Tag: Jesus

Healing, letting go and sunrise

Background: We have just finished a series of three Blue December services at Christ Church Easton for anyone who is having a difficult time during this season. We’ve had a heartening turnout, more people each week, and wonderful feedback from those who attended. The services have been put together and led by a Lutheran Deacon (Mike Hiner) and an Episcopal Deacon (Michael Valliant). This is the text of the reflection/homily in third service on Dec. 18.

“Healing, Letting Go and Sunrise”

St. John of the Cross was a Christian mystic and monk who lived in Spain the 1500s. He is most known for talking about “the dark night of the soul.” John thought it was necessary for us to experience or go through dark nights of our souls in order to fully know, appreciate, and experience the love of God.

It’s a memorable phrase, but it’s not a great marketing campaign. No one is going to line up at the door to go through dark nights of the soul. The reason the phrase and the idea is memorable is not because it sounds desirable; it’s because we can relate to it. I would guess when I say “dark night of the soul” there are a number of us here who understand what that feels like in our own lives.

The fact that we are sitting in a church might mean that we are willing to look to God, look to Jesus for some help with those times.

When you are going through a difficult time, parables don’t seem like the most helpful thing you can come across. But Jesus frequently uses them. That must have been annoying to his disciples and friends.

Jesus, could you please just tell me what I need to do? I don’t have time for another story, another riddle.

Jesus’s parables frequently work on our expectations and our sense of time. The one I come back to over and over again is the Parable of the Sower. And the notion of planting seeds—all over the place, on every kind of soil. The thing about seeds is that they take time to grow. And that, though we can help, we can’t make them grow.

Healing what troubles us is sometimes like planting a seed and/or waiting for it to grow. It doesn’t happen quickly, certainly not fast enough for us when we are hurting. Often we find ourselves waiting.

In my most uncomfortable waiting, I am left with the idea that all I can do is show up, let go of my expectations and desired outcomes, and let God work on them.

I want to talk for a minute about healing. Henri Nouwen was a gifted priest, teacher, and author, who taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard. But where he came alive was when he left those prestigious institutions and became the pastor at L’Arche Daybreak, a community for people with intellectual disabilities in Ontario. It was working with this community where Nouwen got a sense for what work was most important.

He wrote that:

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.”

Someone who shares our pain and touches our wounds. Have you ever had that kind of friend? Have you ever been that kind of friend?

The season of Advent finds us in a time of waiting. There is something about the patience of waiting and the patience of healing that goes together.

Rachel Held Evans was a best-selling author and speaker who died in 2019 at 37 years old from an allergic reaction to a medication she was given for an infection. She wrote a lot about bringing people and groups into the church who felt outcast and unwanted. And she wrote about healing: how the church is called to the “slow and difficult work of healing… being with people in their pain and sticking around no matter the outcome.”

Healing is something that takes time and it is relational. Held Evans wrote:

“Rarely does healing follow a straight or well-lit path. Rarely does it conform to our expectations or resolve in a timely manner. Walking with someone through grief, or through the process of reconciliation, requires patience, presence, and a willingness to wander, to take the scenic route.”


During my lowest times, the immediate thing I want to do is fix whatever is wrong, make it go away and move on. How do I get rid of it?

The only way I have been able to get out of that space is by realizing I can’t fix myself and that ultimately I have to let go of whatever I am holding too tightly—in order to be able to breathe, in order to be able to heal.

In this letting go, I have actually felt weight lift off my shoulders and a sense of being free from whatever it was that had me start to take shape.

This is what Jesus invites us to when he says:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:25-30, NRSV)

We might come to the church, come to Jesus asking to make this hurt go away, and Jesus asks us to set it down, to give it to him… breathe… take a minute… readjust. Taking Jesus’s yoke upon us—being gentle, humble in heart, is how we find rest for our souls.

It takes letting go and it takes time. But we can get there.

I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, but there are times when I can get so worked up, so upset about something that I can physically feel it—it’s a tension, like a clenched fist. Jesus invites us to open that fist. Let it go, give it to him. “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.”

Jesus is offering us rest, both by taking our burdens and by giving us his approach—gentleness and being humble in heart, letting go of the tension and anxiety that we’re holding onto.

Jesus is inviting us into a new way of life, a new way of dealing with suffering—letting it go into God’s love, by which our suffering, our pain, is what helps us experience this love.

St. John of the Cross had his dark nights of the soul. But he didn’t stop there, he didn’t stay there, he used them to come to know God’s love. He waited out the darkness until the light came.

Jesus experienced his own darkness and death on the cross. But he didn’t stay there. He became the sunrise.


Becca Stevens is an Episcopal priest who founded Thistle Farms, a community in Tennessee where women come out of prison and are loved, supported, and taught life skills. They come out of their own dark nights of the soul and into light.

Stevens relates this new light, this sunrise, to the Easter story, and to our lives. She says:

“Sunrise in the story of Easter is not just a time of day; it is a state of the heart. Sunrise is the space where nighttime fears move aside for hope, where we feel peace about our mortality in the scope of the universal truth that love abides and where we feel light crest the dark horizons of hearts we have kept barricaded.”

Sunrise is a state of the heart, where nighttime fears move aside for hope. It takes time. It takes love. It takes letting go. Jesus invites us to give our pain, our fears, our anxiety to him. To try his way of being. And to sit with each other, and him, to help us get there.

Featured image (Top of the Page) – Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Helped Are the Lonely

Background: This month at Christ Church Easton, we are offering Blue December services on Wednesday evenings leading up to Christmas. These services recognize that people have a difficult time leading up to Christmas for any number of reasons–loneliness, grief, depression, anxiety, or just feeling out of step and out of place in a commercially-consumed culture. These services include lighting of candles, prayers, quiet music and singing, Scripture readings and reflections, some silence, Communion with previously sanctified elements (often called a Deacon’s Mass), and they are for are for anyone going through something this time of year who might want to come together for a quiet worship service in the evening in the middle of the week, and have some fellowship and discussion after. Our hope is that people will feel God’s presence and love and experience the company, care, and fellowship of other people.

The Gospel reading for the service on December 4 was Matthew 5:1-12, often called the Beatitudes from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.

“Helped Are the Lonely”

The cards are stacked against us if we are going through a hard time in December. It’s getting colder, it’s basically dark after lunch, Christmas movies and music are streaming 24-7, and we feel like we are supposed to act like we are happy, even when we are the farthest thing from it.

States of being that include loneliness, grief, depression, and anxiety are all connected, we can move back and forth between them. And I say states of being because these aren’t things we can just change our mind about and decide, “I am not going to be lonely or sad,” “I am not going to grieve anymore,” or “I am tired of being depressed.”

But we can reach out. We can show up. We can give ourselves permission, allow ourselves to be low or hurting, or questioning. It may be counter to what we see when we look around this time of year, but it’s honest. Let’s start where we actually are.

How’s it going? Fine. How are you doing? Good. Granted, when someone asks us that when we run into them at the grocery store, that may not be the time and place to bare our souls. But we need to have some place we can do that.

Different people have different ways of coping with life. I don’t know where I would be without distance running and reading, two things that have helped me keep going through some of my darkest times. Reading, in part, because I find people who are describing the same thing I am feeling—someone who helps me give words to something I feel but can’t describe.

There is a poet named David Whyte. In his book “Consolations,” he talks about loneliness.

“Loneliness can be a prison, a place from which we look out at a world we cannot inhabit; loneliness can be a bodily ache and a penance, but loneliness fully inhabited also becomes a voice that asks and calls for that great unknown someone or something we want to call our own.”

One of the questions that led me to searching and to the journey I am on now was wondering in my bones and in my soul, “am I really and ultimately alone—are we only ever truly alone in the Universe?” It’s a question I came back to often enough, and one of the times that it had legs and kicked me in the gut was when my marriage was ending. I knew that even together, I felt alone, I knew that even among friends, I felt alone, like no one was out there, or really understood who I was.

But I wanted there to be. The fact that I didn’t want to be and feel alone, sent me both inside myself and out into the world.

This is David Whyte again:

“Loneliness is the very state that births the courage to continue calling, and when fully lived can undergo its own beautiful reversal.

“Loneliness is the place from which we pay real attention to voices other than our own; being alone allows us to find the healing power.”


Lonely human beings are lonely because we are made to belong. Feeling alone is hard because we aren’t made to be alone. As many times as I feel like living as a hermit would be a lifestyle-change I would embrace—even for an introvert, there are times I need connection.

In one of the most counter-intuitive sermons in the Bible, Jesus says that these low times we experience have a purpose. We call this section of Matthew’s Gospel, the Beatitudes, for its use of the word “blessed.” This is one of the key parts of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. He tells us:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
“Blessed are those who mourn,
“Blessed are the meek,
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…”

Ummm… Jesus, what are you talking about? I’ve felt those things, and no offense, but I’d like to be done with all that.

In her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories,” Debie Thomas writes:

“What Jesus bears witness to in the Beatitudes is God’s unwavering proximity to pain, suffering, sorrow, and loss. God is nearest to those who are lowly, oppressed, unwanted, and broken. God isn’t obsessed with the shiny and the impressive. God is too busy sticking close to what’s messy, chaotic, and unruly.”

What our faith tells us, what Jesus showed again and again with his teaching, his healing, his life, is that it was the outcast, the low, the hurting, the people no one wanted to think about or deal with, who were his people.

Self-reliance and independence are very American values. I can take care of myself, I got this, I don’t need anyone’s help. Those ideas are NOT Christian values. They are not love-centered values.

One of the biggest Christian values we hold is surrendering. Realizing that we don’t control the Universe; that there are so many things in our own lives that we don’t have control of and that we are helped when we surrender our need to be in control to a higher power, to God.

It often happens that we don’t experience a need for God, a need to accept that we aren’t always in control, until things start to fall apart.

And it’s those times that God is closest to us. It’s those times when what we’ve been fed by society—that if we have the right house, the right family, the right job, the right car—then we ‘ll be happy. When that turns out not to give us what we are looking for, or pursuing those things stops making sense, and we are looking for something more substantial, then we are open to another way of thinking about life.

One of the most useful things I’ve run into in thinking about the Beatitudes is the novelist Alice Walker, who wrote “The Color Purple,” in coming up with a similar list for a character of hers, changed the word “blessed” to “helped.” Listen to Jesus’s teaching like this:

“Helped are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Helped are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Helped are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Helped are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Helped are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Helped are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Helped are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

The world wants us to be hard, tough, to put our heads down and be productive. To be good, to be fine, to be surface level.

Jesus wants us to have soft hearts. To go deep. To care for one another, to help one another, to love one another. Our ability to do these things is part of what constitutes the Kingdom of Heaven.

We are not meant to go through life alone. We need each other. We need to be there for each other.

To have soft hearts, to be able to be there for someone, we are helped by knowing what they are going through.

Brene Brown describes herself as a storyteller and social worker. This is how she talks about empathy:

“Empathy is feeling WITH people. I always think of empathy as this kind of sacred space. When someone’s in a deep hole and they shout from the bottom and they say “I’m stuck. It’s dark. I’m overwhelmed.” and we look and we say “Hey” and climb down and say “I know what it’s like down here, and you’re not alone… Empathy is a choice and it’s a vulnerable choice. In order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling.”

Helped are the lonely.

Helped are those who struggle.

Helped are those who feel lost.

Because they are closer to God. And God can help.

And we can help each other.

Was Blind But Now I See

Background: Last weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The Gospel story in the lectionary was Mark 10:46-52, the story of the blind beggar Bartimaeus and Jesus giving him his sight back. Following is the text of the sermon.

“Was Blind But Now I See”

This is a story that begins and ends in faith. Sometimes faith starts in the dark. And sometimes things go dark or at least get obscured without us losing our physical sight.

Faith is not about seeing. Faith is about trust. And trust can lead to vision.

Over the past several weeks, Mark has shown us the disciples failing to understand what Jesus is telling them, failing to understand his mission, and putting their needs and desires before his.

In contrast to that, Mark gives us Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, who shows all the characteristics of being a faithful disciple.

Profession of Faith

Bartimaeus is blind and an outsider and all Jesus has to do is come close to him for the beggar to know who Jesus is and what he can do.

He shouts out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Doing this, Bartimaeus proclaims both Jesus’s identity and his own faith, his trust in Jesus’s power and what he can do.

Even as people try to silence him, Bartimaeus calls out again, louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

This stops Jesus in his tracks. We’ve seen this before in Gospel stories, where someone’s extraordinary belief or faith in Jesus causes him to stop.

Jesus calls him over and in his response to being called, Bartimaeus throws off his cloak—everything he owns—and he leaps up to come to Jesus. Does that remind us of the rich, young ruler, who Jesus tells to give away everything he owns and follow me? Bartimaeus has already done what the rich man couldn’t, and he wasn’t even asked.

The Big Question

As Bartimaeus comes before him, Jesus asks the key question: “What is it you want me to do for you?”

I wonder if there are two questions that Jesus asks in Mark’s Gospel that are the primary questions of our faith:

  • Who do you say that I am?
  • What do you want me to do for you?

Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” And they’ve been working on what that means for the disciples and for Jesus ever since Peter’s answer.

Last week, Jesus asked his followers James and John, “What do you want me to do for you?” The same question he just asked the blind man. And their response was, “We want to sit at your right hand and at your left hand in glory.” They wanted glory, prestige, power. Jesus wasn’t going in that direction, and he told them they didn’t know what they were asking for. Their desires and Jesus’s mission were not aligned.

Now he asks Bartimaeus, a man who has been a beggar, who has been blind, who has figured out how to live his life on the charity of others, what do you want me to do for you?

Bartimaeus being blind, that may seem like a simple answer. But getting his sight will require him to try to live a completely different life, to leave everything he has known and learned, and to go in a new direction.

I wonder, if we are living lives we aren’t happy with… lives that feel empty, or broken, or even just less than we would like them to be; but lives that have become comfortable…. Would we ask for something miraculous that would give us new life, but also ask something of us in return, something that would require us to leave our current lives behind?

If Jesus asked you, what is it you want me to do for you, and you had every feeling that he would give you what you asked for, what would it be?

How We Answer

“The blind man said, ‘Teacher, I would like to see again.’”

He has cast off all he had, he has stepped out of his old life and is taking a risk. He is asking for sight, to go along with the faith he has already shown.

“Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ (And) Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.”

Bartimaeus expressed the faith that the crowds lacked. He gave up everything in a way that the rich young ruler wasn’t able to do. And he answered the question Jesus also asked the disciples, with humility and gratitude. This is what discipleship looks like.

Blind = lost

Last weekend we were in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and I got up early to walk trails through meadows and along the woods to look for and listen to birds. It was a beautiful and quiet morning, and overnight, fog had settled in.

I went to bed with my full eyesight and woke up and my eyes still worked (at least after coffee) and yet, as I was walking around, fog had taken over and I couldn’t see as well as I could the night before.

We live in an area that has fog delays for schools, so I know you can all relate to trying to see through a foggy haze.

I wonder if you’ll take a step with me when I say that fog is also a helpful metaphor in our own lives for when our vision gets obscured, obstructed, and we can no longer see clearly.

I wonder if we can go blind without losing our physical eyesight.

It would be nice to dismiss the story of Bartimaeus by saying, hey, I’m not blind, this story doesn’t apply to me. But I think we are all blinded from time to time, often without realizing it.

Thinking about this reading during the week, I’ve had the lines from the song “Amazing Grace” in my mind:

“I once was lost, but now am found,
was blind, but now I see.”

I wonder if being lost is like being blind. Have you ever felt lost in your life in a way that you couldn’t see to find your way out?

From 2010 to 2014, I commuted across the Bay Bridge to Washington, DC, writing for the Coast Guard. It was a cool job and I met some great people. I never thought I would be able to stomach commuting like that every day and driving into the city.

The jobs I had before that were non-profit jobs here on the Shore. They kept me in touch with the community, they connected me to parts of my family history and opened new doors and new ways of seeing and being in the place where I grew up. And I felt like I was doing something for, and contributing to our shared community.

But it’s hard to make ends meet working for non-profits. My DC job more than doubled the salary I was making on the Shore. I remember driving one day—I don’t remember whether it was on the way to work or on the way home—and thinking, I’m stuck now. I am going to have to keep commuting, keep working in DC for the rest of my career, now that I’ve started this and found the proverbial pot of gold.

There was a slight pause in 2013, when the contract we were working on didn’t get renewed and I had to figure out what was next. I started interviewing for jobs on the Shore and out of nowhere, I had this uncanny and sure sense that I was supposed to go to seminary. Which made no sense, we weren’t even going to church. But that feeling was there.

During that time, I got a job offer on another contract for the Coast Guard, which solved all the financial concerns. It didn’t shake the sense that I was supposed to be doing something else; that I had become completely alienated from the community around me, that I had less time with my daughters for having to commute. But I convinced myself that this was the right decision for my family.

The fog was thick. I took the DC job. During that next year, my entire life fell apart. Family, job, sense of self and self-worth. I had become lost, even though I saw every step I was taking.


Last weekend, when I was walking in the fog, a cool thing happened. I was walking up the hill towards the B&B where we were staying and the fog was laid in, but the sun was also coming up. And as we know happens, the sun started to burn off the fog. If you can take the time to stand in one place, facing toward the sun, and watch as it overcomes the fog, and the fog begins to fade, clarity sets back in. It’s nothing short of miraculous to watch.

I don’t have 20/20 vision as my glasses attest to. But over the course of the last 10 years, I have gone from feeling lost, to being found. From being blinded, to regaining my sight.

And the question that helped me get there—though at first, I didn’t recognize that it was Jesus asking it—was, “What do you want me to do for you?” What do you want your life to become?

Following and Freedom

On my West Virginia morning, and really anywhere there is fog, it takes the sun to burn it off. There was nothing I could do on my own to see through it, it was the sun that had to do the work. In my life, in Bartimaeus’s life, and for many others, it took the S-o-n, Jesus, to give us back our sight, our vision.

Bartimaeus needed his sight to live the life he wanted to live. But he showed it wasn’t just about him. When he regained his sight, what did he do with it? He followed Jesus. In doing so, with his new life, I think it is fair to say that the seeing Bartimaeus was more truly who he was supposed to be than the blind version of himself ever was.

He used his sight in the service of God. Not because he was told to—all Jesus said was “Go.” Bartimaeus followed Jesus in act of gratitude and of realizing what his sight was for.

Author, pastor, and theologian Frederick Buechner put it wonderfully when he said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

It’s been my experience that when we put our trust in Jesus and start to follow, when we let the sun burn off the fog, that meeting place of our deep gladness and the world’s hunger becomes more and more clear.

Are you seeing clearly or do you feel lost? If you feel lost, when Jesus draws near to you, do you trust him enough to call his name? If he asks you what you want him to do for you, do you know what your answer will be? Will it be to ask for the sight to live your life to the fullest, to live the life that God has envisioned for you? To align your sight and your life in following the one who gives us both life and sight?

“I once was lost, but now am found.
Was blind but now I see.”

Luke’s Witness

Background: October 18 is set aside on the lectionary calendar as the Feast of St. Luke, the Evangelist. At Christ Church Easton‘s weekly Wednesday Healing Service, I gave an appreciation homily for Luke. This is the text of the homily.

Luke’s Witness

Matthew’s Gospel begins with “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah…”

Mark gives us, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

John goes deep: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Brace yourselves. In each case, we’re diving right in.

Here is how Luke starts his Gospel:

“Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative about the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I, too, decided, as one having a grasp of everything from the start, to write a well-ordered account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may have a firm grasp of the words in which you have been instructed.”

The author of Luke is also credited with being the author of the Book of Acts, which begins: “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day he was taken up to heaven.”

The name Theophilus can be translated to mean, lover of God, friend of God, or loved by God. “God lover” may be a more fun way to say it, and our sister-in-Christ, Rev. Barbara Coleman used to like to call all her church friends “Theophilus.” “How’s it going, Theophilus?”

As an aside, if you ever find yourself wondering who was the most prolific New Testament writer… you might jump to John, hey he wrote the Gospel and possibly the letters, so probably him, right? Wait, we have all those letters, the epistles, attributed to Paul, it’s gotta be Paul. Good guess. If you take Luke as the author of both the gospel and Acts, he’s got more words and pages than anyone else in the New Testament. The scales tilt to Luke.

Luke is our only transparent Gospel writer: he’s intentional, he tells us what he’s trying to do. Lots of folks have tried to put this story together. I think I have a good grasp on these things, so I want to give you a well-ordered account so that you can understand what happened here. Not that there is anything wrong with the others, but check this out…

What do we get from Luke’s witness? What’s different from the other Gospels?

15th century depiction of St. Luke, the Evangelist


It’s Luke who gives us Mary’s perspective, her encounter with the angel and news of her pregnancy, along with Elizabeth and the cousin connection to John the Baptist.

It’s Luke who gives us the shepherds coming to see Jesus at his birth and thereby Linus’s speech from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

It’s Luke who gives us the only glimpse of Jesus’s childhood with the 12-year-old Jesus in the Temple

Whereas Matthew gives us Jesus’s family tree back to Abraham, Luke goes all the way back to Adam (interestingly, the family trees don’t perfectly match, but that’s another story).

It’s Luke that gives us the parables of the Good Samaritan, the neighbor asking for bread for an unexpected visitor, Lazarus and the rich man, and the prodigal son. They aren’t in the other Gospels.

And the Resurrection story of Jesus and the men on the Road to Emmaus is a story only in Luke.

In Luke we see the elevation of women in ministries, a huge push on lifting up the poor and on social justice. When Jesus gives us his Beatitudes, he is not giving the Sermon on the Mount that we see in Matthew, he comes down to a level place to talk with people.

In talking about how Luke put together his Gospel, Franciscan author Richard Rohr says:

“Luke is creating his gospel using Scripture and tradition, and he’s doing it within a believing community. In putting together his gospel, he’s not only drawing on past Scriptures, such as the Hebrew Bible and Mark’s Gospel, but he’s also weaving in contemporary spirituality, knowledge of the theological schools of Judaism, experience of the times, insights of the believing community (the living body of Christ), and putting it all together.”

Luke looked around, talked to everyone he could, incorporated his own perspective and knowledge, and synthesized this kind of composite account that gives us a deeper understanding of who Jesus was than if Luke had just figured the other accounts were enough.

And there is nothing else in the New Testament like Acts, the days of the early church—Peter finally putting it altogether and becoming “the Rock” of the movement that Jesus predicted he would be; the opening of the ranks to include Gentiles; earthquakes and road trips and shipwrecks, and the conversion of Saul the persecutor of Jesus followers to Paul, the Apostle.

In about a month and a half, when the new church year begins with Advent, we’ll be in a Luke lectionary year, and we’ll see more closely what Luke’s witness is.

Here is a question I have for you. We can see what Luke felt it was important to include in the Gospel that no one else had. We can see what questions Luke asked and wanted answers for. Now take out your reporter’s notebook and pen or pencil: if you were to write your own account of the Gospel, what are the things that aren’t there, the questions that aren’t answered in the other accounts, that you would ask and want to find answers to? What details or eyewitness accounts would you put in your Gospel account?

I want to bring us back to today’s Gospel reading. Luke shows Jesus coming to Nazareth, going to the synagogue, taking and reading the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Jesus reads:

“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.”

And with everyone staring at him, Jesus then says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus just read his mission statement: bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Luke’s witness to who Jesus is and what his messiahship looks like is Scripture-based, radical, relevant, and social justice-minded.

Talking about Luke’s witness, preacher and author Frederick Buechner says:

“To put it in a nutshell, by playing all these things up Luke shows he was a man who believed that you shouldn’t let the fact that a person is jailbait keep you from treating that person like a human being, and that if you pray hard enough, there’s no telling what may happen, and that if you think you’ve got heaven made but don’t let it worry you that there are children across the tracks who are half starving to death, then you’re kidding yourself.”

The people in Nazareth who heard Jesus read the scroll and go on to call them out got angry, drove Jesus out of town, and up to the top of a hill hoping to throw him off of it.

How do we react to the Jesus Luke shows us?

Let’s shoot for the disciples on the road to Emmaus, for whom Jesus blessed and broke bread and gave it to them, “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him… and they said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’” And they go to Jerusalem and tell everyone, “The Lord has risen indeed.”

“The Road to Emmaus,”  by Robert Zund

Let’s Get Back to Love

Background: October 5-6 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The Gospel reading for the lectionary was Mark 10:2-16, where Jesus is questioned about divorce and he goes on to say, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” This is the text of the sermon I gave.

“Let’s Get Back to Love”

In the not quite three years I have been preaching, this is the second time I’ve landed on one of Jesus’s divorce readings. As someone who has been through a divorce, last time out I bounced off personal experience to talk about how devastating divorce can be and how it is to be avoided if at all possible.

This time I want to take a step back and look at why Jesus always seems to make our lives harder by making the laws and rules even more strict than what the Pharisees and scribes bring to him.

Something to keep in mind: Jesus fully engaged and answered everyone who came to him with an honest question or concern. We’ll see that next week in the case of the rich, young ruler. But Jesus is wary when the Pharisees try to test him or trick him into saying something that will get him in trouble. He is wise to what they are up to.

The Pharisees ask: is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Jesus asks: what did Moses command you? They said: Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.

And now Jesus gets to the crux of the matter: “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.”

The law gives us the least we have to do to in order to play by the rules and to get what we want. The Pharisees who repeatedly question Jesus are concerned with the law for the sake of the law. They aren’t concerned with the why behind the law, the intent of the law.

First of all, if you are approaching marriage with the attitude and question, is it legal to get divorced? You probably shouldn’t be thinking about marriage.

People then, and now, want to know what rules or code do I have to follow to be considered righteous, to be a good person, and to go to heaven, right? We’d all like to know that, and to know if we are on the right path, or if we need to make some adjustments.

That’s putting the cart before the horse. Jesus, then and now, is concerned about our hearts, about our relationships, with God and with each other. About us living life and living life abundantly. If we are going to do that, our abundance can’t be at someone else’s loss, pain, or cost.

Jesus was aware of what happened back then to a woman who had been divorced. It would be hard for her to find protection, provision of any kind, dignity, or to have much of a future. That does not give her much of a chance to live life abundantly, to be in right relationship with God and her neighbors.

The laws are the lowest standard. Let’s look just quickly at the commandments that are concerned just with how we treat each other:

  • Honor your mother and your father
  • Don’t commit murder
  • Don’t commit adultery
  • Don’t steal
  • Don’t give false testimony against your neighbor
  • Don’t covet anything that belongs to your neighbor

If we live and follow those laws, does that sound like a happy life? Does that sound like abundant life? That sounds like the bare minimum you can do to stay out of trouble.

All of these laws address the hard-heartedness of people; what they had become, what we are still, and where we fall short in needing clear-cut rules to keep us straight and spell out how to treat each other.

That’s why in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “murder? That’s a pretty low bar. You’ve got to deal with and address that feeling when it’s still anger, long before it gets anywhere close to murder.” It’s not about the law, it’s about the heart. We need soft hearts to love.

Here is what we’ve lost: LOVE IS OUR DEFAULT SETTING. Jesus gets that.


In Mark Chapter 12, one of the scribes asks Jesus, which commandment is first (or greatest) of all? And Jesus gives the response we’ve come to know: “Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love. Be passionate. Care for each other. Live life to the fullest. There is no, “thou shalt not…”; there is no, “is it legal if…”

Jesus is trying to help us get back to our default settings. But we’ve put so much in the way of that, even as the church, which is the issue Jesus kept having with the Temple leadership who cite laws left and right, but keep out the people—the poor, the sick, the marginalized; the sinners and the tax collectors, who Jesus was at the table with and caring for.

In last week’s Gospel, we heard Jesus say, “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”

These little ones, who are learning to believe, learning to love, don’t go quoting Scripture, quoting laws at them, don’t belittle them or cause them to stumble. Help them. Encourage them.

But how? How are we supposed to do all that? People are so weird and hard to deal with. They’re too people’y.

On the road with his disciples, Jesus has been trying to get it through to them. You’ve got to put down, you’ve got to give up, these lives that society is trying to hand to you. You’ve got to put down the things that divide us and put barriers between us. You’ve got to give up the lives you’ve been living, pick up your cross, and follow me.

If we put down the crap that we’re being fed, if we give up the lives that are full of judgment, hatred, power, and status, we are free to pick up and be filled with Jesus’s love. We give up our small, ego selves so that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit.

When we let go of the doubt, the fear, the skepticism and pessimism we are being handed, we become like children: free to love.

“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.”

As a little child. Open, innocent—not jaded, tainted, asking which laws are the ones that really count.


Love is our default setting. Jesus and gift of the Holy Spirit are the reset button. God’s grace is our fresh start.

Well, sure, that’s easy for Jesus to say; He’s Jesus. What about us, who are flawed and human and who mess up? What does it look like for us to let go and start again?

Let me introduce you to Francis. Saint. Francis. Of Assisi. October 4 was the Feast of Saint Francis, who is often held up as the human being who most fully lived a life of Christ-like love. He saw the divine in everything and everyone and lived his life in a simple way. He didn’t start out that way, he found it as a new way of being.

Francis let his love of Christ guide him, rather than rules or laws. Franciscan Friar and author Richard Rohr describes Francis like this:

“Creation itself—not ritual or spaces constructed by human hands—was Francis’ primary cathedral. His love for creation drove him back into the needs of the city, a pattern very similar to Jesus’ own movement between desert solitude (contemplation) and small-town healing ministry (action). The Gospel transforms us by putting us in touch with that which is much more constant and satisfying, literally the “ground of our being,” which has much more “reality” to it, rather than theological concepts or ritualization of reality. Daily cosmic events in the sky and on the earth are the Reality above our heads and beneath our feet every minute of our lives: a continuous sacrament, signs of God’s universal presence in all things.”

Wow. Not a bad way to live and look at the world.

Imagine being so filled with God’s love that when we go out the doors of the church, we carry it with us and give it to everyone and everything we encounter. Imagine someone’s impression of us being, “wow, they were full of love and light”—where did they get that? How can I get some too?

The Pharisees and scribes asked Jesus questions to try to trip him up and to get him in trouble. They were the law-abiding citizens. They wanted to know if it is legal for a man to divorce his wife.

That’s one end of the continuum: following the rules for the rules’ sake. Righteousness is following the law. Now listen to the words that St. Francis is most known for, the prayer that is attributed to him:

“Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

That’s not about the law, it’s about love; the self-sacrificing love that Jesus modeled for us with his life and through his death—the love that overcame death. The love that opens the door for us.

Which do you want your life to be about? Let’s go with Jesus and Francis. Let’s get back to love.

Amen.

A Francis Experience

Context: October 4 is set aside as the Feast of St. Francis. It’s a day I celebrate by both remembering him and by trying to be outside and honor the environment and creatures he so loved. The image at the top of the page is from artist Sue Betanzos, who creates art for people who love animals and nature, and whose portrayals of St. Francis, I rather dig. At this week’s healing service at Christ Church Easton, I gave a short homily on Francis, the text of which is below.

“A Francis Experience”

I first experienced God outside, in Creation. And that is still where I experience God’s presence most frequently. So when I first came across St. Francis of Assisi years ago, in context of being the patron saint of the environment and of animals, I was drawn to him.

If you dig into his life and teachings, Francis (1181/82 – 1226) is fascinating. He was the son of a wealthy merchant and he lived it up until he was taken prisoner in battle and held captive for a year. Following his release, he was sick for a year and during that time he had dreams and visions that caused him to transform his life. He was in his early 20s when this happened. And he proceeded to live a life most of us couldn’t handle or live up to. He embraced and marveled in all of God’s creation.

We hear stories and picture Francis preaching to animals and wandering around in fields taking in and basking in God’s love. But that misses so much of who he was. People who lived at the same time he did said Francis lived out the Sermon on the Mount better than anyone besides Jesus. Taken that a step further, it is St. Francis who many hold up as the human being who most fully lived out what it is to live a life of Christ-like love.

The current Pope adopted the name Francis after St. Francis, and there is an order of Franciscan friars or monks, among whom Richard Rohr—who is one of my go-to theologians and writers—is one of the most widely published public figures. About Francis, Rohr says:

“The truth of Francis’ respect for animals is far more profound than mere “birdbath Franciscanism” lets on. Everything was a mirror for Francis. What he saw in the natural world, in the sky, in animals, and even plants was a reflection of God’s glory. His first biographer, Thomas of Celano, writes about how Francis was constantly praising creatures for giving God glory just by their very existence. They could simply be and be themselves. Eventually, nature mirrored back the same message to Francis himself: He could just be and be himself in all of his freedom and joy and poverty.”

In my experience, teenagers don’t often get excited about things that their parents get excited about. This past Saturday, Holly and I were sitting on the deck, in a wonderful light breeze, reading and watching and listening to birds at the feeders in the back yard. My 19-year-old daughter Ava came out to join us. She knows how I get worked up over sunrises and sunsets and birds.

We sat outside having a wonderful conversation and laughing. And using the Merlin Bird App Sound ID, we were hearing a new-to-us bird, an American Redstart, a migratory warbler, that are coming through the area in big numbers right now. The adult males are black and orange similar to a Baltimore Oriole (the bird, not the baseball team). We started seeing two small gray and yellow birds and Ava became fascinated by them, and was able to spot them everywhere they went around the yard—she was totally absorbed and dialed-in to their presence. It was like watching a little kid follow a butterfly around. Turns out they were immature and/or female Redstarts, which is how most of them look in the fall.

Photos are from the Merlin Bird App from Cornell Lab.


It was the simplest, most incredible afternoon and Holly and I looked at each other and said, “This is the very best stuff.”

One more story. Seventeen years ago a friend and I decided we wanted to run an ultramarathon, a race longer than a marathon, and we picked a 34-mile trail race around Holiday Lake in Appomattox, Virginia. The race was directed by a guy who once held the records for fastest hikes of the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail.


It was early February. It was 14 degrees and the race started in the dark, a few hundred of us running through the woods on singletrack trails with headlamps. It’s hilly, and beautiful, and we’re winding along next to the frozen lake.

As the sun comes up, there is fog lifting off the lake and this crazy, loud sound, which sounds just like whales communicating back and forth, is echoing through the woods. I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s the ice beginning to melt and cracking and shifting the length of the lake.

We move just away from the lake, into an opening field and meadow, the sun is moving into the sky and reflecting off frost all over the trees and ground. The group of us running together have never met, don’t know each other at all, and as we are all taking this scene in, in awe and wonder, a woman says, “This is why I do this.” And that begins a conversation with a handful of us, new friendships over the next several miles.

Backyard birding with Ava and running around the lake in the winter, these are what I call having a Francis Experience. I can describe so many of them, with new ones each week. I wonder if you have had your own Francis experiences, outside, in Creation, where you felt love and connection in a simple and deep way.

When we remember St. Francis in our prayer book, it is with the prayer that is attributed to him, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, let us so love” and so on.

Today, I will leave you with some of Francis’s words you may not have heard, an excerpt from his “Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon,” which give you a sense of how he looked at and revered God, Creation, and everything and everyone therein:

“Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
Who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour,
Of You Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all weather’s moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water,
So useful, humble, precious and pure.

Praised be You my Lord through Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You my Lord through our Sister,
Mother Earth
who sustains and governs us,
producing varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.

Praise be You my Lord through those who grant pardon for love of You and bear sickness and trial.

Blessed are those who endure in peace, By You Most High, they will be crowned.”

This Feast of St. Francis, today and every day, may we have, may we cultivate, and may we share our Francis Experiences.

Choose Wisely

Background: August 3-4 was a preaching weekend for me. The lectionary readings included 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a–the fallout from King David’s underhanded actions with Bathsheba and Uriah, and John 6:24-35, where Jesus talks about the sign of feeding the 5,000 and proclaims, “I am the bread of life.” Following is the text of the sermon I gave at Christ Church Easton, connecting the two readings.

I want to take us back a couple months ago, to one of our readings at the beginning of summer, just after Pentecost. It’s from 1 Samuel.

The people of Israel tell Samuel they want a king. Samuel passes the message along to God, who says, “You shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

Samuel relays God’s warnings of all the nefarious things a king will do. And then we hear:

“But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

Now, God wasn’t warning them that they were going to get a bad egg as a king. He was warning them against placing trust in worldly power; he was warning them against what being king does to people, how they can get caught up in all that goes with the position.

In the case of this particular king, God loved David. He wasn’t against him. And when all this went down with Bathsheba and Uriah, God didn’t give up on him. But David sure messed things up.

Not every story in the Bible has a fairytale, happy ending. We get the good, the bad, and the ugly—and some of the stories leave us in a bad spot. They are supposed to. The story of David and Bathsheba leaves us in a lurch.

I have to say, I like Nathan and the approach God came up with for him. The story about the one little ewe lamb and watching David get fired up about it—revealing that he still has some sense of justice and compassion in him, outwardly looking anyway.

God blasts David for what he’s done; He speaks to David in David’s own language, based on his actions and the things that are important to him. God didn’t say to Israel—“See? Didn’t I tell you bad things would happen if you went with a king?” Instead God still loves David, tries to work through what has happened, avoid anything like that happening again, and come to a better understanding and a better relationship on the other side.

And though God doesn’t say I told you so, the king issue is still a problem. In this case, a problem that may have a proposed solution, right in our readings over the last two weeks.

In last week’s reading, after Jesus had fed the 5,000 people with just a few loaves and some fish, they had a notion that Jesus was the prophet to come into the world.

“When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”   


Jesus wants no part of the worldly power that the crowds want to give to him. God warned Israel that they didn’t want a king. Israel said, “oh yes we do, we want to be like everyone else in the world, the king can fight our battles, and we’ll be on the news just like the cool countries.”

The people witness the signs Jesus is doing and they think, well finally, here’s the guy, this is the king we’ve been waiting for. Jesus says thanks, but no thanks.

Jesus’s mission is much bigger, more profound, more earth-shattering, more kingdom-bringing than becoming the next king on a throne.

Remember, these aren’t bad people who want to make Jesus king. These are people who witnessed him healing and curing the sick. They followed him and Jesus loved them and had compassion enough that he performed another miracle and fed them.

In writing his Gospel account, John doesn’t call these things that Jesus is doing miracles: he calls them signs. Because they point to something bigger than the sign itself. And in this week’s reading, Jesus explains something about this sign. He says:

“Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

People eating their fill of loaves is what they do in the world of kings. Food that endures for eternal life is what they do in the kingdom of God. Jesus uses this feeding sign to point to the thing behind it: to point to God.

This is tough stuff for the people to get their head around. They’re not getting it. They ask:

“What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing?”

Maybe now we can understand why Jesus walks away from the crowds sometimes. “What work are you performing?” Hey guys, Jesus is going to do another magic trick! Let’s set up a tent and some seats and take in the show!

The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, is full of stories of the relationship between God and His people, where the people get confused, lose sight of God’s love and their covenant; they get tempted and give into temptation, and God keeps giving them course corrections. Reminders. “Remember, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… I’ve done all these things for you.”

What we see in Jesus and what we see in the Gospels is what it looks like to make the right decisions, to repent from the wanting of kings and the low-hanging fruit of worldly desires, power grabs, and putting ourselves first. Where Israel wanders lost in the dessert for 40 years, Jesus doesn’t give into temptation during his 40 days in the wilderness. Jesus is the course correction, he shows us how to live in this life, what to focus on, who to care about, who to take care of, how to love, so that we move beyond our small, selfish selves, by giving up our lives and our want for kings and focusing on heavenly things and eternal life.

Every day we make choices. In some cases, those choices can move us away from God and towards the world who wants to be ruled by kings. Some of our choices can move us closer to God, closer to Jesus, who is trying to show us how to make the right decisions.


In her book, “An Altar in the World,” Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor is invited to go speak at a church in Alabama. She asks what they want her to talk about. The priest says, “Come tell us what is saving your life now.”

Brown Taylor says:

“All I had to do was figure out what my life depended on. All I had to do was figure out how I stayed as close to that reality as I could, and then find some way to talk about it that helped my listeners figure out the same things for themselves.”

“Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

How do we come to Jesus? How do we believe? What are things we can do to draw closer to God, to make the right decisions?

Tell us about what is saving you now. Here are some of things that have helped me lately:

Rest – I am less likely to rush into a bad decision when I rest, when I pause. We’ve spent the last couple Sunday evenings on the screened in porch and in the yard to watch the sunset and the sky. Taking an afternoon walk down the tree-lined, gravel lane to Claiborne Beach. Hit the reset button. If people’s energy is intense and they are spun up about something, as we see so often right now, if I have caught my breath and come to a situation rested, my chances of making good decisions are better.


Prayer – when I am in conversation with God, when I am listening, I am more likely to be looking at life from a bigger perspective than just my own. We stay close to people we spend time with. Prayer is a great way to spend time with God. At our healing service this week, someone talked about, when she feels distant from God, she starts her prayers with, “Lord, have mercy on me.” That puts us in a place of humility. Being humble can be its own category.

Gratitude – if I find something to be grateful for each day, my heart and my mind are aligned. If David had looked around and said, “Wow, look at the kingdom I have, the life I am living, and been grateful to God for it all, maybe he doesn’t put himself in the situation that gets him in so much trouble.

Heartbreak – this is about perspective. Over the past few weeks, I gave a homily at a friend’s funeral and watched his 16-year-old daughter give a eulogy for her father; another friend lost his wife about this time last year and now his brother is in home hospice. Another friend last week was in the church praying on her late husband’s birthday and we got to catch up, and what a gift to see that their love continues even now. So many people around us, our friends, our family, members of our congregation, are going through so much. If we allow our hearts to break with theirs; to know we can’t fully understand what someone else is going through, but we can try to be there with them; that’s what Jesus asked us to do. Heartbreak reminds us what things are most important and what decisions to make.

Study – I have so much more to learn about the Bible. God’s inspired Word; a library of readings for our learning, sometimes as night and day different as someone sleeping with a neighbor’s wife and then plotting to have that same neighbor killed; to feeding 5,000 hungry people who are looking for something more than food. When I spend time reading and reflecting, learning from Scripture, I am being fed with more than food.

Jesus is talking about feeding people spiritually, going beyond just our human hungers and thirsts. Not discounting them but using them to point to something bigger. To point to the one who was sent to give us these signs; the one who was sent to show us how to love and how to live; and when the crowds asked what they had to do, Jesus said believe in me. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Believing, when it comes to Jesus, isn’t about just agreeing with him, it’s not some mental exercise. It’s about how we live our lives, how we love, and what we do with our time. I still make a lot of bad decisions. But prayer, gratitude, rest, heartbreak, and study are some of the things that help me make the decisions God hopes I’ll make. As you go about your week, think about what things are helping you. What is saving you, bring you closer to Jesus, helping you believe, right now?

Putting Love First; Keeping Soft Hearts

Background: This past weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton and the lectionary Gospel reading was Mark 2:23-3:6, where Jesus and his disciples eat pick and eat grain from the grainfields on the Sabbath and Jesus heals a man with a withered hand against protests from the Pharisees. It was also a commissioning weekend for our newest Stephen Ministers and a new leader for the program. Following is the text of my sermon.

“Putting Love First; Keeping Soft Hearts”

Thirty years ago or so I remember having a discussion about integrity, and a definition that was put out there was “doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.”

I don’t remember anything else about the conversation, but I’ve thought about that definition a number of times since. And Jesus as we meet him in the Gospel stories seems to me a perfect example of what that kind of integrity looks like in action. We see it beautifully in today’s reading.

Jesus and his disciples are walking through grainfields. They are hungry, so they pluck the heads off grain and eat. The Pharisees call them out for working on the sabbath, doing something that is against their law. It’s unthinkable to the Pharisees that someone would do this.

Jesus tries to speak to them in their own language, with historical precedent. “Hey, we all agree that David is someone we revere right—you guys are on Team David. Remember when David and his friends were hungry and needed food? He went into the Temple and got the bread of the Presence and they ate it. That’s a way bigger deal than this.”

You can almost hear the Pharisees grumbling—who does this guy think he is, David?

Then Jesus makes a statement that they just aren’t ready for: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.”

When I look at the world today, the idea of sabbath rest might be one of the things the world needs most to help get us back on track. We are in full production mode—work, produce, more, faster, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a society, we’ve almost totally discounted the idea of the sabbath, a day to rest, to recharge, and enjoy the day.

Jesus was all about that. And he frames it beautifully—the sabbath was instituted, for the benefit of humanity, to make sure we rest, we take a break—not to be just another law that has to be followed and adhered to at all costs.

Something that Jesus understood and tried to make clear in his teaching and his actions was to look at the SPIRIT of the law, not the LETTER of the law.

The disciples were hungry, they weren’t harvesting. They needed something to eat, not to take grain to the marketplace. The spirit of what they were doing was sustenance, not work.

Now the Pharisees have their guard up. This Jesus character is shifty. He’s given them a what-for. Keep an eye on him. Now, they go into the synagogue and there is a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees have it in their mind, no healing on the sabbath.

“Jesus Heals a Man with a Withered Hand,” Scribe: Ilyas Basim Khuri Bazzi Rahib, ink and pigments on laid paper, 1684, collection Walters Art Museum.


Jesus calls the man with the withered hand forward. He looks at the Pharisees and says, “Is it lawful to good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”

Crickets. Not a word. Silence.

The power and condemnation of this line strikes me: “He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart…”

Mark is a Gospel writer of few details, but his words here and crushing and heartbreaking at the same time.

Jesus was “grieved at their hardness of heart.” Here is a human being at the synagogue who is suffering. How can he rest as the people of Israel were instructed to do if he has a condition that keeps him from living his life every day of the week?

The spirit of the law, not the letter of the law. Doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.

I wonder, in your lives can you think of times when what seemed to be the right thing to do was in conflict with the law or customs as they were practiced or commonly understood?

There is a great line that the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 15:4 that says, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope.”

Scripture was written to teach us, for our learning, for our instruction, to improve us, to make us better people, to make us a community, to help us understand God’s love and how to take care of each other—to help us come into an understanding of God’s will and God’s ways. To give us hope.

If Jesus took a literal approach, a letter-of-the-law approach to Scripture, almost every story recorded in the Gospels wouldn’t be there.

  • If Jesus had said to the centurion, sorry, you’re not Jewish.
  • If he had seen the woman at the well coming and gotten up and walked away from the well, as social custom told him to do.
  • Demon-possessed? Well, is he active at the synagogue?

If Jesus had the same understanding of Scripture as Nicodemus that Kelsey preached about last weekend, would we be talking about Jesus today? He wouldn’t have angered the Pharisees or the religious leaders and he probably wouldn’t have been killed.

Jesus put the love of God and the love of humanity, all of humanity, first. He lived by and for God’s love, in the spirit of the law, not as a literalist following the letter of the law.

If you want to go out on a limb like Jesus did, consider this statement, replacing “the Sabbath” with “Scripture”—

“Scripture was made for humankind, not humankind for Scripture.”

Now, Jesus did NOT say that these laws are dumb, that they should get rid of them; he didn’t say it’s time to write a whole new set of laws; he didn’t say riot in the streets, do whatever you want.

He tried to redirect people, where he could see they had gone—or were going—off course. The sabbath isn’t wrong, the sabbath is a good thing, but it was made for people, not people for the sabbath.

How was Jesus to enjoy rest on the sabbath, when there was a man suffering, right in their midst, when he could do something about it?

“Sorry about your hand. Too bad we didn’t run into each other on a different day, I would love to have helped you.”

Does that sound like a Jesus we would want to follow?

Jesus understood the spirit of the laws. He knew where love was in each of them, and he could see where laws and customs had lost their salt and were being used in ways and for purposes they were never intended for. They were to be for our learning, for our instruction, for our improvement—to give us hope.

And when it came to a choice between following the letter of the law, or following a love of God and humanity, Jesus chose love.

I wonder if there are places in our lives where we might do the same.

This weekend, we are commissioning 12 new Stephen Ministers and a new leader for the Stephen Ministry program. This is a program that trains people to walk beside someone going through a difficult time in their lives. It’s a program that has been a part of the DNA of Christ Church since 2005. This class will make the number of Stephen Ministers trained here top 100 people. More than 100 people who have responded to a call in their hearts to learn to be more loving, more empathetic, more compassionate, to be better listeners, and to make themselves available for people who are hurting.


My fiancé Holly is one of those in the class. And I have had the great perspective of listening to and watching her go through the 50 hours of training and reading they complete; of hearing her talk about what they were learning. So much of it is life skills that don’t get taught from K-12 or in college, or trade school, or anywhere else.

One of the parts of training that Holly talked about and stepped right into is assertiveness. And that sounds like an odd thing to have as a part of training to be a care giver, doesn’t it?

Let’s think about assertiveness in today’s story of the man with the withered hand at the synagogue. What if Jesus sees the man, looks at the Pharisees who are telling him that healing the man is against the rules, then drops his shoulders, and says, “Well, I guess not. I can come back again tomorrow and heal him.” We have a whole different story and a whole different Jesus.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is assertive in his love, in his teaching, and with his healing. He doesn’t back down when many of us probably would. He does the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.

Learning to be more assertive helps push us out of our comfort zones and into the mission field. And the mission field is everywhere people are hurting, need love, or want to know God in their lives. The mission field is where we work, it’s in our homes, it’s where go out to eat; it’s in doctor’s waiting rooms; and it’s in grocery stores.

Jack Anthony is a Stephen Leader and was one of the earliest Stephen Ministers at Christ Church. Many of you have heard him tell his story about why he became one and the part of his story that is so easy to relate to is where Jack said if he was in the grocery store and he saw someone at the other end of the aisle who he knew was going through a difficult time, he would avoid them because he didn’t know what to say. Jack didn’t like that about himself, so he did something about it.

It takes being assertive to walk up to that person who you know is going through something big. It takes getting out of our comfort zone to pick up the phone and call, text, or to stop by to see someone.

I come back to Jesus’s line on seeing the Pharisees standing by and doing nothing for the man with the withered hand, “He was grieved at their hardness of heart…”

Jesus lived his life with a soft heart. He wants us to do the same. In a hard-hearted world, it takes being assertive to keep a soft heart.

I give thanks this weekend for the Stephen Ministry program and for the 12 new Stephen Ministers and new Stephen Leader, who are going forth with soft hearts to love and serve the Lord.

Protected and Connected

This past weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The lectionary Gospel reading for the day was John 17:6-19, after Jesus has given his farewell discourse to his disciples, and he looks up to heaven and prays for them. I referenced a bit of John 17 before and after the lectionary verses.

“Protected and Connected”

This is the seventh and last Sunday of the Easter season. In our Easter lectionary this year, we have been heavy into John’s Gospel. We heard about the empty tomb and Mary Magdalene encountering Jesus there. We read about Jesus appearing to the disciples and coming back again to make sure Thomas had the experience he needed to believe.

But for the majority of Easter, the lectionary doesn’t give us Resurrection readings. It takes us back into John’s Gospel just before Jesus was arrested. If Easter is a celebration of the Resurrection, why do we have these other readings?

Here’s one way of thinking about it. The Resurrection IS the good news—it’s the revelation, the payoff, it’s what changes everything. It’s part of the proof of who Jesus is. It’s why we get charged up for Easter Sunday.

In light of this good news, the lectionary then takes us back to look at the last things Jesus says to his disciples before he is arrested and killed. Why? Jesus did most of his teaching and talking before the Resurrection. What we’ve been listening to and discussing the past few weeks is Jesus’s farewell speech, where he tries to make sure the disciples get all the biggest points of what he taught and modeled for them.

We go back to Jesus’s final words to his disciples, so that we might all take those things to heart, so that we might believe, live into, and spread the good news, as disciples of Christ.

In today’s reading, Jesus has just finished giving this last speech. And what he does here is heartfelt, crucially important, and a model for us whenever we face difficult times.

“After Jesus had spoken these things,” John writes, he looked up to heaven and prayed for his disciples. Jesus wanted them to know, even though he was going away, he is leaving them in the care of his Father.

“Christ Taking Leave of the Apostles,” Duccio di Buoninsegna, tempura on wood, Wikimedia Commons.

I want to look at a couple aspects of Jesus’s prayer here. First, he prays specifically for his disciples, his friends. He says:

“I am asking on their behalf, not on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those you gave me, because they are yours.”

We know Jesus to be the savior of the world, as we hear so often in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world…”… But here he’s not praying for the world, he is much more specific.

Praying this prayer for a world that is about to kill Jesus, using these words for a world that has rebelled against the way God intended things to be, wouldn’t make sense here. The disciples are the key to spreading the good news, to fixing things, to spreading God’s love. Jesus’s work in the world is being passed along—they are the ones entrusted with the right words, the knowledge of what needs to be done. Jesus is praying for his friends and the importance of what they have to do.

He knows he is leaving; he is not going to be there to protect them anymore, or to keep them in line; he knows what the world is about to do to him and he wants to keep them from scattering and giving up.

Jesus prays this prayer, out loud and in front of the disciples for their benefit, so they can see and hear him praying. In what he does, he is modeling something for them, which they are going to need, and he is showing them how close he is to the Father, which is how close they are going to need to be without Jesus there.

Jesus asks his Father to protect the disciples. And yet, look at what happened to many of them. They had difficult lives even after the Resurrection. Some were arrested, tortured, and a number of them were killed.

So I want to ask you a question: Did Jesus’s prayer work? Was it answered?

To get our minds around this, I want to talk about what it is to protect someone.

This is Mother’s Day weekend. Happy Mother’s Day to all the amazing moms here. You are so important in so many lives. When we think about protecting the way a mother might protect her children, we are talking about protecting them from harm.

My earliest memory of that kind of protection is when I was three years old. My favorite show was called “Emergency !”, which was about a Los Angeles Fire Department with one fire truck and an ambulance. I had a plastic fire helmet with the Emergency! logo on the front of it that I wore everywhere. I was obsessed with that show.


My cousin and I were playing in the neighbors’ yard next to the water where they had been building up the shoreline with rip rap, and they had a big pile of rocks and dirt. I remember standing on top of that pile, with my Emergency One! fire helmet on thinking I couldn’t be much cooler. We were throwing some chunks of dirt into the river and I wound up to throw as far as I could and tumbled down the pile, over the rip-rapped wall and into the river. I sank like a rock.

But my Emergency! helmet floated. To this day, almost 50 years later, I can look up from the bottom of that river and see that helmet floating. It wasn’t terribly deep, but it was over my head, and I couldn’t swim.

The next thing I knew there was a body breaking through the water, my Mom wrapped her arms around me and pulled me up and out of the river. She wasn’t right there with us, but she was nearby, she heard me tumble down the rock pile and looked and saw my helmet floating on the water.

She said she didn’t have any thoughts in her head, she just reacted, ran to the river, jumped in and pulled me out. For my part, I was a very grateful child: as she wrapped me in a towel and took me inside, I yelled at her for not calling the ambulance, because it would have been cooler if they had saved me.

That’s a mother protecting her child from harm. That’s a very clear and necessary kind of protection.

That’s not the kind of protection Jesus was asking his Father for. He knew that kind of protection didn’t exist for him or for his disciples in a world that had different priorities. They were doing something that was going to put them in harm’s way.

When Jesus prays for the disciples’ protection, he asks for two things:

  • Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.
  • I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but to protect them from the evil one.

He told them to abide in his love. He wants them to stay in that love, stay connected to God. Jesus knows that the good news, that the coming kingdom, depends on them—that the disciples are going to become His body and do the work of spreading the news to the ends of the earth, so that others might believe.

And he knows that there is pain and suffering, fear and distraction, and evil in the world—all kinds of things that could scatter the disciples.

With all these concerns on his heart, with everything on the line, knowing he is about to be arrested, hauled away, and killed, what does Jesus do?

He looks up to heaven, calls on his Father, and prays for his disciples. John gives us Jesus’s prayer in very theological way that is hard for us to make sense of. I wonder, to our ears, for our time, if it might have sounded something like this:

Dad, they know you. This crew you gave me, this rag-tag group of fishermen, tax collectors, and what all. You should see them, Dad. They might not always understand, but their hearts are in it, they are committed, they don’t give up. They are getting it. And they know it all comes from you. Everything that you’ve shown me, I’ve shown them. And they’re doing us proud.

I’m asking for them. Not for the world; the world who seem to come up with new and cruel and horrible things every day, the world that’s about to kill me… No, I’m asking for them, the ones you gave me, because they are yours.

I’m not going to be here anymore, but they are. They’ve looked to you through me, but I’m won’t to be here, I’m coming to you. I’m worried about them. I know there is a part of me that’s you, Dad, and there’s a part of me that’s like them, and that part of me is worried.

I’ve given them your word and the world hates them for it, just like it hates me, because I don’t belong to the world. The world. This place. This harsh, impossible, beautiful, incredible world. I’m not asking you to take them out of it—they aren’t ready to go where I’m going. But protect them from the evil one. We know what he can do. Keep them close to you and close to each other, that’s the only way this will work. And it has to work.

That’s what all this has been for, that’s why you sent me, that’s why I came, and now I am sending them out, just like you sent me. They can do it. I know they can. But they need your help, just like I do.

I’m setting myself apart, for them. Set them apart, Dad, in your truth. In your love. And it’s about more than them, it’s all those who will believe in me through their words—the people sitting in Christ Church Easton, 2,000 years from now—they won’t know you unless it’s starts with my disciples, my friends.

Dad, the world doesn’t know you. But I know you. And these who you gave me, they know you. And the way you have loved me, I’ve loved them. We’re all in this together. Keep them close to us.

Thanks, Dad. Love you.

Imagine the disciples watching and listening to a prayer like that. What an impact.

Sometimes the protection we need is to stay close to God. Life might take us through some rough places. A good friend who is a clergy person just shared with me his cancer diagnosis. He said, I know I’ve got to let the doctors do what they need to do and that I can’t control that. What I need to do is stay focused on God, stay close to God, through this.

We pray for healing, we pray for good outcomes, and we don’t always have control over those things. But praying, staying connected to and protected by God, gives us something to get us through life’s dangers no matter what happens.

That’s what Jesus wanted for his disciples. That’s what he wants for us.

I think his prayer worked.

Amen.

You are witnesses of these things

Background: At the healing service on Wednesday, April 10 and for the Zoom prayer service and discussion on Sunday, this is the text/basis for a homily and discussion we had on Luke 24:36b-48, where Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his Resurrection, per Luke’s account. (artwork: “Jesus’ Appearance While the Apostles are at Table,” by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255-1319))

“You are witnesses of these things.”

Today’s reading gives us Luke’s version of a story similar to what we heard from John’s Gospel last week. The disciples are gathered in a room and Jesus appears to them. In the course of their encounter, they go from being terrified and afraid, thinking they are seeing a ghost, to being witnesses, inspired and charged up to share their testimony.

How does this change happen?

Does Jesus make some rousing speech? Does he scientifically explain what happened to him?

He gives them his body. He says “look at my hands and feet. Touch me and see. That’s a line I want to let sink in for a bit.

Over the different Gospels we have heard Jesus say, “Follow me” and “Come and see,” now this is the most personal, most intimate invitation he could give, “Touch me and see.”

They are starting to come around, still not sure about all this—they know he died, there is no way this can be… Jesus looks around and says, “Got anything to eat?” And then eats fish to show them he’s legit.

I love the encounters with the risen Jesus in Luke—this story and the Road to Emmaus—there is a light-heartedness about Jesus, there is humor even in the serious work that he is there to do.

In light of the Resurrection, everything takes on new meaning. In the Road to Emmaus story, it’s just two disciples walking and Jesus comes upon them, and they walk and talk and he teaches them and then breaks bread with them, and their lives and hearts are changed. In a way that didn’t happen before. Things are different.

In today’s reading, for the disciples it is conversation, it is Jesus’s bodily presence, it is teaching, all things they have experienced before, but this is different. This changes everything.

I want to ask a question here and see what you think. Why does Jesus come back to his disciples? What’s his purpose in appearing to them and spending time with them?

To fulfill his mission; to do what he said he was going to do. To show them he is who he said he was; to show them that love conquers death.

It’s also this: to give them living and credible proof. To help them take the next step in their learning.

He is going to ascend and it is going to be up to them. His life, his love, his teaching, he is placing it in their hands to pass on to others.

“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,” … he goes back over what he told them before he was killed, but it all has a new significance; it means something different now.

Then he opens their mind to understand the Scriptures. Wow, that would be a lovely gift, wouldn’t it? Hey, Jesus, what does this mean? How do I make sense out of this? Like a phone-a-friend lifeline to Jesus.

In coming back, in appearing to the disciples, in teaching them, and being with them, in them touching him, Jesus says:

“You are witnesses of these things.”

If the disciples aren’t credible witnesses, it will never work. If they don’t believe, if they aren’t convinced and convicted, how will anyone else come to believe?

But not just credible witnesses, they have to be fired up, they have to be motivated, they have to want nothing more than to share their testimony, to share the good news. It has to be part of their core purpose.

Imagine if after Jesus leaves, the disciples are sitting on this amazing, life-giving story that can change the world, and they decide, “Okay, well, we’ve got this church here, a house church, and if anyone new comes in, we’ll tell them. That’s what it means to be a disciple, right—that we proclaim the word within the walls of our specific church, we celebrate Communion, we pray for others, and Jesus is happy, right?”

Jesus knows his work, his purpose, his life, his love for us hangs on the disciples becoming apostles—being sent out to spread the good news. So he supercharges them, gives them everything they need to succeed, including the Holy Spirit (that comes in Luke, Part II, Acts).

Let’s look at how Jesus gives them what they need in this story. He doesn’t come in and say, “Great to see you guys, would you please pick up your Bibles and turn to page 42 for today’s lesson.”

He shows them his scars, he says, “touch me and see,” he eats with them. He is vulnerable, intimate, and authentic. Explaining Scripture doesn’t come until later.


I love this quote from Debie Thomas in the book we studied last year, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She says:

“Maybe when the world looks at us to see if OUR faith is authentic and trustworthy, it needs to see our scars and hungers, too. Our vulnerability, not our immunity. Our honesty, not our pretenses to perfection. What would it look like for us to offer our stories of scars and graces, hungers, and feasts, in testimony to this world? How might our embodied lives become a way of love? Naming our hungers, widening our tables, sharing our scars and our feasts—what if THIS is practicing resurrection? Maybe more is at stake in a piece of fish, or a glass of water, or a loaf of bread, than we have imagined.”

Another question I want to ask you, and if it is something you feel like you have an answer for or want to talk about, wonderful, if not, ponder it over the week:

What is YOUR witness?

What is it from your life, your scars, your hunger, your passions, your relationships that might speak to others?

We are all different witnesses. The good news is the good news, but we connect to it in different ways, and we connect to other people in different ways. My witness, my testimony, is different than yours.

Part of this whole line of thinking came to me yesterday while I was skateboarding. I had been sitting at my desk for the afternoon, I needed to go to the grocery store, and there is a paved trail down next to Easton Point that goes across Papermill Pond, right on the way to Harris Teeter or Target. I wanted to stretch my legs.

And I got to thinking that the joy that I get from cruising on a skateboard, a joy I found when I was 13 and almost 40 years later is still there, is part of my witness. Writing is part of my witness. Discussing the Bible, laughing, asking questions, building friendships while wondering about Scripture, is part of my witness. Sitting outside in nature and feeling like a part of Creation is a part of my witness.

What things are a part of yours?

I want to mention one more aspect to this Resurrection story. Jesus is changed. The disciples are changed. Something has happened, they have received something from Jesus that has made them witnesses.

What is it and how can it help our witness? This is how Debie Thomas puts it:

“The resurrection is not a platitude or a line in a creed. The resurrection is fire in our bones, steel in our blood, impetus for our feet, a song of lamentation, protest, and ferocious hope for our souls. The resurrection is God’s insistence that we speak, stand, and work for life in a world desperate for fewer crosses, fewer graves, fewer landscapes littered with the desolate and the dead.”

This is the season of the Resurrection. This is the Easter season of new life. That power and love and energy is for us, it is supposed to be a part of our witness. Is it a part of yours?