22 Pentecost

October 20, 2024

 

Isaiah 53:4-12; Mark 10:35-45

 

+Sometime in our lives, as much as we hate to admit it, we need people who  rile us up.

 

We sometimes need people who can get under our skins.

 

We might not like it when we encounter people like that.

 

But it is important to have people around us at times who can nudge us out of our complacency.

 

Certainly, we find some of this happening in our Gospel reading for today.

 

Today’s Gospel story is one that I think we can all somewhat relate to.

 

We have all had our own Jameses and Johns.

 

We’ve all had them as co-workers, or students, or simply fellow parishioners.

 

I’ve definitely known some priests like this.

 

They are the ones who—while we quietly labor, quietly do our duties—they sort of weasel their way up the ladder.

 

They jockey for position.

 

They are the ones who try to get a better place in line by butting in front of everyone else.

 

They are the ones who drive us—who work and sacrifice and try to do the good thing—they drive us crazy.

 

Or maybe…and maybe none of us want to admit it …maybe, they are the ones that we relate to the most in this morning’s Gospel.

 

Maybe we are ourselves at times are the James and the Johns.

 

Maybe we ourselves are the Sons or Daughters of Thunder.

 

Whatever the case may be, the fact is James and John are really missing out.

 

Like some of the other apostles, they just don’t get it.

 

They don’t quite understand what Jesus is getting at when he is talking about the last being first.

 

They don’t understand him when he says that we are called to serve and not be served.

 

They just don’t understand that simple virtue of humility.

 

Their view of following Jesus—their view of where they stand in relation to Jesus—is a constant jockeying for position.

 

And many of us to this day feel the same way in our own lives, in our work and in our faith lives.

 

There are many people who look at the Church in this way.

 

For many people in the Church, the Church  is simply a place that is here to serve them.

 

They feel that Christianity is all about being served by the Church.

 

Guess what?

 

I hate to break the news to you.

 

It is not.

 

It is our duty as followers of Jesus, as members of the Church, to serve.

 

What today’s Gospel shows us is that Jesus is calling us to something much bigger than we probably fully understand.

 

I think a lot of us—even those of us who come to church every Sunday—sometimes look at Christianity as a somewhat quaint, peace-loving religion.

 

We dress up, we come to church on Sunday, we sing hymns, we hear about God’s love, we receive Body and Blood of Jesus in the Bread and Wine, and then we go home and…and we don’t think about it again until the next week.

 

But the Christianity of Jesus is not soft. It is not just a whitewashed, quaint religion.

 

The Christianity of Jesus, as we hopefully have all figured out here at St. Stephen’s, is a radical faith.

 

It is a faith that challenges—that makes us uncomfortable when we get comfortable, that riles us when we have become complacent.

 

It is a faith that works well here in church, on Sunday morning, but also should motivate us to get up from these pews and go out into the world and live out the faith we have learned here by serving others.

 

And it is this fact that many of us might find a bit frightening.

 

Like James and John, we all want to gain heaven.

 

We all want a nice place beside Jesus in that world-to-come.

 

I want that place!

 

But few of us want to live out our faith in all that we do and say right now. And even fewer of us are ready to be servants—to be slaves for others.

 

We don’t always want to serve the lowliest among us.

 

We don’t want to suffer like Jesus suffered.

 

We don’t want to taste from the same cup of anguish that Jesus drank from on the night before he was murdered.

 

And we sure don’t want to be humble sometimes.

 

I will admit, I am in that boat a lot.

 

 I sometimes don’t want to be a servant or slave to others.

 

I don’t want to suffer like Jesus suffered.

 

And although I might try—and not always that hard—I am not so good at being humble sometimes.

 

But we all, I think, at least here at St. Stephen’s, are trying.

 

We are all making the effort in some way.

 

As followers of Jesus, we are reminded that we are called truly to be servants to each other and especially to those who need to be served.

 

We are asked as followers to do something uncomfortable.

 

We are asked to take a long, hard look at the world around us and to recognize the fact that there are people living in need in our midst.

 

And we are called to serve them.

 

And in those moments when we ourselves may need to be served, many of us have discovered that serving others is sometimes the best antidote for that need.

 

What we cannot do is ignore those in need.

 

When I ignore those in need, when I don’t serve, when I don’t stand up against injustice—I am made very aware that in that moment, I am not following Jesus.

 

If I don’t do those things, but I still stand up here and call myself a Christian, then I have truly become a “Son of Thunder.”

 

And, for most of us, that is exactly what it sounds like when we want the benefits of our faith, without making the sacrifices of our faith.

 

In those instances, we truly do sound like a low, distant thunder.

 

We cannot bulldoze our way into heaven by riding roughshod over those we should be serving along the way.

 

For us, as followers of Jesus, our job is simply to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves—and when we do, in our lives, in our work, in the way we perceive the world around us, then a natural humility will come over us.

 

In those moments, we do recognize that God is in control.

 

Not us.

 

What is more humbling than that realization in our lives?

 

We are not in control of anything ultimately!

 

Again, here is another example of this radical Christianity.

 

It carries through in how we serve each other. Christians are not expected to bring anyone to God through an arrogant attitude.

 

We are not expected to come charging into people’s lives, making them tremble before us in fear.

 

We are not expected to thump our Bibles and wave the Words of Jesus before people in a desperate attempt to win souls for God.

 

We aren’t forcing God on anyone, nor should we.

 

In doing so, we dominate people.

 

We coerce them into believing.

 

But if we simply serve those Jesus calls us to serve, with love and charity and humility, sometimes that says more than any Sunday sermon or curbside rant.

 

Think of the words Jesus could use.

 

He could use, “power” to mean “dominance,” or “oppression” or “force.”

 

But he doesn’t.

 

Rather, Jesus uses the words “serve” and “servant”

 

In all of this, Jesus is telling us that we are to be servants—servants not only to God, but to each other as well.

 

I, as a priest, who stands here at this altar at each celebration of the Eucharist —I am not the only one called to be a minister of God.

 

We are all called to be ministers of God.

 

By our very baptism, by the Eucharist we share at this altar each Sunday, we are called by God to serve each other.

 

We are not here on Sunday morning to be served—to be waited upon, to be lavished with gifts.

 

We are here to serve.

 

And it is this sense of service that we must take with us out of here into the world.

 

James and John eventually figured this out.

 

They went on from that day and served Jesus in the world.

 

Eventually , they would both die for Jesus as martyrs—as very witnesses to Christ by their deaths.

 

So, for those of us who get angry at the daughters and sons of thunder in our lives—let us be patient.

 

For those of who recognize ourselves as a son or daughter of thunder—just relax.

 

God always finds a way to break through our barriers—if we let God.

 

It is this breaking through, after all, that makes our Christianity so radical.

 

So, let us serve God.

 

Let us serve each other in whatever ways God leads us to serve.

 

By the very fact that we are baptized and fed with Jesus’ Body and Blood in the Eucharist, we live out our service in the world.

 

And when we do, we just may find that the thunder we hear is the thunder not of arrogance or pride, but rather the thunder of the kingdom of God breaking through into our midst.  Amen.

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.