4 Pentecost

July 6, 2025

Luke 10.1-11, 16-20

+ This past week, as you may have heard, Jimmy Swaggart died.

 

Swaggart, for those of you who don’t know, was one of those notorious televangelists from the 1980s who spewed some pretty terrible things, and then had a very public fall from grace.

 

If you ever doubted my “the chickens always come home to roost” analogy, look no further than Jimmy Swaggart.

 

Personally, however, my father was a huge fan of Swaggart.

 

Swaggart spoke for men (and probably some women too) of my father’s generation.

 

He was macho.

 

He was tough.

 

He could sing a kind of countrified Gospel music.

 

He could be funny.

 

And, before his scandal toppled him, he was knew how to use his winning personality to rake in a LOT of money.

 

This is nothing new in the church, after all.

 

Church history is filled with people like Swaggart—bigger than life personalities who made it all about them.

 

I have known too many church leaders who have  made it clear to me that it was because of them—because their winning personality, or their knowledge of church growth, or their years of expertise—that a particular parish or diocese flourished.

 

 

It’s an unfortunate trap leaders in the Church fall into when they believe that a congregation’s success depends on them as individuals and their own abilities of ministry—and, mind you, I am not just talking about priests here. Lay leaders in the Church have fallen into this trap as well. I have known some of those lay leaders as well, trust me.  

Maybe to some extent it’s true.

 

Maybe some people do have the personality and the winning combination in themselves to do it.  

 

But for those who may have that kind of natural personality, I still have to admit: it all  makes me wary.

 

It’s just too slippery of a slope.

 

We are dealing with similar personalities in today’s Gospel.

 

In our Gospel reading for today, those seventy that Jesus chose and sent out come back amazed by the gift of blessing God had granted to them and their personalities.

 

They exclaim, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!”

 

In and of its self, that’s certainly not a bad thing to say.

 

It’s a simple expression of amazement.   

 

But Jesus—in that way that Jesus does—puts them very quickly in their place.  

 

He tells them, “do not rejoice in these gifts, but rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven.”

 

Or to be more blunt, he is saying rejoice not in yourselves and the things you can do with God’s help, but rejoice rather in God.

 

The burden of bringing about the Kingdom of God shouldn’t be solely the individual responsibly of any one of us.  

 

Even Jesus made that clear for himself.

 

Just imagine that stress in having to bring that about.  

 

Bringing the Kingdom of God into our midst is the responsibility of all of us together.  

 

It is the responsibility of those who have the personality to bring people on board and it is the responsibility of those of us who do not have that winning personality.

For those of us who do not have that kind of personality, it is our responsibility to bring the Kingdom about in our own ways.

 

We do so simply by living out our Christian commitment.

 

As baptized followers of Jesus, we bring the Kingdom into our midst simply:

 

By Love.

 

We do it by loving God and loving each other as God loves us in whatever ways we can in our lives.

 Bringing the Kingdom of God about in our midst involves more than just preaching from a pulpit or attending church on Sunday.

 

Spreading the Kingdom of God is more than just preaching on street corners or knocking on the doors. 

 

It means living it out in our actions as well.

 

It means living out our faith in our every day life.

 

It means loving God and each other as completely and fully as we can.

 

But it does not mean loving ourselves to the exclusion of everything else.

 

It means using whatever gifts we have received from God to bring the Kingdom a bit closer.  

 

These gifts—of our personality, of our vision of the world around us, of our convictions and beliefs on certain issues—are what we can use.

 

It means not letting our personalities—no matter how magnetic and appealing they might be—to get in the way of following Jesus.

 

Our eyes need to be on God.

 

We can’t be doing that when we’re busy preening in the mirror, praising ourselves for all God does to us and through us.   

 

The Church does not exist for own our personal use.  

 

I, for example, am not your free therapist.

 

And the Church is not you group therapy.

 

If we think the Church is there so we can get some nice little pat on the back for all  the good we’re doing, or as an easy way to get us into heaven when we diem I hate to tell you but we’re in the wrong place.

 

And we’re doing good for the wrong intention.

 

The Church is ideally the conduit through which the Kingdom of God comes into our midst.

 

And it will come into our midst, with or without me as individual.

 

But it will come into our midst through us.

 

All of us.

 

Together.  

 

The Church is our way of coming alongside Jesus in his ministry to the world.

 

In a very real sense, the Church is our way to be the hands, the feet, the voice, the compassion, the love of God to this world and to each other.

 

But it’s all of us.

 

Not just me.

 

Not just you as an individual.

 

It’s all of us.

 

Together.

 

Working together.

 

Loving together.

 

Serving together.

 

And giving God the ultimate credit again and again.

 

Hopefully, in doing that, we do receive some consolation ourselves.  

 

Hopefully in doing that, we in turn receive the compassion and love of God in our own lives as well.

 

But if we are here purely for our own well-being and not for the well-being of others, than it is does become only about us and not about God.  

 

And in those moments, we are sounding very much like those 70 who come back to Jesus exclaiming, “look at what we have done!”

The message of today’s Gospel is that it must always be about God.

 

It must always be about helping that Kingdom of God break through into this selfish world of huge egos. It means realizing that when we are not doing it for God, we have lost track of what we’re doing. We have lost sight of who we are following.

 

So, let us—together—be the hands, the feet, the voice, the compassion and the love of God in the world around us. Like those 70, let us be amazed at what we can do in Jesus’ name.

 

But more importantly let us rejoice!

 

Rejoice!

 

Rejoice this morning!

 

Rejoice in the fact that your name, that my name—that our names are written at this moment in heaven.

 

Amen. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 Pentecost

 June 29, 2025

 

1 Kings 19.15-16,19-21; Galatians 5.1,13-25; .Luke 9:51-62

 

+ This past week I started the process of doing something I am not excited to do:

 

I started to revise my Will.

 

I had not realized that my Will was out of date until I actually started going through it.

 

My last revision of my Will was in 2012.

 

That was a long time ago.

 

And my life has changed considerably since then.

 

It was a wake-up call when I realize that four people mentioned in my will are no longer alive, and that two bequests I made in that Will are to places that are no longer operational.

 

That is probably a sign that you should revise your Will

 

And it’s a good reminder for everyone to so on a regular basis.

 

And, when doing so, to consider our brand-new Endowment Fund in your estate planning.

 

It’s not fun to think about things like Wills and funeral arrangements and the final disposition of one’s material goods.

 

And if you’re anything like me—and I hope you’re not—you can easily find yourself obsessing over these things a bit.

 

It’s a control freak thing.

 

I’m aware of it.

 

But being that kind of person means I really have issues with what Jesus is telling the young man in our Gospel reading for today.

 

We hear Jesus say, Let the dead bury their own dead.

 

What?

It’s an unusual statement.  

 

It almost boggles the mind when you think about it.

 

And yet….there is beautiful poetry in that phrase.

 

We hear this saying of Jesus referenced occasionally in our secular society.

 

It conveys a sense of resignation and putting behind oneself insignificant aspects of our lives.

 

Still, it is a strange image to wrap our minds around.

Let the dead bury their own dead.

What could Jesus possibly mean by this reference?

Does it means we shouldn’t bury our loved ones?

 

No. This statement from him, as always, has a deeper meaning—and really only starts to make sense when we put it in the context of his time and who his followers were.

 

When we find this man talking about having to go and bury his father, and Jesus’ response of “let the dead bury their own dead,” we might instantly think that Jesus is being callous.  

 

It would seem, at least from our modern perspective, that this man is mourning, having just lost his father.

 

The fact is, his father actually probably died a year or more before.  

 

What happened in the Jewish culture at that time is that when a person died, they were anointed, wrapped in a cloth shroud and placed in a tomb.

 

There would have been an actually formal burial rite at that times.

 

And of course, Jesus himself would later be buried exactly like this.

 

This initial tomb burial was actually a temporary interment.

 

They were probably placed on a stone shelf near the entrance of the tomb.

 

About a year or so after their death, the family gathered again at which time the tomb was re-opened.

 

By that time, the body would, of course,  have been reduced to bones.

 

The bones would then be collected, placed in a small stone box and buried with the other relatives, probably further back in the tomb.

 

A remnant of this tradition still exists in Judaism, when, on the first anniversary of the death of a loved one, the family often gathers to unveil the gravestone in the cemetery.

 

There’s a wonderful liturgy in the New Zealand Prayer Book that I’ve used many times for the blessing and unveiling of a gravestone.

 

Which I think a very cool tradition personally. 

So, when we encounter this man in today’s Gospel, we are not necessarily finding a man mourning his recently deceased father.

 

What we are actually finding is a man who is waiting to go to the tomb where his father’s bones now lie so he can bury the bones.

 

When we see it from this perspective, we can understand why Jesus makes such a seemingly strange comment—and we realize it isn’t quite the callous comment we thought it was.  

 

As far as Jesus is concerned, the father has been buried.

 

Whatever this man does is merely an excuse to not go out and proclaim the kingdom of God, as Jesus commands him to do.

Now to be fair to the man, he could just be making an excuse, which really under any other circumstances, would have been a perfectly valid excuse.

 

Or he could really have felt that his duty as his father’s son took precedence over this calling from Jesus.

 

Certainly, in Jewish culture, this would be an acceptable way of living out the commandment of respecting one’s parents.

 

It doesn’t seem as though he doesn’t want to follow Jesus or proclaim the Kingdom.

 

He doesn’t flat-out say no.

 

He simply says, not now.

 

In a sense, he is given the choice between the dead and dried bones of his father or the living Jesus who stands before him.

Jesus’ response, which may sound strange to our modern, Western ears, is actually a very clear statement to this man.

 

He is saying, in a sense: “You are attached to these bones.

 

Don’t worry about bones.

 

Break your attachment, follow me, proclaim the goodness and love of God and you will have life.

 

Follow me

 

TODAY.

 

NOW.

 

How many times have we been in the same place in our lives?

 

How many times have we looked for excuses to get out of following Jesus, at least right now?

 

We all have our own “bones” that we feel we must bury before we can go and proclaim the Kingdom of God in our midst by following Jesus.

 

We all have our own attachments that we simply cannot break so we can go forward unhindered to follow and to serve.

 

And they’re easy to find.

 

It’s easy to be led astray by attachments—to let these attachments fill our lives and give us a false sense of fulfillment.

 

It is easy for us to despair when the bad things of life happen to us.

 

Despite bad things in the world or in our own lives, we as Christians just need to remember: the kingdom of God still needs to be proclaimed.

 

Now.

 

And not later. Not after everything has been restored. Not when everything is good and right in the world.

 

Not after we have calmed down.

 

The Kingdom needs to be proclaimed NOW.

 

Now.

 

Even in the midst of chaos.  

 

Even when those crappy things happen, we still need to follow Jesus.

 

We proclaim the Kingdom of God by standing up and speaking out against those forces that seek to undermine basic human dignity.

 

We proclaim the Kingdom of God by living out our Baptismal Covenant in this world.

 

We proclaim the Kingdom of God by loving God and loving others—loving people enough to stand up for their rights, their health, their worth. Their dignity.

 

Let us remember that this is not some sweet, nice, gentle suggestion from Jesus.  

 

It is a command from him.

“Let the dead bury their own dead. But as for you, go, and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

We proclaim the kingdom, as we all know, by loving God and loving each other.

 

You can’t proclaim the kingdom—you can’t love—when you are busy obsessing about the dead, loveless things of your life.

 

You’re not proclaiming the Kingdom when you complain about things, but then don’t DO anything about them.

 

We who are following Jesus have all put our hands to the plow.

 

We put our hands to that plow when were baptized, when we set out on that path of following Jesus.

 

Now, with our hands on that plow, let us not look back.

 

Let us not be led astray by the attachments we have in this life that lead us wandering about aimlessly.

 

Let us not be led astray by our anger.

 

But, let us focus.

 

Let us look forward.  

 

Let us push on.

 

Let us proclaim by word and example the love we have for God and one another.  

 

And when we do, we are doing exactly what Jesus commands us to do.

 

Now is the time.  

 

Stand up.

 

Speak out.

 

Proclaim that Kingdom.

 

And make it a reality in our midst.

 

Now.

 

Let us pray.

 

Holy God, you are a God of justice; send your Spirit as a fire into our hearts and into our mouths that we may speak out against injustice in this world. And in doing so, let us know that we are proclaiming your Kingdom. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trinity Sunday

 

June 15, 2025

 

 

+ Last Wednesday, I observed the 21^st anniversary of my ordination to the Priesthood.

 

My priesthood is now of legal drinking age, if it drank.

 

(It, like me, doesn’t)

 

And on Friday, with my ordination anniversary still fresh in my mind, I was reminded of something:

 

Early in my training for the Priesthood, I was cautioned to avoid “lone wolf” ministry, advice I very often blatantly ignored.

 

Knowing when or even how to ask for help when I need it has often been difficult for me.

 

An example of my “lone wolf” tendencies happened about a year ago when I thought I could simply move one of my heavy plastic window-well covers by myself to cut a weed that had grown inside the window-well.

 

I got the cover off without too much trouble but when I tried to put it back I ended up shattering it (in retrospect I realize it was definitely a two person job).

 

Well, lesson learned.

 

On Friday, I ended up asking our very loyal deacon, John, if he could help his chronically  “lone wolf” priest on a rainy day to pick up and install a new window-well cover.

 

Which he did.

 

And I am grateful.

 

Because, well, I couldn’t have done it on my own.

 

And in gratitude for that, I’m preaching on Trinity Sunday instead of him.

 

Usually, at least for the last five years or so, I let Deacon John preach on this Sunday, which he does well.

 

But, today, I will do it.

 

*sigh*

 

So, why my apprehension about the Trinity?

 

Well. . . when all is said and done, at the end of the day, I can say this about myself:

 

I am don’t know how orthodox I am for people.  

 

Let’s face it.

 

I’m pretty liberal.

 

And the accusation of “heretic” has been tossed in my direction more than once.

 

Probably because, as you all know I am unashamed universalist.

 

I do believe that, eventually, we will all be together with Christ in heaven.

 

I really do believe that.

 

I do not believe in an eternal hell.

 

But despite all of that, I am actually a pretty “orthodox” priest.

 

I am pretty cut and dry on the other stuff.

 

I really do believe Jesus is the Son of God.

 

I really do believe he’s the Word of God Incarnate.

 

I believe prayer does make a difference in this world.

 

I believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist.

 

And let’s not get into my view of Mary and the saints.

 

And then, there’s the Trinity.

 

Sigh.

 

The Trinity.

 

Now, I taught Systematic Theology for 10 years at the University of Mary

 

I still teach Religion on a regular basis.

 

Every time I try to explain it, I find myself nudging over into some kind of heresy.

 

Am I doing a Modalist definition?

 

Or am I guilty of Partialism?

 

So, to avoid anyone getting that ugly “heretic” accusation lobbed at me. I’m not even going to attempt it today.

 

After all, I’m just a priest.

 

I’m not a theologian, nor have I ever claimed to be one.

 

Most of us, let’s face it, don’t give the doctrine of the Trinity a lot of thought.

 

Like you, I really don’t lost a lot of sleep over it.

 

I approach this Sunday and this doctrine of the Trinity as I approach any similar situation, like Christmas or Easter or, as we celebrated last Sunday, the Holy Spirit and Pentecost.

 

It’s a mystery.

 

And I love the mystery of our faith.

 

And let me tell  you, there is nothing more mysterious than the Trinity.

 

God as Three-in-One—God as Father or Parent or Creator, God as Son or Redeemer and God as Spirit or Sanctifier.

 

I know, I know.

 

It’s difficult to wrap our minds around this concept of God.

 

The questions we priests regularly get is: how can God be three and yet one?

 

How can we, in all honesty, say that we believe in one God when we worship God as three?

 

Certainly our Jewish and  Muslim brothers and sisters ask that very important question of us:

 

My answer is: I don’t know.

 

Whole Church councils have debated the issue of the Trinity throughout history.

 

The Church actually has split at times over its interpretation of what exactly this Trinity is.

 

We can debate it all we want this morning.

 

We can talk what is orthodox or right-thinking about the Trinity all we want.

 

But the fact remains that unless we have experienced God in a real and somewhat personal way, none of this talk to the Trinity is really going to matter, ultimately.

 

And there is the key to everything this Sunday is about.

 

We can go on and on about theology and philosophy and all manner of thoughts about God, but ultimately what matters is how we interact with our God.

 

How is our relationship with God and with each other deepened and made more real by this one God?

 

That’s what Jesus tells us again and again.

 

Just love God.

 

In scripture we don’t find people worrying too much about whether they are committing a heresy or not in trying to describe God.

 

What do we find in scripture?

 

We find a constant striving toward a more personal and closer relationship with God.

 

This is our primary responsibility: our relationship with God.

 

How can all this talk about God—how can this thinking about God—then deepen our relationship with God?

 

Our goal is not to understand God: we will never understand God.

 

God is not some Rubik’s Cube or a puzzle that has to be solved.

 

Our goal is to know God. In our hearts. Passionately.    

 

Our goal is to love God.

 

Our goal is to try to experience God as God wishes to be experienced by us.

 

Because God does know us.

 

God does love us.

 

And, more likely than not, we have actually experienced our God in more than one way more than once in our lives.

 

I personally have experienced God in what I would call a tri-personal kind of way (I don’t know what heresy that might be, but I really don’t care)

 

I personally have experienced God as a loving and caring parent, especially when I think about those times when I have felt marginalized by people or the Church or society or by friends and colleagues.

 

I have also known Jesus as my redeemer—as One who, in Jesus, has come to me where I am, as Jesus who suffered in a body and who, in turn, knows my suffering because this One also has suffered as well.

 

And this One has promised that I too can be, like Jesus, a child of this God who is my—and our—Parent.  

 

I have been able to take comfort in the fact that God is not some distant deity who could not comprehend what I have gone through in my life and in this limited, mortal body.

 

In Jesus, God knows what it was to be limited by our bodies.

 

There is something wonderful and holy in that realization.

 

And I have known the healing and renewal of the Spirit of God of my life.

 

If that’s the Trinity—and certainly that’s the Trinity I have experienced in my life—then, it’s wonderful!

 

If all we do is ponder and argue and debate God and God’s nature, we’ve already thrown in the towel.

 

And we are defeating the work of God in this world.  

 

But if we simply love God and strive to experience God through prayer  and worship and contemplation, that is our best bet.

 

No matter what the theologians argue about, no matter what those supposedly learned teachers proclaim, ultimately, our understanding of God needs to be based on our own experience to some extent.

 

Yes, God is beyond our understanding.

 

Yes, God is mysterious and amazing and incredible.

 

But God does not have to be a frustrating aspect of our faith.

 

Our experience of God should rather widen and expand our faith life and in our understanding and experience of God and, in turn, of each other.

 

And that’s where I’m going to leave the whole issue of the Trinity.

 

 

Ok. I’ll say one more thing about the Trinity.

 

Every year, on Trinity Sunday, I place the Andrei Rubelev’s famous icon of the Trinity in the nave

In it you’ll find three angels seated at a table.

 

According to some theological interpretations, these three Angels represent the three Persons of the Trinity.

 

In the icon we can see that all three Angels are shown as equals to each other.

 

In a sense, this icon is able to show in a very clear and straightforward way what all our weighty, intellectual theologies do not.

 

What I especially love about the image is that, in showing the three angels seated around the table, you’ll notice that there is one space at the table left open.

 

That is the space for you.

 

In a sense, we are, in this icon, being invited to the table to join with God.

 

We are being invited to join into the work of God.

 

And I think that is why this icon is so important to me.

 

It simply allows me to come to the table and BE with God.

 

It allows me to sit there and be one with God.

 

No need to wrestle, or debate,  or doubt God.

 

And we realize, certainly in our own life here at St. Stephen’s, that, like this ikon, God is still calling to us to be at the table with God.

 

Here, at this altar, we find God, inviting us forward.

 

And from this table, at which we feast with God, we go out to do the ministries we are all called to do.

 

Today, as we ponder God—as we consider how God has worked in our lives in many ways— and who God is in our lives, let us remember how amazing God is in the ways God is revealed to us.

 

God cannot be limited or quantified or reduced.

 

God can only be experienced.

 

And adored.

 

And pondered.

 

God can only be shared with others as we share love with each other.

 

So, let us sit down at that table.

 

Let us bring our doubts and uncertainties with us.

 

And let us leave them there at the table.

 

Let us let God be God.

 

When we do that—when we live out and share our loving God with others—then we are joining with the amazing and mysterious work of God who is here with us, loving us with a love deeper than any love we have ever known before.