21 Pentecost

October 13, 2024

 Amos 5:6-7,10-15; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10.17-31

 

+ Last Sunday, poor Dan Rice had to read through our reading from Genesis, which made him and others—including Amy Phillips his wife—a bit uncomfortable.

 

Sometimes, that’s exactly what happens.

 

We are made uncomfortable by the scripture readings we encounter.

 

As Episcopalians—as liturgical Christians—we have advantages and disadvantages.

 

Just like anything else in life.

 

And, depending on where you stand, our lectionary—our assigned scripture readings for Sunday morning, is either an advantage or a disadvantage.

 

I, as the Priest or anyone who preaches here, do not just get to randomly pick whatever scripture I want on a  given Sunday.

 

There are assigned readings.

 

And we have no real choice in those readings.

 

So, the congregation sometimes has to sit through readings that are sometimes not readings we might want to hear for a particular Sunday morning.

 

And let me tell you, sometimes those scriptures are not easy to preach.

 

Sometimes, I just simply choose not to preach about them, which is exactly what I did last Sunday.

 

I can do that at this stage in my career.

 

Today, we get the full range of scriptures.

 

We first of all get this beautiful poetic gem in our reading from the Hebrew scriptures.

 

I love the prophet Amos.

 

“Seek good and not evil,” he tells us this morning.

that you may live.

And so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you…

hate evil and love good,

and establish justice at the gate…”

 

Beautiful!

 

That could be the motto for us here at St. Stephen’s.

 

Our reading from Hebrews also is just lovely:

 

“Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

 

I could preach a couple sermons just on that one alone.

 

But then…

 

Then!!!!

 

Our Gospel reading for today.

 

Did you listen closely to this morning’s Gospel?

 

Were you uncomfortable with it?

 

I was uncomfortable with it.

 

We should be uncomfortable.

 

We all should be uncomfortable when we hear it.

 

Jesus is, quite simply, telling it like it is.

 

It is a disturbing message—at least, on the surface.

 

I stress that: on the surface.

 

He makes three hard-hitting points.

 

First, he tells the rich man who calls Jesus “good” to sell everything he has and give the money to the poor.

 

Second, he compares wealthy people getting into heaven to a camel going through the eye of a needle—a great image really when you think about it.

 

Finally, he tells his disciples that only those who give up their families and their possessions will gain heaven, summarized in that all-too-famous maxim: “the first will be last and the last will be first.”

 

For those who have—who have possessions, who have loved ones, who have nice cars and houses and bank accounts and investments,--these words of Jesus should disturb us and should make us look long and hard at what we have and, more importantly, why we have them.

 

But…is Jesus really telling us we should give up these things that give us security?

 

Does it mean that we should rid ourselves of those things?

 

Should we really sell our cars and our houses, empty out our bank accounts and our savings and give all of that money to the poor?

 

Does it mean, we should turn our backs on our families, on our spouses and partners, on our children and our parents?

 

Does it mean that we should go poor and naked into the world?

 

Well, we need to look at it a little more rationally.

 

We’re Episcopalians, after all. We’re rational!

 

Because, when Jesus talks about “riches” and giving up our loved ones, I don’t think he’s really talking about what he seems to be talking about.

 

I don’t think that when Jesus talks of these things, he’s really talking about what we think he talking about.

 

He’s not really talking about the securities we have built up for ourselves.

 

What Jesus is talking in today’s Gospel is about attachments.

 

Or more specifically, unhealthy attachments.

 

Having “things” in and of themselves are, for the most part, fine, as long as we are not attached to them in an unhealthy way.

 

Jesus knew full well that we need certain things to help us live our lives.

 

But being attached to those “things” is a problem.

 

It is our attachments in this life that bind us—that tie us down and prevent us from growing, from moving closer to God and to one another.

 

Unhealthy attachments are what Jesus is getting at here.

 

And this is why we should be disturbed by this reading.

 

Let’s face it, at times, we’re all attached to some things we have.

 

We are attached to our cars and our homes.

 

We are attached to our televisions and computers and our telephones.

 

Some of us are attached to our mid-century furniture.

 

(Did you hear about that 1959 Lane coffee table I picked up last weekend in Brainerd?)  

 

And, even in our relationships, we have formed unhealthy attachments as well.

 

Co-dependence in a relationship is a prime example of that unhealthy kind of attachment that develops between people.

 

We see co-dependent relationships that are violent or abusive or manipulative.

 

People, in a sense, become attached to each other and simply cannot see what life can be like outside of that relationship.

 

And as much as we love our children, we all know that there comes a point when we have to let them go.

 

We have to break whatever attachments we have to them so they can live their lives fully.

 

It is seems to be part of our nature to form unhealthy relationships with others and with things at times.

 

Especially in this day and age, we hear so often of people who are afraid to be alone.

 

So many people are out there looking for that “the right one”—as though this one person is going to bring unending happiness and contentment to one’s life.

 

Some people might even be attached to the idea of a relationship, rather than the relationship itself.

 

We’ve all known people like that—people who are afraid because they are getting too old to settle down and still haven’t found that right person in their lives.

 

It seems almost as though their lives revolve around finding this ideal person when, in fact, no one can live up that ideal.

 

See, attachments start taking on the feeling of heavy baggage after so long.

 

They do get in the way.

 

They weigh us down and they ultimately make our life a burden.

 

And they come between us and our relationship God and our service to others.

 

The question we need to ask ourselves in response to this morning’s Gospel is this: if Jesus came to us today and told us to abandon our attachments—whatever it is in our own lives that might separate us from God—what would it be?

 

And could we do it?

 

Because Jesus is telling us to do that again and again.  

 

What the Gospel for today hopefully shows us that we need to be aware of our attachments.

 

We need to be aware of anything in our lives that separates us from God.

 

Jesus today is preparing us for the Kingdom of Heaven—the Reign of God.

 

We cannot enter the Kingdom of God and still be attached to those unhealthy things in our lives.

 

Because as we enter the Kingdom, we will be distracted, looking back over our shoulders.

 

The message is clear—don’t allow your unhealthy attachments to come between God and you.

 

Don’t allow anything to come between God and you.

 

If Jesus came to us here and now and asked us to give up those attachments in our lives, most of us couldn’t to do it.

 

I don’t think I could do it.

 

And when we realize that, we suddenly realize how hard it is to gain heaven.

 

It truly is like a camel passing through the eye of the needle.

 

For us, in this moment, this might be a reason to despair.

 

But we really don’t need to.

 

We just need to be honest.

 

Honest with ourselves.

 

And honest with God.

 

Yes, we have attachments.

 

But we need to understand that our attachments are only, in the end, temporary.

 

They will pass away.

 

But our relationship with God is eternal.

 

This is what Jesus is getting at in today’s Gospel.

 

So, we can enjoy those “things” we have.

 

We can take pleasure in them.

 

But we need to recognize them for what they are.

 

They are only temporary joys.

 

They come into in our lives and they will go out of our lives, like clouds.

 

All those things we hold dear, will pass away from us.

 

Let us cling instead, to God and to the healthy bonds that we’ve formed with God and with our loved ones—with our spouses or partners, our children, our family and our friends.

 

Let us serve those whom we are called to serve.

 

And let us serve them fully and completely, without hindrance.

 

Let us truly see that what we have is temporary.

 

Let us be prepared to shed every attachment we have if we need to.

 

And when the day comes when Jesus calls us by name, we can simply run forward and follow him wherever he leads us.

 

Amen.

20 Pentecost

October 6, 2024

 

Mark 10.2-16

 

 

+ As some of you know, I have been going through a strange kind of deconstruction in my own spiritual life.

 

I have been having lots of struggles about where I fit in in the Church as a whole and the whole spectrum.

 

So, I’ve been doing a bit of deconstruction in my own life, which, as you’ve heard me say many times, I think is very important for all of us.

 

Deconstructing our faith life, our identify as Christians, is always a good thing, as long as we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

 

It’s always good  (and difficult) to burn away the spiritual “fluff” of our lives and really get to the meat and bones of our faith.

 

Well, recently, as I’ve been doing this, I have found myself taking a break from it by exploring a  Protestant sect that has always appealed to me (and this might come as a surprise to many of you): the Quakers, or the Society of Friends.

 

You would not think a denomination that is completely and totally non-sacramental and non-liturgical would hold any appeal to someone like me,—an Episcopalian who loves liturgy and the sacraments!

 

But, I really love the simplicity of Quakerism.

 

In fact, I learned to love Quakerism through a dear Quaker friend of mine.

 

Mary Gardner was a very wonderful and accomplished novelist who was a dear, dear friend of mine.

 

She, for many years, was a Quaker, though she was also a pretty solid skeptic on most supernatural issues.

 

Mary taught me so much about Quakers and how to live a truly Quaker life.

 

And through Mary I came to love the silence and contemplative aspects of Quakerism.

 

I love their pacifism.

 

I love the fact that, historically, they were on the forefront of so much social change in society.

 

I love how they strive for a truly experiential and relational connection with God—with the Light within, as they call God.

 

And I love how the Quakers embody in their faith and in their lives a very simple, child-like faith.

 

It’s this last point that is especially appealing to me.

 

And I also personally find it difficult.

 

To me, cultivating such a relationship with God without the structure of liturgy and the sacraments seems particularly daunting.

 

But there are days when I want that Quaker-like faith.

 

I want that simplicity.

 

I want that silence.

 

I want that child-like relationship with God.

 

And it is this child-like relationship with God that Jesus is commending to us in our Gospel reading for today.

 

Our Gospel reading for today is wonderful.

 

As people are bringing children to Jesus, he says,

 

“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

 

So, what does Jesus mean when he talks about the Kingdom of heaven and children?

 

Well, he is talking quite bluntly, I believe.

 

He is making it clear that we need to simplify.

 

We need to simplify our faith.

 

We need to clear away all the muck, all the distractions, all that spiritual “fluff,” all those negative things we have accumulated over the years regarding our relationship with God.

 

Now, to be fair, the Church and Religion in general have piled many of this negative things on us.

 

And that is unfortunate.

 

Too often, as believers, we tend to complicate our faith life and our theology.

 

We in the Episcopal Church get caught up in things like Dogma and Canon laws and rules and Rubrics and following the letter of the law, and getting caught up in committees and sub-committees and sub-sub-committees. (Episcopalians love to micro-manage)

 

In many Protestant churches,  we find that the Bible itself is held up as a kind of idol, it is held up in such a way that it eclipses the fact that we are called to live out what we learn scripturally and not just impress one another with our scriptural prowess and knowledge.

 

All the churches get so caught up in doing what we are told is the “right thing,” that we lose sight of this pure and holy relationship with God.

 

We forget why we are doing the right thing.

 

For Jesus, he saw what happened when people got too caught up in doing the right thing.

 

The scribes and Pharisees were very caught up in doing the right thing, in following the letter of the Law.

 

I actually like talking about these two groups of people—the scribes and the Pharisees.

 

They have received a very harsh judgement in the long arc of history.

 

But we need to remind ourselves that, at their core, these were not bad people.

 

They were actually well-intended people, trying in their own way to live out the Law, as they were taught.

 

It was the job of the scribes to write down and copy the scriptures, a daunting job in those pre-printing press days.

 

As a result of copying scripture again and again, they of course came to see themselves as experts of the scriptures.

 

And they were.

 

The Pharisees saw their job as interpreting the Law and the scriptures for people.

 

They tried to make sure that the letter of the law was followed and that all those complicated rules we find in the Levitical law were followed to a T.

 

They did this because they thought it was what was supposed to be done.

 

In the course of their trying to do the right thing, they ended up losing sight of the heart of the Law and Scriptures and only concentrated on the letter of the Law and scriptures.

 

But in doing so, they lost sight of God, which is easy to do when you’re so caught up on the dots and dashes of the words, and not on what those words actually mean.  

 

They lost sight of the meaning behind the Law.

 

Jesus is telling them—and us—that we need to simplify.

 

We need to refocus.

 

We need to de-construct.

 

We need to become like children in our faith-life.

 

Now that isn’t demeaning.

 

It isn’t sweet and sentimental.

 

Becoming children means taking a good, honest look at what we believe.

 

As followers of Jesus, it does not have to be complicated.

 

We just need to remind ourselves that, if we keep our eyes on Jesus, he will show us God.

 

Following Jesus means knowing that God is a loving, accepting and always-present Parent.

 

God is our “Abba.”

 

Our job as followers is to connect with this loving Parent, with “Abba,” to worship and pray to God.

 

Our job is to be an imitator, like Jesus, of this loving, all-accepting God in our relationship with others.

 

When we do that—when we become imitators of our loving God, when we love as God loves us—the Reign of God becomes present in a very real and profound way.  

 

But the fact is, the Reign of God is not for people who complicate it.

 

God’s Reign is one of those things that is very elusive.

 

If we quantify it and examine it too closely, it just sort of wiggles away from us.

 

If we try to define what the Reign of God is, or try to explain it in any kind of detail, it loses meaning.

 

It disappears and become mirage-like.

 

But if we simply do what we are called to do as followers of Jesus—if we simply follow Jesus, imitate our God and love one another—God’s Reign becomes real.

 

It becomes a reality in our very midst.

 

And whatever separations we imagine between ourselves and God and one another, simply disappear.

 

This is what I love about being a follower of Jesus.

 

I love the fact that despite all the dogmas and structures and rules the Church might bring us, following Jesus is simply that—following Jesus.

 

It is keeping your eyes on the one we’re following.

 

It means doing what he did and trying to live life like he lived life.

 

It means worshipping like him a God of amazing and unlimited love.

 

Yes, that sounds so very simple.

 

But it can also be very difficult, especially when we still get caught up in all the rules and complications of organized religion and the letter of the law of the Bible.  

 

And we do get caught up in those things.

 

Because following Jesus can be so basic, we find ourselves often frustrated.

 

We want order.

 

We want rules.

 

We want systematic ways of understanding God and religion.

 

Simplicity sometimes scares us.

 

Becoming childlike means depending on God instead of ourselves.

 

Becoming childlike means shedding our independence sometimes, and we don’t like doing that.

 

Sometimes complication means busywork.

 

And sometimes it simply is easier to get caught up in busywork, then to actually go out there and follow Jesus and be imitators of God and love others.

 

Sometimes it is easier to sit and debate the fine points of religion, then it is to go out and actually live out our faith in our lives, and to worship God as our Abba.

 

But, as Jesus shows us, when we do such things, when we become cantankerous grown-ups, that’s when the system starts breaking down.

 

We when get nitpicky and bitter, we have lost sight of what it means to be like Jesus.

 

That’s when we get distracted.

 

That’s when we get led astray from following Jesus.

 

That is when we “grow up” and become cranky, bitter grown-ups rather than loving, wonder-filled children.

 

It is good to be wonder-filled children.

 

It is good to look around us at the world and see a place in which God still breaks through to us.

 

It is good to see that God lives and works through others.

 

So, let us be wonder-filled children.

 

Let us truly be awed and amazed at what it means to follow Jesus.

 

Let God be a source of joy in our lives.

 

And let us love each other simply, as children love.

 

Let us love in that wonderfully child-like way, in which our hearts simply fill up to the brim with love.

 

Let us burn with that love in a young and vibrant way.

 

Being a Christian—following Jesus—means staying young and child-like always.

 

Following Jesus is our fountain of youth, so to speak.

 

So let us become children for the sake of the Kingdom.

 

And when we do, that Reign of God will flower in us like eternal youth.

 

Amen.

 

St. Michael and All Angels

September 29, 20214

+ Well, a few weeks ago we stepped out of our regular Ordinary green on Sunday morning when we celebrated the feast of the Holy Cross.

Today, we’re doing it again.

As I said then, I repeat now: we’re not really supposed to do this, but I really think it’s important to celebrate some of these feasts that many of you don’t get to celebrate regularly.

But now we’re stepping into the .

And we are doing so to celebrate the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, or as it is commonly known, Michaelmas.

Why? You may ask.

Well, we are because let’s face it: we don’t really give angels a lot of thought.

We just don’t.

And, from what it seems, the angels themselves would be just fine with that.

They don’t seem like they want a lot of attention brought to themselves.

But whether they like it or not, we are going to commemorate them today.

But first, let’s talk about our scripture readings for today.

We have these three very familiar stories featuring angels this morning.

Our first is the really wonderful story of “Jacob’s ladder” (one of my favorites).

The second is the story Michael, leading the “good” angels, who battle and then  beat “the dragon” (we know dragon as “the Devil or Satan”) and his “bad” angels.

Finally, in our Gospel reading, which echoes our reading from the Hebrew scriptures, we find Jesus telling Nathanael that he will see something like Jacob’s ladder,  with angels “ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Lots of angels.

But let’s ask ourselves: what are angels?

I mean honestly.

Angels, as we understand them, based on Scripture and tradition, are spiritual beings who interact with humans—sometimes as servant and sometimes as messengers of God.

The word “angel” comes from the word angelos, which means messenger or envoy.

In Hebrew, angels are referred to mal’ak elohim (“the messenger of God”), or  mal’ak YHWH (“messenger of the Lord”) or  bene elohim (or children of God”).

Stephanie Garcia and I have a shared interest in something biblically correct angels, a trend on social media in which angels are depicted as we encounter them in the Hebrew scriptures.

 These are not sweet, nice, chubby little cherubs, or stoic, blond, white men or women with wings.

 Biblically correct angels are frightening—wheels with wings and eyes and a frightening all-seeing eye at their center, which we find in the prophecies of Isaiah and Ezekiel.  

 Angels are not humans.

 And we don’t become angels when we die, despite what popular culture says.

 They are different than us.

 They are somewhat divine—somewhat above us and beyond us.

 But the problem for us, good, rational progressive Christians that we are, is that all this sems a bit fantastical, doesn’t it?

It’s like listening to someone talk about the Game of Thrones or Dungeons and Dragons.

It’s seems to mythical. Or mythological.

And most of us have a very hard relating angels to our own lives.

After all, WE’ve never encountered angels, right?

Well, we may have.

Sometimes, the right people come into our lives at just the right time.

And there was one time in my own life when I think I actually did in fact encounter an angel in human form.

Way back in April of 2002, I was recovering from cancer.

It was a dark time in my life.

I was sick.

And weak.

And about as down and out as a person can be, emotionally and spiritually.

Well, one day early in that month, I finally finished my round of radiation for cancer.

I was exhausted, but I was also relieved.

I decided, following that final treatment, to take a drive.

For some reason I don’t remember anymore, I was driving my father’s pickup.

Anyway, I had a fairly nice morning driving around in Minnesota in the cold spring weather.

I was looking forward to healing and getting beyond my cancer.

Well, as I was driving home on a highway between Halstad, Minnesota and Hillsboro, North Dakota, I hit a rock on the road that had been dragged there by some tillers, who were tilling the fields for planting.

It destroyed the tire.

And I pulled over alongside the road in the middle of nowhere.

And I mean nowhere.

Although it was April, it was still bitterly cold.

And to make matters worse, the cellphone I had the time, which was not a very good one, died on me.

I had no one to call.

So, I got out and was going to change to tire.

But I didn’t know where the spare tire was on my father’s pick up.

Besides, I was sick.

And weak.

And I wasn’t certain I would’ve even been able to physically manage it.

I panicked.

There was a farmstead a few miles away.

But I decided to stay put and see if anyone stopped.

And no one did.

No one.

Cars drove by, back and forth, but no one stopped, even when I got out and waved at them.

Finally, after some time, a car did pull over.

In it was a middle-aged woman.

She asked if I needed help.

I told her about the rock and the tire and that I didn’t know where the spare was because it was my dad’s pickup.

She offered to drive me to Hillsboro.

I was grateful and got in, but I did tell her that she should probably be careful giving rides to strangers.

“It’s all right, “ she said. “I have a gun under my seat.”

We made small-talk on the ride and it came out that I was studying to be an Episcopal priest and that she was Jewish.

I then confessed to her that even if I had found that tire I wasn’t certain I was going to be able to change it since I had just had my last radiation treatment that morning for cancer.

She said, “Oh, I have cancer too.”

She then offered me her cellphone and I called my mother to tell her what happened.

We then made it into Hillsboro and she dropped me off a Goodyear Tire store there.

Weirdly, the next time I was in Hillsboro after that, that tire store had closed.

I asked her name so I send her a thank you.

She said, no. that’s all right.

We bid each other farewell. I thanked her again.

And off she went into the snow.

I later found out that she called my mother, since the number was on her phone, to tell my mom that I was all right and that she should be proud of me for some reason.

This nameless Jewish woman, in the middle of nowhere between Halstad and Hillsboro.

What are the chances of that?

For me, this is what angels are.

For me, this is all the proof I need that angels exist.

For me, that’s exactly what angels would do.

I hope we have all experienced angels among us in some way in our lives.

These angels among us remind us that we are not alone, that we are, ultimately, taken care of.

They remind us that God does care for us—that we are important to God.

Even in the middle of nowhere between Halstad and Hillsboro.  

But, it doesn’t end there.

The message for me—and for all of this morning—is that sometimes, we too are called to be angels for others.

We too are, like angels, called to embody God’s goodness, God’s grace, God’s love in our service of others.

We are called to be angels in this world for those who need angels in this world.

So let us do just that.

Let us be those angels.

Let us embody the goodness and love of God in our service of each other.

Let us reach out in mercy and compassion for those around us.

By doing so, we become angels in our midst to those around us.

By doing so, we embody God’s goodness and love.

By doing so, we glimpse God’s reign, present here on earth as tiny glimpses.

By doing so, we truly will see angels ascending and descending among us.

Amen.