

“it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles”
these are words that hit home for me, and no doubt, for many of us.

We were all raised reciting that little verse:

Sticks and stone may break my bones
But words will never hurt me.

The reality of the matter is that words DO hurt. Words are sometimes much more painful and hurtful than sticks and stones. And when it comes to our relationship with God, the words we say carry much weight.

In today’s Gospel we find Jesus making very clear statements:

“…what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this is what defiles. For out of the mouth comes evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person…”

Jesus is clear here about what makes one unclean. The words that come out of our mouth are really only the end result of what’s in our hearts. The words that come out of our mouths are really only little mirrors of what is dwelling within us. When we say dumb things, we harboring dumb things in our hearts. When we say hurtful, mean things, we are carrying hurt and meanness in our hearts. And what’s in our hearts truly does make all the difference. If our hearts are dark—if our hearts are over-run with negative things—then our words are going to reflect that. When we talk about something like “sin,” we find ourselves thinking instantly of the things we do. We think immediately of all those uncharitable, unsavory things we’ve done in our lives. And when we realize that sin, essentially, is anything we chose to do that separates us from God and from each other, it is always easy to instantly take stock of all the bad things we’ve done.

But the fact is, we can truly “sin” by what we say as well. The words that come out of our mouths can separate us from God and from each other because they are really coming from our hearts—from that place in which there should really only be love for God and for each other.

We have all known Christians who are quick to profess their faith with their mouths, but who certainly do not believe that faith in their hearts. And, I think, we have also known people who have kept quiet about their faith, who have not professed much with their mouths, but who have quietly been consistent in their faith. If we profess our faith with our mouths, but not in our hearts, we really are guilty to some extent.

There is a well-known saying that has been attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the Gospel, use words only if necessary.” To be honest, that saying has been a breathe of fresh air in the Church.

I think we’re inundated in this world by people who are constantly preaching their faith with words. When we turn on the TV, we find televangelists and other church leaders going on and on about their faith and only later do we find out about their scandals and shortcomings and we realize that they certainly do not practice what they preach. We’ve also known our fair share of clergy and lay leaders who have done this as well. And probably few things drive us away faster from church than those self-righteous people who shake their fingers at us and spout their faith to us, but who, in turn, don’t show love, compassion and acceptance to others.

The name we encounter in the Gospels for those people who do not practice what they preach is “hypocrite.” And throughout the Gospels, we find that Jesus isn’t ever condemning the ones we think he would condemn. He doesn’t condemn the prostitute, the tax collector, any of those people who have been ostracized and condemned by society and the religious organizations of their times. The ones Jesus, over and over again, condemns, are the hypocrites—those supposedly religious people who are quick to speak their faith with words, who are quick to strut around and act religiously, but who do not hold any real faith in their hearts.

The Pharisees that Jesus is having trouble with in today’s Gospel, are not at all concerned about what is in their hearts. Their faith has nothing to do with their hearts. They are more concerned about the purification rites. They are more concerned about making sure that the food one eats is clean and pure—that it hasn’t been touched by those who are unclean. They are concerned that they are the clean ones and they are concerned that there is a separation from those that are unclean. They are more concerned with the words of the Law, rather than the heart of the Law. They are more concerned with the letter of the Law, rather than the spirit of the Law. We’ve all been guilty of such things in our own lives.

Let’s face it: it’s just easier to stick the letter of the Law.

It’s easy to follow the religious rules without bothering to think about why we are following them. It’s just so much easier to go through the motions without having to feel anything. Because to feel means to actually make one’s self vulnerable. To feel means one has to love—and, as we know, love is dangerous. Love makes us step out into uncomfortable areas and do uncomfortable things. But the message of Jesus is all about the fact that to be a follower of Jesus means not being a hypocrite. The message of Jesus is that to be a follower of Jesus means believing fully with one’s heart.

Baptisms are prime opportunities for us to take stock of our Christian faith. Whenever we baptize someone, we renew the vows that were made for us at our own baptisms and we are reminded of what it means to be a baptized Christian.

In the Baptismal Covenant we once again promise to try, “with God’s help,” to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” To “proclaim by word and example the Good News” is, in essence, to say that, as Christians we will strive not to be hypocrites. To proclaim the Good News, we need to do so by both word and example. It is to truly practice what we preach. It to preach the Gospel and to use words only when necessary.

Now that I have confessed to you the sin of my Big Mouth, I now can work on myself. I am now able to recognize that what sometimes what comes out of my mouth isn’t my mouth’s fault. It is only reflecting what I am holding in my heart. And it is a change of heart that I need to work on.

When I am a big mouth, when my mouth gets me in trouble, it is only giving voice to the darkness and the lack of love that I harbor sometimes in my heart. And that darkness means that I am not letting the Light of God shine through me.

So, let us take to heart what Jesus is saying to us in today’s Gospel. Let us take his words and plant them deeply in our hearts. Let the words of his mouth be the words of our mouth. Let the Word by our word. And let that word find its home, its source, its basis in our hearts.

When it does, our words will truly speak the Word that is in our hearts. Let us allow no darkness, no negativity to exist within our hearts. Let us not be hypocritical Pharisees to those around us.

But let us true followers of Jesus, with love burning within and overflowing us. As followers of Jesus, let love be the word that speaks to others. Let our hearts be the source of our faith in everything we do in faith. Let our hearts be so filled with love that nothing else can exist in it but love. Let us strive to live out our Baptismal Promises with God by proclaiming “by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” And if we do, we will find that Good News pouring forth from our mouth and bringing joy and gladness and love and full acceptance to others—and to ourselves.

7 Pentecost

July 31, 2011

Matthew 14.13-21


+ Last weekend, as most of you know, I was in the Cities. On Friday night, I had supper with my good friend, Justin and his girlfriend, Johanna at her apartment in St. Paul. Now, I had never actually had one of Justin’s famous meals before. I had heard about his culinary abilities (which, I was told, were quite something), but I had no idea what I was in for.

Sure enough, Justin did not disappoint. The meal he served was something else. And that is an understatement. He served, that evening, an incredible poached salmon with braised leeks and red wine butter sauce (beurre rouge). He also served an au gratin with three different potatoes including purple potatoes. For dessert he served several different kinds of fresh berries with ice cream. It was like nothing else I had ever eaten before.

Now, I hate to tempt all of you with these food images, especially those of you who very loyally have been keeping your Eucharistic fast this morning. But it was one of those truly magical meals. I have found myself thinking about that meal often this week—sometimes at very inopportune moments. But what is great about such an experience is that meals like that truly do make us appreciative of special times. Such a meal isn’t just about the food we share. It is also about the friendship we have and the celebration of friendship that meal entails.

We encounter another one of those magical culinary experiences in our Gospel reading for this morning. Here also we have an incredible meal. We have a miracle involving food. But we realize that like any truly magical culinary experience that there is more involved here than just the sharing of food. There is something deeper, something more meaningful. What we find happening today is something very familiar to us who follow Jesus. This so-called feeding of the multitudes appears frequently in the Gospel readings. Six times, actually. You know, then, that it is an important event in the lives of those early followers of Jesus if they are going to write about it six times.

I probably will also preach and write about Justin’s meal six times.

For us, this feeding of the multitude also has much meaning. Yes, it is a great miracle in the life of Jesus. But it also has meaning in our lives as well. If you listen closely to what is happening in the reading you’ll notice that, in many ways, we reenact what happens in today’s Gospel in our own lives as Christians. If you look closely, Jesus doesn’t just perform some outstanding miracle just to “wow” the crowds. He also performs a very practical act. And, as often happens in the life of Jesus, the practical and the spiritual get bound up with each other.

In our reading we find Jesus saying of the bits of bread and fish, “Bring them here to me.” Then he proceeds to do four things. He takes the bread and fish, he blesses it, he breaks the bread and he gives it to them. He takes, blesses, breaks and gives. That’s important to remember.

When else do we hear and do these things? Well, at every Eucharist we celebrate together. Every time we gather at this altar, we take, we bless, we break and we give. Of course, we commemorate the Last Supper when we do these things, but certainly, in the early Church, those early followers of Jesus remembered all those moments when Jesus shared food with them as kinds of Eucharistic events, since essentially the same actions took place at each. They also saw these meals—these moments when Jesus fed people—as glimpses to what awaited us. And we do too.

You have heard me say many, many times that when I talk of the Kingdom of God, I imagine a meal. The Kingdom of God is truly a meal—a wonderfully meal with friends. The Kingdom is no doubt much like the meal my friend Justin made. It is a meal in which the finest foods are served, the best wines are uncorked and everyone—everyone, no matter who they are—is treated as an honored guest. And everyone IS invited. Of course, some don’t have to come, but everyone is invited to this meal. In a sense, that is the very reason I hold the Eucharist to be so important to my own personal and spiritual life. What we celebrate at this altar is a glimpse of what awaits us all. What we do here is a moment in which we get to see what the Kingdom of God is really like. But what all of this—the feeding of the multitude, the Eucharist, the Kingdom as a meal—shows us as well is the way forward to doing ministry.

How do we bring the Kingdom of God into our midst, as we are told to do as followers of Jesus? We do it by taking, blessing, breaking and giving. In our case, we do this with the ministry we have been given to do. We take what is given us to share. We bless it, by asking God’s blessing on it. We break it, because only by breaking it can we share it. And we give it. This is what each of us is called to do in our ministries, in our service to those around us.

The Eucharist is the basis—the ground work or the blueprints—on what we should be doing as followers of Jesus. Our ministries call us to feed those who are hungry. Yes, to feed the physically hungry, but also to feed the spiritually hungry, the emotionally hungry, the socially hungry, as well. We are called to take of our very selves, to bless ourselves, to break ourselves to share and to give of ourselves. Just as Jesus did.

It’s not easy. It’s not fun. In fact, oftentimes, it’s painful and tiring and exhausting. But this is what it means to follow Jesus. And when we do these things, the Kingdom comes forth in our midst.

Our job as Christian is to let people know this one simple fact—there is a meal awaiting us and everyone, EVERYONE, is invited. Our job as followers of Jesus is to do what Jesus does. We are to be the invitation to the meal. And we do this best by showing people what the meal will be like. We take, we bless, we break and we give of ourselves, freely and without limit or qualm. We give freely without prejudice or distinction.

Yes, I know—it is a radical thought to think of such things. But, so is feeding a multitude of people in abundance from just a bit of bread and two fish.

So, let us do as Jesus does. Let us embody that meal to which we are all invited. Let us take with us what we gain from the meal we share here at this altar. And let us, in turn, bless, break and give to all those around us in need. There is an incredible meal awaiting us. We are catching a glimpse of it here this morning. We who feed here this morning on what may appear to some to be little, will be filled. And those whom we feed in turn will also be filled.

"Give them something to eat,” Jesus is saying to us.

How can we not do just that?

5 Pentecost

July 17, 2011

Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52

+ This past Friday I met with a wonderful young couple over whose wedding I will preside in September. We met at the HoDo, appropriately enough because they will be getting married on the rooftop there. We had a wonderful evening. I really enjoy meeting with wedding couples in such environments. The days of meeting with the priest in the priest’s office are, I think, starting to be a thing of the past. And I can tell you I get to know a couple much better over cocktails than sitting across from each other in my office. This will be my fifth wedding of the year. I was going to say that I still have three more after that—not a record by any sense of the word. Then, yesterday morning, I received a Facebook message about doing another wedding on the same day as this one in September, only later in the evening.

On Friday, in the midst of our conversation, as we got to know each other better, the future husband shared with me an interesting scenario in their family. His fourteen year son (from a previous relationship) has a nasty little habit of using the words “Gay” and “retarded” to describe things he hates. I think we all know situations like this. This couple suddenly got very passionate about this.

They said, “This is one of those things that drive us crazy. We have to jump on him immediately about how using those words is not only disrespectful, but downright slanderous.”

After a while, the boy got it. And now he doesn’t use those words anymore because he realizes that they are hurtful and disrepectful.

As we discussed this, I, of course, was thinking about our Gospel reading for this morning. And I realized that, in a very real sense, this is what means to sow good seed in the Kingdom. Now this parable we hear today in the Gospel is traditionally referred to as the Parable of Tares. T-a-r-e-s. We find this word “Tares” in the King James Version of the Bible. I personally like that word very much. This word is thought to mean darnel, which is a kind of ryegrass which actually looks very much like wheat does in its early stages of growth. To put it in a bit of perspective to Jesus’ own time, Roman law prohibited the sowing of darnel among the wheat of an enemy. To take it all a step further, we need to realize that sometimes planting darnel within an enemy’s wheat might actually be an issue of life or death. Less of a harvest, means less food. Less food means more illness, more death. So, this whole concept of planting weeds in an enemy’s wheat has much more meaning than we may initially thought when we heard this parable.

For us, it’s a bit different. For us, sowing weeds among wheat is something very different, especially when we look at Jesus’ explanaition of this parable. As I pondered this these last few days, I realized that for us, we sow darnel among wheat in very different ways. In the situation with that son of that young couple, we would sow tares, sow weeds, when we do not speak up when deragatory words are used. Yes, we know that standing up and saying “this is not right” is hard to do. Yes, it may cause us to be on the receiving end of ridicule and possibly even violence. But the fact remains that when we don’t stand up—when we are complascent—we are sowing tares. We are sowing weeds in the Kingdom. We are showing that we do not love our neighbor as ourselves and that we are not truly followers of Jesus, who would stand up and speak out against the injustices of such comments.

And we’ve all been guilty of complascency like this. We’ve all done it. We’ve all rolled our eyes and bit our tongues—or maybe even chuckled a bit—when someone has made a sexist or homophobic or racist joke or comment around us. And we have all tried to ignore when institutions like our very Church or our government on have denied certain rights to people in various ways.

And sometimes even we ourselves have been malicious. Sometimes we have endevoured to plant seeds that prevent growth. We sometimes don’t do it purposefully. But we do it.

When it comes to church, for example. We show weeds among the wheat when we are afraid. Fear is a great tare among the wheat. Fear of the future. Fear of change. These can be crippling. We sow the weeds when we are afraid that everything we once knew and found so comfortable is now being viewed as out-of-date or somewhat archaic.

One of the greatest “tares” we all experience in parish ministry is when people say things like: “We can’t do that. We have never done that before.” Saying things like that and being stuck in that mentality is a kind of sowing of weeds in the midst of the field. Yes, we need to have a healthy respect for our history and our past. We can never forget where we have came from and what has been done in the past.

As you know I occasionally love to do a traditional Rite I Mass on Wednesday nights, esepcially in the summer. It’s good for us to hear that traditional language. It might not be our “thing,” but it certainly puts into perspective where we have come from. It gives some of us a certain level of comfort. And I love doing it. I was trained in celebrating Mass with those traditional words and with those traditional actions. They have meaning and they have contributed in real and purposeful ways in what we do now in our current liturgy.

But we can never be stuck in that past. And we can’t step back in time. We cannot let what we’ve done in the past prevent us from doing the work that needs to be done now and in the future. When we get stuck, that is when the crop begins to die. It prevents the harvest from happening. It prevents growth from happening. It makes the church not into a vital, living place proclaiming God’s loving and living Presence, but it preserves it as a musty museum for our own personal comfort.

The flourishing of the kingdom can be frightening. It can be overwhelming. Because when the Kingdom flourishes, it flourishes beyond our control. We can’t control that flourishing. All we can do is plant the seeds and tend the growth as best we can.

Allowing the Kingdom to flourish also means that there also needs to be some pruning of the weeds. In the Rule of the Episcopal monastic order of the Society of St. John the Eveanglist, we find this wonderful statement in the chapter titled “The Spirit of Mission and Service”:

“Christ has promised that if we abide in him and consent to his skillful pruning, we shall bear fruit that abides. If the result of our labors are to last we need to root our endeavors in Christ and draw on our intimacy with him.”

Rooting our endeavors in Christ is a sure guarentee that what is planted will flourish. Because rooting our endeavors in Christ means we are rooted our endeavors in a living, vital Presence. We are rooting them in a wild Christ who knows no bounds, who knows no limits and who cannot be controlled by us. Rooting our endevors in Christ means that our job is simply to go with Christ and the growth that Christ brings about wherever and however that growth may happen. Even when that growth may seem to happening in the midst of weeds and thorns.

Last week, in my sermon on sowing seeds among thorns and weeds, I said that sometimes God even uses the thorns and weeds and that, even then, crops flourish. I believe the same happens even when tares have been planted by the enem—whoever that enemy may be. God sometimes is able to even to bring about a fruitfull harvest even when vindicitive tares have been planted in our midst. Sometimes when we encounter weeds maliciously planted in our midst, our frustration, our anger, our impatience drives us to not only root out those weeds, but to make sure another like it never happens again. And hopefully in those instances when we ourselves have planted weeeds that have stunted the Kingdom from growning, the recgonition of our actions sometimes causes us to stop and take notice of our actions and to change.

So, you with ears, listen! To be righteous does not mean being be good and sweet and nice all the time. The be righteous one simply needs to further the harvest of the Kingdom by doing what those of us who follow Jesus do. It means to plant the good seeds. And in those instances when we fail, we must allow the harvest to happen even when we have planted weeds among the good seeds.

And when we do strive to do good and to further the kingdom of God, then will we being doing what Jesus cooamnds us to do. The harvest will flourish and we can take some joy in knowing that we helped, working with God, to make it flourish. And, in that moment, we know the fruits of our efforts. And we—the righteous—we the ones who do the work of God in this world, who further the kingdom in our midst—we will shine like the sun in that kingdom of our God.

4 Pentecost

July 10, 2011

Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23

+ I think I am going through one of those moments most people go through at my age. One of the signs that we are maturing as adults (and especially for those of us heading into middle age), happens when, one day, a strange feeling comes upon us when we least expect it. For some people, when this feeling rears its ugly head, it is a time to despair. Some people call it a mid-life crisis. Others just say it’s a restlessness that comes with age.

It is a feeling we fight, we try to avoid, we do anything in our power to get around. But sometimes, there’s no escaping it. This feeling I’m talking about is the feeling of frustration.

I’m not talking about the frustration one feels when its rains on a day you’ve planned some big outdoor event. I am talking about the frustration that comes on us when we realize that all those dreams, all those plans we had have simply come to naught. It’s the frustration we feel when we simply face the facts of our life and see our present life for what it really is. And when we compare that present life with what we imagined our life would be like at this point, we definitely find ourselves frustrated.

We ask ourselves: what happened to me? How did I end up becoming this person—this person who looks and acts just like what I disliked the most when I was younger.

Certainly most of us have felt this frustration in our jobs, or as parents. For those of us in ordained ministry, we deal with this all the time. When many people go into the ministry, they imagine all the good they’re going to do in their lives. They imagine all the people whose lives they are going to positively affect. They imagine all the souls they will save. They imagine all the parishes they will one day fill with believers and how they, single-handedly, will change the sometimes all-too-accurate reputation the Church has of being a close-minded, human-driven organization with all its faults.

To use the images from today’s Gospel, they imagine all the seeds they sow will be in good soil and will flourish a hundred times what was sown. They come out of seminary and rise up from having hands laid on them at their ordination with a starry-eyed idealism.

Now I don’t think I did have much starry-eyed idealism when I was ordained. I had already been through the ringer a couple of time by that time. But trust me, there are a lot of newly ordained clergy who do.

And then, they hit the five-year mark. For some clergy, the five-year mark is that mark when they realize the honeymoon’s over. They’ve, hopefully, been through the wringer once or twice by this time. Their wrists have been slapped, their egos have been deflated, their sermons critiqued to the point they are much more careful what they are going to say when they enter the pulpit. And, more importantly, they face reality.

By five years, one knows if the seed one has sown is producing a crop. And by five years, every clergy person knows that what they are producing is not anywhere near one hundred times what was sown. And it is then that frustration settles in.

Now, I say this as I approach the eight anniversary of my ordination to the diaconate on July 25. These eight years have been a strange rollercoaster ride for me. And as I approach this ordination anniversary, I find myself reflecting back to what my goals were in that hot summer of 2003 and what, if any of them, have been met. I reflect back on what I sowed in those early days of ministry.

Now, I am very fortunate and very grateful to God and to the people I have served with in those eight long years, that the crop hasn’t been too bad. There have been many successes. And I have had many more joyful moments as an ordained deacon and priest than I have had disappointments. You have heard me say it before and you will hear me say it again: I am very happy and thankful to be a priest. It truly is one of the greatest joys in my life.

Still, I’ve had plenty of set-backs and disappointments. Yes, I have stumbled and fallen and failed miserably. I have preached my share of clinker sermons. I have lost my professional cool with parishioners and other clergy and, yes, maybe a bishop or two. And I have failed people I have been called to serve—not purposely, but certainly I have fallen short of the expectations made of me by some people. I have done my share of very stupid things as a priest. And when I think about those things—those dumb things I have done in my ministry— then I face it. I find it right there, staring me in the face—frustration.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us a glimpse of what this frustration is like. If you notice at the beginning of our Gospel reading, as Jesus sits in the boat from which he preaches sort of like from a pulpit, we are told that there is a large crowd coming forward to listen to him. To this large crowd, Jesus then proceeds to preach about seed that fails and seed that flourishes. And for this moment, it seems as though the seed of the Gospel as it comes from Jesus’ mouth is truly falling on the good soil. But when we look at it from the wider perspective of the story of Jesus, what we realize is that what he is preaching is, in fact, falling on rocky ground and among thorns.

Let’s face it: on the surface, from a completely objective viewpoint, Jesus’ ministry ultimately seems like a failure. He is surrounded by twelve men—people he himself chose—who just don’t get what he’s saying. These men will, eventually, turn away from him and abandon him when he needed them the most. One of them, will betray him in a particularly cruel way: one of them will betray him to people he knows will murder Jesus.

By the time Jesus is nailed to the cross, it’s as though everything Jesus said or did up to that point had been for nothing. Not one of the people Jesus helped, not one of the person he gave sight to, helped to walk, healed of illness, came forward to defend him. Not even one person he raised from the dead came forward to help him in his time of need.

And certainly, not one person from this large crowd of people that we encounter in today’s Gospel, comes forth to defend him, to vouch for him or even to comfort him as he is tortured and murdered. Everyone left him except his mother and a few of his female friends. And maybe his dear apostle John.

It would be even worse if even his mother has deserted him. Can you imagine, in that awful lonely moment, to look down and realize not even your mother—of all people—had stayed with you. So, it could have been worse.

Still, as far as his life of ministry was concerned, it seemed very much like a failure. It seems, in that moment, as though the seed he sowed had all been sown on rocky ground and among thorns. It seemed as though the seed he sowed had died. For any of us, frustration would be an understatement for what we would be feeling at that moment. And if this was the end of the story, if it ended there, on that cross, on that Friday afternoon, then it would be truly one of the greatest failures.

But this is one of the cunning, remarkable things about Christianity—one of the things that has baffled people for thousands of years. In the midst of this failure, in the midst of this frustration, God somehow works. In that place of broken dreams, of shattered ambitions, God somehow uses them and turns them toward good. Somehow, in a moment of abject loneliness, of excruciating physical pain, of an agonizing murder upon a cross, God somehow brings forth hope and joy and life unending. Ands what seems to be sown on rocky ground and among thorns does, in fact, flourish and produces a crop that we are still reaping this morning.

In my own life I have found strange moments when God has broken through my own failures, my own shortcomings to work, when God has taken the seed I thought I had sown on land unsuitable for growth and somehow made it grow. In those moments when I have failed, I have found that I learned a few lessons about myself.

First, my failures have taught me that I had to stop being selfish and self-centered. What God does in ministry has very little to do with me personally. Let me tell you, it’s a hard realization for me to make but it isn’t all about me all the time. It is always truly about God using even me in those situations.

Second, those failures taught me that, even in those moments in which I, myself, was, if in no one else’s eyes but my own, a failure, still, somehow, God works. God truly can use our flawed and fractured selves for good and turn our failures and our frustrations into something meaningful. What we can take away from our Gospel reading today is that our job is not always to worry about where or how we are sowing the seed. Our job is to simply do the sowing. And God will produce the crop.

What I have realized in these eight years of ordained ministry is that I simply need to let God do what God is going to do. Our job, as Christians, is simply to sow. And God will bring forth the yield. And when God does, then we will find crops flourishing even in rocky soil and amidst thorns.

So, all you who have ears, listen. We will all feel moments of frustration in this life, but for those of us who hope in God and who sow the seed of God’s Word in this world simply cannot allow frustration to triumph. Frustration and despair are the thorns and rocky soil of our lives. We must be the rich soil in which that seed flourishes. And when we do, the crops God brings forth in us and through us will truly be one hundred times more than what we sowed. Amen.

3 Pentecost

July 3, 2011

Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30

+ Sometimes, I honestly feel sorry for you. You truly do have to suffer sometimes under my strange eccentricities, especially my strange appreciation of strange catholic beliefs and practices.

This past Wednesday, at Mass, we commemorated Sts Peter and Paul, but I also threw in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Feast of the Sacred Heart fell this past Friday. And because I have always held a deep devotion to the Sacred Heart, I couldn’t let the day go by without some kind of commemoration.

The fact is, we Episcopalians do not officially observe the feast of the Sacred Heart. But that, of course, has never prevented me from doing anything and this is one of those feasts that I just can’t let by without making some reference to it.

And although we seem to see this particular devotion to the Sacred Heart as only a Roman Catholic devotion, I beg to differ. I learned my devotion to the Sacred Heart not from any Roman Catholic, or even from an Episcopalian. I learned devotion to the Sacred Heart from my very Lutheran grandmother.

My Grandma Minnie had a deep devotion to the Sacred Heart. I don’t know if she ever called it the “Sacred Heart,” but her favorite representation of Jesus was always ones in which he was revealing his heart. In fact, the two representations I remember most clearly were a very cheap picture in a black plastic frame and a large statue of the Sacred Heart that she keep in the corner of her living room. She received that statue from a Hispanic Roman Catholic friend of her’s and it was one of her most prized possessions.

The other day, as my mother and I were cleaning the basement of my mother’s house, getting ready for her move, I found that statue in a large cardboard box. No, I will not set it up here in the church, but I am going to put it in a place of honor in the rectory.

For my grandmother, this devotion wasn’t some strange Catholic devotion. For her, it truly represented the love Jesus had for us and, although she wasn’t a big preacher, she made it clear that Jesus did truly love each of us.

I have to agree with her.

Why the Sacred Heart is important to me is not because it is some quaint catholic devotion. It is important to me because it is such a wonderful representation of that love Jesus has for each of us and all of us. That Sacred Heart is a beautiful symbol that Jesus loves fully and completely and wholly. Jesus loves in a way we strive to love, but cannot love. Our love has limits. Our love fails at times. But not Jesus’. His love is always without limits.

And that love knows no bounds. Jesus loves everyone fully and completely, no matter who or what they are. I say it all the time and I will always say it—Jesus love for us knows no bounds. He loves us fully and completely. And we see this most clearly in that devotion to the Sacred Heart.

But it’s not enough that we are simply the recipients of this love. The fact is: we are followers of Jesus. As followers of Jesus we are essentially called to imitate Jesus. And that means that our hearts should be like his Heart. Our hearts should be filled to the brim with a burning love. For everyone.

Everyone—no matter who they are—can be found within that Heart. No one is excluded from that place of burning love which is never extinguished.

When we see devotion to Christ’s loving heart in this way, we see that it IS very timely for our church at this point. We see that this reminder to love as Jesus loved is at the core of the Gospel and at the core of what it means to follow Jesus.

When we see the Sacred Heart we should see it as a mirror in which our own hearts are reflected. His heart is the ideal. It is the goal in our own love. We too should love just as like the Sacred Heart of Jesus loves.

This love is not an easy love. It truly is the yoke that Jesus talks about in today’s Gospel. When he says to us:

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for you souls. For my yoke I easy, and my burden light.”

We truly find that he is setting the standard. Learn from him. He is gentle and humble in heart. In this love that he feels for each of us and in the love that we, in turn give to others, we will find rest for our souls.

So find refuge in this love. Let his love be the guide for your love. Let your heart be a reflection of that Sacred Heart of Jesus, which contains within it the vastness of Christ’s love for each of us.