Ash Wednesday

 

March 5, 2025

 Joel  2.1-2,12-17; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6.1-6,16-21

+ I once had a parishioner tell me that they were not appreciative of me preaching to them about sin during Lent.

That elicited one of those looks I occasionally give—a look of absolute bewilderment at what people sometimes say to me.

Some of you have received that same look.

“I’m sorry, Father,” this person said to me, “but what do you know of about my sins and the kind of sins I have to deal with in my own life?

"You’re a celibate asexual male priest of all things!

 "You don’t know the struggles I go through as a married person, as a parent, as a person who struggles with real temptations and real frustrations and real marital issues, for example.”

 Granted, yes, I am that now-very-rare, almost extinct dinosaur of being a celibate priest in the Episcopal Church (there aren’t a lot of us out there, let me tell you)

 Now, as you know, I also don’t make any apologies about any of that, but to say that, because I’m celibate and asexual, I somehow don’t understand others’ struggles, or, worse, that because I’m celibate I somehow seem “removed” from everybody else’s struggles, shocked me.

 I responded to this person the only way I knew how to.

 I said, “You do know that I am a sinner too, right?”

 I understand that this might not be something parishioners want to hear.

 They don’t want to hear that their priest is a sinner just like them.

 But the fact is, we all are sinners.

 That’s what Ash Wednesday is all about.

 This is our time to admit God and to one another,

 “I am a sinner too.”

 We’re all in this boat together.

 It might be different for you as opposed to someone else who is here tonight.

 But each of our dealing with our own sins, in our own ways.

 That doesn’t mean we say that so we can then whip ourselves, or bash ourselves or be self-deprecating.

 We say it as a simple acknowledgment of our humanity before God, our imperfection, that none of us are perfect and that no one—not even God---expects us to be perfect.

 That is exactly what we do tonight and for these next 40 days.

 During Lent, we will be hearing a lot about sin.

 We will be hearing about repentance.

 We will be reminded of the fact that, yes, we have fallen short in our lives.

 And tonight especially, we will be reminded that one day, each of here tonight will one day stop breathing and die.

 We are reminded tonight in very harsh terms that we are, ultimately, dust.

 And that we will, one day, return to dust.

 Yup.

 Unpleasant.

 But…

 …sometimes we need to be reminded of these things.

 Because, let’s face it.

 We spend most of our lives avoiding these things.

 We spend a good portion of our lives avoiding hearing these things.

 We go about for the most part with our fingers in our ears.

 We go about pretending we are going to live forever.

 We go about thinking we’re not really like everyone else.

 We think: I’m just a little bit more special than everyone else.

 Maybe…maybe…I’m the exception.

 Of course we do that.

 Because, for each of us, the mighty ME is the center of our universe.

 We as individuals are the center of our own personal universe.

 So, when we are confronted during Lent with the fact that, ultimately, the mighty ME is not the center of the universe, is not even the center of the universe of maybe the person who is closest to me, it can be sobering.

 And there we go.

 Lent is about sobering up.

 It is about being sober.

 About looking long and hard at the might ME and being realistic about ME.

 And my relationship with the God who is, actually, the  enter of the universe and creation and everything that is.

 It’s hard, I know, to come to that realization.

 It’s hard to hear these things.

 It’s hard to have hear the words we hear tonight as those ashes are placed on our foreheads,

 “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

 You are dust.

 I am dust.

 We are dust.

 We are ashes.

 And we are going to return to dust.

 Yes.

 It’s hard.

 But…

 Lent is also about moving forward.

 It is about living our lives fully and completely within the limitations of the fact that are dust.

 Our lives are like jazz to some extent.

 For people who do not know jazz, they think it is just free-form music.

 There are no limits to it.

 But that’s not true.

 There is a framework for jazz.

 Very clearly defined boundaries.

 But, within that framework there is freedom.

 Our lives are like that as well.

 Our mortality is the framework of our lives.

 We have boundaries.

 We have limits.

 And I am going to talk about those limits during this season of Lent.

 I am going to be talking throughout these forty days about a term one of my heroes coined.

 That hero, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the great Jesuit priest and paleontologist, talked about something called passive diminishments.

 Passive diminishments, according to Chardin, are simply those sufferings in this life that we cannot avoid.

 They are the limits in our lives—the hard boundaries of our existence that we cannot avoid.

 Within those limits, within the boundaries of those passive diminishments, we have lots of freedom.

 And we have the potential to do a lot of good and a lot of bad.

 Lent is the time for us to stop doing the bad and start doing the good.

 It is time for us to store up for ourselves treasure in heaven, as we hear Jesus tell us tonight in our Gospel reading.

 It is time for work on improving ourselves.

 And sometimes, to do that, we need to shed some things.

 It is good to give up things for Lent.

 The reality however is this:

 Yes, we can give up sugar or caffeine or meat or tangible things that might not do us good.

 But let me just say this about that.

 If we give up something for Lent, let it be something that changes us for the better.

 Let it be things that improve us.

 Let us not only give up things in ourselves, but also things around us.

 Yes, we can give up nagging, but maybe we should also give up those voices around us that nag.

 Or maybe confront those voices that nag too much at us.

 Yes, we can give up being controlling and trying to change things we can’t.

 But we maybe also try hard to push back and speak out against those unreasonably controlling forces in our own lives.

 Maybe Lent should be a time to give up not only anger in ourselves, but those angry voices around us.

 Lent is a time to look at the big picture of our lives and ask: what is my legacy?

 How am I going to be remembered?

 Are people going to say of our legacies what we heard this evening from the prophet Joel?

 “Do not make your heritage a mockery…”

 Am I going to be known as the nag? As that angry, bitter person?

 Am I going to be known as a controlling, manipulative person who always had to get my way?

 Am I going to be known as a gossip, as a backbiter, as a person who professed my faith in Christ on my lips, but certainly did not live it out in my life?

 If so, then there is no better time than Lent to change our legacy.

 That is our rallying cry during Lent as well.

 Let us choose to be a good, compassionate, humble, love-filled follower of Jesus.

 That is the legacy we should choose during this season, and from now on.

 After all, we ARE ashes.

 We are dust.

 We are temporary.

 We are not immortal.

 We are bound by our passive diminishments.

 We have limits.

 But our legacies will outlive us.

 In fact, in many ways, they are, outside of our salvation, ultimately, the most important thing about our future.

 Let us live in to the legacy that will outlive us.

 This is probably the best Lenten discipline we can do.

 Most importantly, let this holy season of Lent be a time of reflection and self-assessment.

Let it be a time of growth—both in our self-awareness and in our awareness of God’s presence in the goodness in our life.

As St. Paul says in our reading from this evening: “Now is the acceptable time.”

“Now is the day of salvation.”

It is the acceptable time.

It is the day of salvation.

It is time for us to take full advantage of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Epiphany

 

March 2, 2025

 Exodus 34.29-35; Luke 9.28-43a

 + I usually don’t preach the Last Sunday of Epiphany.

 I am often returning from vacation around this time of the year.

 This year, of course, I took a longer break, which I definitely needed.

 It was good to have some time to travel, to visit other places and other churches.

 It was good to read more than I usually do (I read 18 books during my sabbatical).

 I also finished a new book of poems, this one being another project with Marjorie Schlossman.

 But as good as all of that was, it’s also good to get back.

 And it’s good to be here today, on this last Sunday of Epiphany.

 Way back on January 6 (doesn’t that seem like lifetime ago already?) we began this season with the Magi visiting the child Jesus

 In that event, we had a mysterious star.

 Then, on January 12th, we commemorated the Baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan by John the Baptist.

 The following Sunday, January 19, we commemorated the Wedding Feast at Cana, in which Jesus turned all that purification water into fine wine.  

 Now we end the Epiphany season on another glorious high note.

 First, today, we get this reading from the Torah—from the Hebrew scriptures—about Moses’ encounter with the glory of God on Mount Sinai.

 The glory of God, we find, is so powerful that it has a kind of residual effect on those who encounter it.

 For Moses, in our reading from Exodus, after encountering the glory of God,  “the skin of his face was shining.”

 Then, in our reading from the Gospel today, we find a similar event.

 We find another encounter with the Glory of God on a mountaintop: the Transfiguration.

 I realize that I have preached a lot about the Transfiguration in my 21 years as a priest.

 It’s an event I have explored so often in sermons and in scripture study and in my own prayer life.

 Why is that?

 Because it really is an important event in scripture and in our lives as Christians.

 In fact, it is such an important event that we actually celebrate it twice in our Church Year.

 We celebrate today of course, the Last Sunday of Epiphany—the last Sunday before Lent begins.

 And we celebrate it again on August 6.

 Personally, I truly appreciate that we celebrate it on this Sunday before Lent begins.

 I’m happy that we go into the season of Lent with this vision fresh in our minds.

 I am happy that we enter Lent with the glory of God shining on the skin of our faces.

 There is no better way to enter this season.

 The events of Moses’ encounter with God and the Transfiguration is what will sustain us and hold us and nourish us through these next forty days.

 This Transfiguration and the glory that we see revealed on the Mount was certainly one of the defining events in Jesus’s life.

 And in ours too, as followers of Jesus.

 For us, the glory we witness on Mount Tabor is the glory that awaits us in God’s Presence.

 It is the glory we see whenever we encounter God in our lives.

 On Mount Tabor, we have seen the veil temporarily lifted that separates this world from God’s world.

 And it is a glory that is almost too much for Jesus’ followers to comprehend.

 It is this glory that we glimpse today that sustains us.

 It strengthens us for what we are about to participate in our following of Jesus.

 Because following Jesus always involves this glory that we encounter on the mount.

 Following Jesus means recognizing in him the fulfillment of the Law (which is represented by the presence of Moses on the mount in today’s Gospel reading) and the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures (represented by Elijah’s presence on the mount)

 There is no doubt, as we enter the season of Lent, that the one we follow is not just another great teacher or leader.

 The one we follow is the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed One, the one promised to us in the prophecies, the one who embodies the Law given to Moses.

 This is important to recognize and hold close as we enter Lent.

 Because following Jesus also means following him down off the mountain and onto the path that lead to another hill-top—Golgotha.

 It means following Jesus from the glory of the mount all the way to the darkness and defeat of the cross.

 And, of course, to the eternal glory beyond the cross as well.

 But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

 For now, we are here.

 For now, we are encountering the glory of this moment.

 For now we come down off the mountain with Jesus and his privileged three followers.

 And we are struggling to make sense of this event.

 We are struggling to make sense of this moment of glory.

 What do we do when we encounter the glory of God?

 How do we process it?

 How do we make sense of glory?

 I don’t know if we can make sense of it.

 But what we can do it is embody it.

 What we can do it open ourselves to this glory of God.

 Because it is a glory that is given to each of us, no matter who we are.

 Each of us—no matter who we are—carry within us that transfiguring glory of God—of the God who appeared to Moses, of the God whose glory descending upon Jesus on Mount Tabor, of the God who is our God as well, who loves us and knows us and is well-pleased with each of us.

 And that is what we take away from our encounter with the vision on the mount of the Transfiguration.

 It would be nice to stay here, basking the glory of this event.

 It would be nice to stay put and not come down off the mountain.

 Because once we come off the mountain, we must face some unpleasant things.

 For the followers of Jesus, they must endure their own betrayal of Jesus, they must endure the fact that their betrayal contributes to Jesus’ torture and murder.

 In our lives, we must come down from the mountain and face our own issues.

 We must face a country in daily chaos.

 We must face a lack of empathy and compassion in our society and in our government.

 We must face a world in which tyrants are celebrated and dictators emulated.

 We face a Church that is trying hard to respond to that chaos, to the forces of darkness that seem, at times, to prevail.

 We must come down and face whatever issues we are wrestling with our lives—issues that seem in many ways to detract from the glory that we have just witnessed.

 And as we come down and face those things, it is amazing how quickly the vision of God’s glory vanishes from our minds.

 In that one moment, when all seemed clear, when all seemed to have come together, we find in the next instant that everything is topsy-turvy again.

 And that’s this crazy thing we call life.

 It often works this way.

 We find that we can’t cling to these glorious, wonderful events that happen.

 But what we can do is carry them deep in our hearts.

 What we can do it not let that glory of God that dwells within us and shines brightly on the skin of our faces to die away.

 And if we recognize that, if we embrace that, we find that somewhere down that road away from the mount, it will still be there, borne deep within us.

 Somewhere, when we need it the most, that comforting presence of the God of glory we encountered on the mountain will well up within us and sustain us when we need sustaining and shine brightly on our faces.

 Of course, the stickler about this is that it is not something WE can control.

 We can’t make it happen.

 We can’t conjure that glorious experience whenever we want it.

 It happens on its own.

 It happens in God’s own time.

 It happens when it is needed the most.

 And when it does, it truly does sustain.

 In these next forty days, we will need to be sustained by the glory we encounter today.

 In this upcoming season, we will be encountering a somewhat more dour side of spirituality.

 On Wednesday, we will have ashes smeared on our foreheads as a reminder that we will all one day die.

 We, in this upcoming Lenten season, will face the fact that we truly do have limitations.

 We will remember and repent of the wrongdoings we have done in this life—to God, to others and to ourselves.

 And we will fast.

 Some of us will fast from certain physical foods or drink.

 Some of us will abstain from certain practices.

 Some of us will struggle to use this upcoming season to break certain dependences we’ve had on things and people.

 And in this season, we will hear in our scripture readings and participate in our liturgies the continuing journey away from the amazing mountain-top experience toward the humiliation of the cross of Golgotha. 

 In those moments, we will need to find an inner sustenance.

 In those moments, we will truly see how far we have journeyed away from the mount of Transfiguration.

 We will, at times, no doubt, feel as though we are far separated from the glory of God.

 It will not seem that this glory will be shining on the skin of our faces.  

 But, then, on Easter morning—there again, that glory will be revealed to us once again and it will all fall into place once more.

 So, let us begin our Lenten season with our faces still aglow with this encounter with God.

 Let us go knowing that no matter what will happen—betrayal, physical and emotional pain, even death—we know that what ultimately wins out is the glorious light of God’s loving presence in our life.

 Let us go from here carrying that glory within us, without detachment.

 Let us go from here transfigured with Jesus—changed by this encounter with God’s glory so that we can reflect and spread this glory even in the midst of whatever may come to us in the days that are to come.

  

 

3 Epiphany

 Annual Meeting Sunday

January 26, 2025

Luke 4.14-21

 +This past week was. . . well. . .it was something else.

 This past week was the kind of week preachers dread.

 How many times did I have to re-do my sermon for this Sunday?

 But, despite the weirdness and bizarreness and downright insanity of this week, we were able to hear one clear voice.

 The clear voice of Bishop Marianne Budde.

 That voice—that simple plea of hers—cut right through the chaos and the distractions and the grandstanding.

 And it is that voice that we are listening to this morning.

 It is the words of that sermon that we are clinging to this morning.

 I posted a beautiful illustration of Bishop Budde done up in stained glass, with her words embossed on it.

 “Be merciful to the stranger, for we all were once strangers in this land.”

 That post generated over 460 likes.

 And some lively conversation.

 Not all of it nice or commending. 

 But those words resonated with almost everyone else.

 Even my atheist friends.

 It was a week in which I, for one, could say that I was very proud to be an Episcopalian.

 And I know many of you felt the same way.

 Now, for many, many people, the message of Bishop Budde was seen as radical.

 And it was.

 But for us, here at St. Stephen’s—well, it’s a message we hear almost every week.

 We preach regularly here about inclusion and mercy and standing up against injustice and inequality.

 Maybe so much so that we don’t even really hear it anymore.

 But others do.

 On one local online group, people were asking where they could find a church like Bishop Budde’s church.

 And Pastor Jessica Miller of the Neighborhood Church, who will be preaching here on February 16, wrote this to the group:

 “[I] 100% recommend St. Stephen's Episcopal Church Fargo/St. Stephen's Episcopal Church - Fargo. Not just accepting, but fully affirming. Exude love and grace. Jamie Parsley is their priest, and the whole community is just  truly lovely. You will experience what resonated from Bishop Budde.”

 Those are words we need to hear on this Sunday, our Annual Meeting Sunday.

 For those of us who worship here week in and week out, we sometimes take for granted what St. Stephen’s is and what it stands for.

 But this week, we were reminded that not many churches do what we do.

 Yes, churches many “welcome” others.

 But not many churches “affirm” others.

 Not many churches fully include others.

 Not churches stand for the things that Bishop Budde stood up for this week.

 We do.

 And I think we should remind ourselves of how rare that is, especially here in this community.

  It is this that we need to be reminding ourselves on this Annual Meeting Sunday.

 Being who we are is why we’re here and not somewhere else.

 Now, in our Gospel reading for today, we find a seed for all we do here at St. Stephen’s.

 We find this story of Jesus, standing up and reading this amazing scripture from Isaiah.

 ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’

 He then, after rolling up the scroll, says,

 ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

 Those words echo in our midst, here at St. Stephen’s this morning.

 Do you hear it?

 Listen.

 ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

 Because, yes, today, that scripture from Isaiah has been fulfilled in our hearing.

 By Jesus standing and proclaiming who he is and what he has come to do, he really sets the standard for us here at St. Stephen’s on this Annual Meeting Sunday in 2025 as well.

 We too should proclaim our faith in Jesus in the same way.

 Now, as I say that I pause.

 Most Christians take that to mean something I did not intend it to mean.

 When I say “faith in Jesus,” I don’t mean we should be obnoxious and fundamentalist or bullies in our views.

 You have heard me say a million times from this pulpit that I think way too many Christians proclaim themselves as Christians with their lips, but certainly don’t live it out in their lives and by example (and I am guilty of this myself).

 And it is something at which I bristle again and again.

 But for us, this Gospel reading for today speaks loudly to us and what we do as Christians, as followers of Jesus, as members of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.

 Because the Spirit of God was upon Jesus, and because he was appointed to bring good news to the poor, that truly becomes our mission as well because we follow Jesus and the Spirit of God rests upon each of us as well.

 Because Jesus breathes God’s Spirit upon us, that same mission that the Spirit worked in Jesus is working in us as well.

 And we should, like Jesus, stand up and proclaim that mission to others.

 We, like Jesus, should breathe God’s Spirit on others.

 That is our mission as followers of Jesus.

 How do we do that?

 Jesus has empowered us to do what he says in that reading from Isaiah:

 We are to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of the sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

 Well, that sounds great.

 But…how do I do that in my life?

 It’s easy for priests and poets to say that, you might say.

 But how do I do that in my own life?

 What does that mean to us—to us who are here, in this place, in these mismatched pews, who are dealing with our own doubts, or uncertainties or anxieties?

 It means that we are not to go about with blinders on regarding those with whom we live and work.

 It means that we are surrounded by a whole range of captives—people who are captive to their own prisons of depression and anxiety and alcohol and drugs and conforming to society or whatever.

 People who are captive to their grief or their pain or their own cemented views of what they feel the Church—or this congregation of St., Stephen’s—SHOULD be.

 Our job in the face of that captivity it to help them in any way we can to be released.

 It means that we are not to go about blind and not to ignore those who are blinded by their own selfishness and self-centeredness.

 I am still so amazed by how many people (especially in the Church, amazingly enough) are so caught up in themselves.

 I really think being self-centered is a kind of blindness.

 One of the greatest sins in the Church today is not all the things Bishops and priests and church leaders say is dividing the Church.

 The greatest sin in the Church today:

 Hubris.

 Narcissism.

 Self-centeredness.

 Selfishness.

 Bullying.

 Hubris causes us to look so strongly at ourselves (and at a false projection of ourselves) that we see nothing else but ourselves.

 By reaching out to others, by becoming aware of what others are dealing with, by helping others, we truly open our eyes and see beyond ourselves.

 When we do these things, we are essentially letting the oppressed go free.

 Finally, we are called to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

 This is simply the icing on the cake.

 Once we have proclaimed that God favors us—all of us—not just the single me—that God loves us—not just me—we must then proclaim God’s blessings on us and the work we are called to do.

 And by doing so, we truly become liberated.

 God favors a liberated people.

 God does so because God can only effectively work through a people who have been liberated from captivity, blindness and oppression.

 This to me is where the heart of all we do here at St. Stephen’s lies.

 It is not in our blind faithfulness to the letter of scripture.

 It is not in our smugness that I—the great and wonderful singular me—somehow knows more than the priest or the Church or the Bishops or our elders. Or the President of the United States.

 It is in our humility and the love of God that dwells within each of us.

 It is the Spirit of the living God that is present with us, here, right now, in this church.

 It is in the fact that even if this church building gets blown away, or even if we gloss ourselves up and match our pews and spit-shine our processional cross and preach sermons based squarely on the correct interpretation of scripture (whatever that might be) , we would still be who we are, no matter what.

 We need to be aware that the poor and oppressed of our world—here and now—are not only those who are poor financially.

 The poor and oppressed of our world are those who are morally, spiritually and emotionally poor.

 The oppressed are still women and LGBTQ people in the Church and in the world, or simply those who don’t fit the social structures of our society.

 They are the elderly and the lonely.

 They are the immigrants and the children of immigrants.

 They are those who mourn deeply for those they love and miss who are no longer with us.

 They are the criminals trying to reform their lives.

 They are those who are just leading quietly desperate lives in our very midst.

 We, as Christians, as followers of Jesus, are to proclaim freedom to all those people who are on the margins of our lives both personally and collectively.

 And often those poor oppressed people are the ones to whom we need to be proclaiming this year of the Lord’s Favor, even if those people might be our own very selves.

 This is the year of the Lord’s favor.

 I am not talking this particular Year of Our Lord.

 I am not talking about this year until our next Annual Meeting.

 I am talking about this holy moment and all moments in which we, anointed and filled with God’s Spirit, go out to share God’s good news by word and example.

 This moment we have been given is holy.

 And it is our job is to proclaim the holiness of this moment.

 When we do so, we are making that year of the Lord’s favor a reality again and again.

 This is what we are called to do on this Annual Meeting Sunday and in every day of our lives. 

 And always.

 So, let us, like Bishop Budde, proclaim the good news.

 Let us speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.

 Let us do what we have always done here at St. Stephen’s.

 Let us bring sight to the blind, mercy to those who are oppressed and hope to those who are hopeless.

 Let us bring true hope in our deeds to those who are crying out (in various ways) for hope and mercy, which only Jesus and his followers can bring.

 And when we do, we will find the message of Jesus being fulfilled in our very midst.