lectionary | Michael Valliant

Listen to the Overlooked

Background: Last Sunday’s Gospel reading was Matthew 21:33-46, known as The Parable of the Wicked Tenants. It’s the second of three parables Jesus presents to the Temple priests, elders, and Pharisees, painting a harsh picture of how Israel is not living up to their name in their disobedience to God. This is the text of a homily I presented to the Christ Church Easton Zoom prayer service. Since our time with the Gospel is also a discussion, questions and answers people had changed and shaped things somewhat differently than what is written here.

“Listen to the Overlooked”

This conversation between Jesus and the chief priests and Pharisees began last week for us, when Jesus entered the Temple and was grilled by the priests and the elders about who he thought he was and where he gets his authority. And Jesus gave them a parable about a father asking two sons to go work in the vineyard, the first said he wouldn’t go, but then did, the second said that he would go and then didn’t. And Jesus made sure they caught onto the chief priests and the Temple leadership being the second son, who talks a big game, but then doesn’t do what they said they would.

And now Jesus takes it further. He relates the parable of the wicked tenants to them. This isn’t about saying one thing and then failing to deliver. This reaches another level. It’s outright disobedience and being self-serving despite all they’ve been given.

Michael Green in his book, “The Message of Matthew,” says:

“This parable unveils the flagrant disloyalty of the leaders of Israel. God had given them a wonderful vineyard to cultivate; he had given them all the necessary equipment to do the job (a winepress, a watchtower for shelter and burglar patrol, a wall to keep out the wild pigs and other trespassers). He had put his trust in them. And what did they do? The history of Israel tells the story starkly. In brief, they appropriated his goods, rejected his prophets, denied his rightful claims on them and killed his Son. They were given freedom as well as trust, but the day of reckoning is at hand: they will be held accountable for the way they have exercised that freedom.”

This is helpful to know how Jesus felt about the priests and Pharisees. In a reading we haven’t discussed in this part of the lectionary, the start of Jesus entering the Temple here is him driving out all who were selling and buying and overturning the tables of the money changers. This is the time of table-flipping Jesus. And now he is telling it like it is.

Jesus is calling out those who have been charged with doing God’s work, but who instead are looking after their own assumed power. But let’s not tell ourselves that what we are reading is simply supposed to point out and remind us of the disobedience of past people and generations—is it possible that church today, that we might also sometimes be the wicked tenants who tried to act like the vineyard was theirs and ignore the will of the owner?

Jesus then goes into quoting Psalm 118 verbatim when he says:

“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.
This is the Lord’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.”

In this case, the SON and the STONE can be thought of as the same. Where they are ignoring and casting off John and Jesus, a new movement will begin that will have them as the main cornerstone, the foundation.

Let’s take a step back and look at some reasons why Jesus might be so upset with the chief priests and the Pharisees. What do you think?

They are putting the letter of the law over the intent.
They have ignored John the Baptist and now Jesus.
They are more worried about maintaining their own power than they are about the welfare of their people.
They are being exclusive rather than inclusive.
They are ignoring their responsibility to the poor, the sick, the downcast.

And what is it that Jesus is doing that is different? What do we see when we look at Jesus’s ministry?

He includes those who have been excluded—tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners, and when called upon, Gentiles.
He is healing the sick and caring for the poor.
He isn’t concerned about status or worldly power.
When it comes to things like the Sabbath, Jesus is following the intent of the law, not the letter of the law when it comes to helping people who are hurting.
Jesus views himself as a servant first, he is there to help, and to lead by serving.

Let’s fast forward to our time. Even though we wear his logo and worship his name, are we still ignoring Jesus? What would it look like for the church to be obedient, to follow him and live as he did now?

Talking about the rejected stone, the rejected Son, Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and writer who we are studying, says:

“Jesus reminds us that sometimes it is the overlooked person who is the one we need to pay attention to.”

Who are the overlooked people now who we might want to pay attention to?

I doubt anyone can hear the things that Jesus taught and look at the life he lived and say, “no, that’s just a bad idea.” I wonder if part of what happened to the Pharisees and to the world today is that our hearts are out of step with God and that gets in the way of our following.

I’ve been reading Meister Eckhart lately, who lived from 1260 to 1328. He was a German Catholic theologian, mystic, and a part of the Dominican Order of Preachers. He is someone who seems to help me get out of my own way and do a better job of being open and listening for what God might want to say to me.

Let’s try a couple of his sayings and see if there is something helpful:

“Breaking Through”

Too often I decide what my
life should be and whether

there is from in it for You
while You sit in a deeper

place within me, wondering
what it will take for me to

make more of all the things
in my life—the good and

the bad—and so to learn to
break through to find You

in all that is and let You
take form in me in all that

I was and am and will be.

I wonder if too often our own ideas of what we should do push out any room in our hearts for God to operate. Did the Pharisees and chief priests have such fixed ideas of who God was and how he would speak to them, that it prevented them from stepping out in faith to trust the new direction John and Jesus offered?

On top of that, I wonder if what Jesus was modeling, what he was showing those in power was too radical, too much of a change for them when they came to enjoy so much the power and the status they had.

Here is one more from Meister Eckhart on what it looks like to follow Jesus:

“You Rise by Stooping Down”

With You everything
is upside down

and inside out,
for You rise by

stooping down,
and call me

to follow in
the footsteps

of your descent,
where I find

that You and
I are one

In being and
even in power.

Jesus rises by stooping down. He became incarnate, he humbled himself, and he called and showed himself to be a servant. Where we are in Matthew’s Gospel is Jesus on his way to the cross, to his death. He is trying to get everything he can across to his disciples, as well as being critical of the Pharisees, giving them another chance to repent and obey.

We have seven Sundays left in the lectionary year. Something to consider in the way these readings are presented to us. We read and reflected on Matthew’s telling of Jesus being arrested, crucified, and resurrected earlier this year, in Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.

We finish the church’s year with this series of teachings, warnings, and parables, and then November 26 is “Christ the King” Sunday, and the last reading we will get from Matthew before moving into Advent and the new year for the church, will be Matthew 25:31-46. Those will be the words we hear and reflect on to close this Gospel and then begin our Mark year.

Does anyone know the story?

Here is a key takeaway:

“Truly I tell you, just as you did (or did not do) it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did (or did not do) it to me.”

Believe

Lead in: I am in my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school. April 15-16, with a last minute switch, was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for April 16 was John 20:19-31, which most people know for “Doubting Thomas,” the disciple who won’t believe that Jesus has been resurrected until he touches Jesus’s wounds for himself. We are all a bit like Thomas. The reading is where Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his death.

“Do Not Doubt, But Believe”

I’m a big fan of John’s Gospel. On the one hand, he’s a bit like the Rodney Dangerfield of the gospels—not enough respect to get his own lectionary year like the synoptic Gospels; on the other hand, every lectionary year is made better because we have John peppered throughout them.

For John, “believing” is a big deal. He uses the word “believe” 98 times in his Gospel, always as a verb, as something active and dynamic. He tells us at the end of today’s reading that these stories are written that we might believe that Jesus is the Messiah and through believing have life in his name.

Today’s reading is John’s version of Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Remember, John didn’t write Acts, that was Luke, so we don’t get the Pentecost telling of the story here.

There are scholars who say that John’s Gospel is the one most likely to have originated with an eyewitness account. We read the author describing himself as being there at the crucifixion and later, on the beach with Peter and the others. There are details in John that we don’t find in the others.

Let’s look at two stories of the giving of the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, he says that after investigating everything he wants to write an orderly account of all that went on, talking to everyone he can. Each Gospel sets out its witness to the good news of Jesus Christ, and I love Luke (he gives us the prodigal son, the Road to Emmaus, etc). But when I think humorously about the way stories get passed down over time, there is some part of me that thinks about Luke asking everyone for their recollection of Pentecost:

“And there was FIRE! Fire? Yeah, FIRE! It was intense! And then people were speaking in tongues, remember that? And people thought we were drunk, and Peter was like, noooo waaaayy, it’s only 9:00 in the morning…”

In Luke’s telling of the story in Acts, it is a public event, a spectacle.

In contrast, listen to John’s account:

“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’”

Maybe it’s because I tend prefer being understated, but I love the simple, straightforward, intimate and understated way John gives us the Holy Spirit. No crowds, no fire, no speaking in tongues. Jesus breathed on them and gave them a new Spirit. A new life in Him. A life that has overcome death.

Does that sound familiar? This is from Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 7:

“then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”

I love that John sees what Jesus is doing and connects it back to the beginning (remember he starts his whole Gospel account with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”) John wants to make sure we don’t miss what’s happening. This is new life, that comes through Jesus, which is giving us a direct connection to God.

I get excited about the Holy Spirit.

But let’s backtrack to where the disciples are in the reading and what’s going on.

Jesus has been arrested, crucified, and was buried in a tomb. The disciples scattered, afraid for their lives. Just before today’s reading, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and found the stone rolled away, she ran and got Peter and the one whom Jesus loved (who we think of as John, the author) and they went in and found the tomb empty. And then the men left and went home. All Peter and John saw was the empty tomb.

Mary Magdalene stuck around, talked to angels, then encountered Jesus, who told her to go and tell the disciples, which she did. But none of them have seen Jesus for themselves yet. They might dismiss her story as being unbelievable story, saying she was overly excited at finding the tomb empty—she could have been hallucinating.

Now, they were hiding out together in a locked room, hoping not to be found or found out. As writer and pastor Frederick Buechner describes it:

“They had bolted the door and were listening for the dreaded sound of footsteps on the stair when suddenly Jesus was among them. He stood in their midst—always in their midst, this man, turning up when they least expected him—and told them to breathe his breath, his holy breath and spirit, so that they could go out into the world again and perform his holy work.”

6th century mosaic in the Church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna

Knowing that they are going to be scared out of their wits, Jesus’s first words to them are “Peace be with you.”

He reassures them. He shows them his hands and his side, so that they know it’s him and that this is real. And the disciples rejoiced. Of course they did. If there are scenes out of Scripture that you would want to be there for—this has to be one of them! This is massive. It’s transformative. It’s life changing. It’s death conquering.

Jesus gives the disciples what they need to believe. And then he gives them his Spirit and gives them work to do.

But Thomas isn’t there. The other disciples tell him what happened, but he isn’t having it. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hand and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

On the one hand, we can say, sure, everyone talks a big game when Jesus isn’t standing there, just you wait… But I think this is true to life. How many of us, when hearing friends tell us an unbelievable story, decide, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Even if it comes from people we trust, we still want proof. Thomas wants the same experience the others had.

So what does Jesus do? He comes back. He shows up again, just for Thomas. He gives Thomas what he needs to believe. Jesus doesn’t scold him, he is there for him and tells Thomas, “Do not doubt, but believe.”

Notice, Thomas doesn’t get kicked out of the club for doubting. That is one of the wonderful aspects of this reading—there is room in our faith for doubt. It is okay to want to see for ourselves. It’s okay not to believe just because everyone else tells you to. Jesus works with Thomas.

And Thomas believes; seeing is believing as they say. Jesus then delivers the showstopper of lines, a line so important to faith: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

That’s us. I don’t know about you—I haven’t encountered the bodily resurrected Jesus in the flesh. But I have come to believe. How?

Think of the work Jesus is asking the disciples to take on. To help people believe, when they haven’t seen him for themselves.

Here is Frederick Buechner again:

“The risen Christ is risen in his glory, but he is also Christ risen in the hearts of those, who although they have never touched the mark of the nails, have been themselves so touched by him, that they believe anyway. However faded and threadbare, what they have seen of him is at least enough to get their bearings by.”

Believe. What does that mean here? Is that an intellectual affirmation? Is it convincing ourselves and never doubting? Is this just a box we have to check off? I don’t think so.

For the disciples, their belief was foundational to the mission Jesus gave them. If they didn’t believe, what kind of witnesses would they be? If they don’t believe, why would anyone they meet want to believe?

Jesus’s life and love and good news are dependent on the disciples to continue to spread it out into the world. He was inviting them into an intimate, dynamic relationship with him.

And the same thing is true of us now. If people are going to come to believe in Jesus, it probably won’t be because they have had a bodily encounter with the resurrected Christ; it will be through the Holy Spirit, which is carried and passed on by the NEW body of Christ, the church, US.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in his book, “Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief,” talks about a young Jewish woman named Etty Hillesum. She was in her 20s when the Germans occupied Holland. She watched her world turn into an utter nightmare. She was sent to a concentration camp at Westerbork before being shipped to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

She wrote in her diary: “There must be someone to live through it all and bear witness to the fact that God lived, even in these times. And why should I not be that witness?”

Williams describes her attitude and commitment like this:

“She decided to occupy a certain place in the world, a place where others could somehow connect with God through her. She took responsibility for making God credible in the world. She took responsibility for God’s believability.”

What if THAT is what believing in God, believing in Jesus, means. That with and through our lives, we take responsibility for God’s believability. How many of us would say that we believe if that were the standard?

That’s what Jesus is asking of his disciples. But he doesn’t leave them on their own to do it, he doesn’t abandon them. He shows up. He brings them peace. He breathes his Holy Spirit into them.

The fact that we are gathered here in a church worshipping and loving Jesus, trying to understand his life and example, and bearing witness to the good news of his Resurrection says that the early disciples, with God’s help and the Holy Spirit, were up for the task.

I wonder: are we?

Let me give a brief witness. Over the past month, my daughter Ava has been in and out of A.I. DuPont Hospital, three times, first for surgery, then with multiple ambulance rides for seizures she couldn’t come out of. She’s home now and we’re hopeful she’ll be back in school this week and going to her senior prom next weekend. But epilepsy is challenging at times, and it’s been a rough, slow, frustrating go of things.

Not once going through it, have we, or I felt alone. Through so many text messages, phone calls, people checking in before or after classes, the school systems offering help, prayers, hugs, you name it–I have felt the Holy Spirit and God’s love at work through friends, through this congregation, through family, sometimes through strangers–volunteers at the Ronald McDonald House or, nurses, doctors, and people working at the Einstein Brother’s Bagels at the hospital, who can tell you are beyond tired this morning.

My experience is not unique. One of the things that touches my heart the most is to hear how people have shown up, how people have been there, how people have been LOVE in the lives of others. The way we love one another, even as Jesus loves us, can help make God believable for others.

We can see the Holy Spirit being God’s love in the world. We can be the Holy Spirit being God’s love in the world.

In the dark and confusing times that we are in the middle of in the world right now, can our belief, can our lives, can our love, be a witness for God’s believability in the world?

Yes, we can be that witness. Yes, God’s love, moving through us, through our belief, and our lives, can be credible in the world. That’s how the Holy Spirit works. No fire required.

Amen.

Our Iona Eastern Shore seminary class with professor, Fr. Dan Dunlap and guest presenter, Dr. Tom Long, one of the United States foremost preachers. That is how we started Saturday.

Are You the One Who Is to Come?

Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. December 10-11 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for December 11 was Matthew 11:2-11, where John the Baptist sends followers to ask Jesus if he is the one who is to come, or are they to wait for another? And Jesus’s answer.

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

That’s the question we’re going to kick around, the one John has his disciples ask Jesus.

John the Baptist didn’t care what other people thought. He wore strange clothes, ate strange food, blasted the religious people, and attended to business in the wilderness. And he was faithful—he did what he was called to do and he had crowds following him.

And as he was called to do, he pointed to Jesus as the one who was to come—the one he wasn’t fit to carry the sandals of.

John is in the New Testament Hall of Fame—each of the four Gospels has him playing a pivotal role in helping Jesus launch his ministry. And it was John the Baptist’s death that marked the beginning of Jesus’s time teaching and healing and moving toward his death and resurrection.

And this same John, while in prison, sends a question to Jesus: are you the guy or are we supposed to wait for someone else?

Brutal, right? Disheartening. Not exactly a vote of confidence from your friend and mentor.

Let’s think about it from John’s perspective: he’s in prison. He will end up beheaded. The Jewish people’s position hasn’t been improved.

The Jewish people had this idea that the Messiah—the anointed one—will arrive on the scene, hand out justice, military-style, free Israel, put them back on top in power, and they will all be vindicated with a great, big victory to show the world they were right.

That’s what they’re waiting for. Hey Jesus, are you this guy? Or are we waiting for someone else?

Notice how Jesus answers him: he doesn’t say, “Yes, I’m the guy.”

He tells John’s disciples to “Go and tell John what you hear and see:

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them.”

Jesus points to his actions as his answer.

Is Jesus the one who was and is to come? Yes. He was showing it then and we’ve seen the movement that has swept around the world in the 2,000-plus years since. But he wasn’t doing what John, or what the Jewish people, or what the world expected.

I wonder if that is still the case. If we are still largely missing what Jesus was doing and what he came to do.

How many people have heard some form of the expression, “Wait til your father gets home…” Or, “when your father gets home…” That’s not really meant as a good thing, right? It’s more along the lines of—here come the consequences of your actions.

Think about that over the course of Biblical history, especially for those who have been singled out, chosen as examples, held up by God as those to look to. We see a lot of, “Wait til the Messiah gets here. Then you’re gonna get it. Then you’ll be sorry.”

Today it isn’t hard to look around and see people doing a lot of the same posturing: look at how you’re acting; look at what a terrible place the world is becoming. Wait til God gets here. Wait til Jesus comes back. Then you’re going to get it.

Don’t make God angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

God is not the Incredible Hulk. He didn’t give us free will and the capacity to love—he didn’t fill us with wonder and awe and compassion, just to smash us when we mess up or get things wrong.

God wants us to change. He wants to help us. He has bigger and better ideas in mind.

If God is Love, what does a big military victory and putting those who were oppressed on top of their oppressors—what does that do to further love in the world? What does that do to further the work that we know Jesus came to do? How does that put things back right?

We have this idea of righteousness, on our terms, not on God’s terms.

Jesus was working out righteousness and salvation in accordance with the will of his Father. Before he gets to his death and resurrection, he is giving us a model for how we can do the same.

ARE YOU THE ONE OR ARE WE TO WAIT FOR SOMEONE ELSE?

“Go and tell John what you hear and see:

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them”

We are not Jesus. We can’t perform the miracles that we read about him doing throughout the Gospels. But those are things that God is calling righteous, that God is saying are in synch with His will.

If we want to know who God is and how he wants us to act, we need to look at Jesus.

And Jesus doesn’t want us to throw up our hands and say we’re not you, we can’t do it. He makes it clear that he gives us the Holy Spirit so we can continue the work that he began.

How much of our energy, how much of our attention, how much of our creativity, how much of our resources are being put towards this kind of work?

Who are we waiting for? Who will we follow?

I wonder how we would feel if we reframed John’s question for Jesus and pointed the finger at ourselves:

Are WE the ones Jesus has asked to continue his work or is He to wait for someone else?

That question should make us look in the mirror.

Here’s the thing about John: this isn’t a knock on him at all. He did his job well. He lived his life the right way and he spread the message he was given.

When Jesus starts to speak to the crowds he says John is a prophet and more than a prophet.

“To those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist… He is the one about whom it is written:

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
Who will prepare the way before you.’

What was John’s message? REPENT. TURN AROUND.

Don’t get caught up in all the things the world is throwing at us and telling us are important. Playing it forward: don’t make violence the answer. Don’t make hate the way we live.

To a people who have lost their way, to a people who are in a spiritual wilderness, John is saying to stop. Don’t keep doing the same things. Turn around. Be different. The kingdom of heaven is near.

It’s not too late to change.

Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, in chapter 4, after Jesus is baptized by John and then tested/formed in his own wilderness experience, Jesus hears that John was arrested. And as he begins his ministry, the message that Jesus proclaims is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

They were both telling the people, and us, the same thing. The difference is that Jesus was bringing the kingdom with him. He knew the work he needed to do to help bring it about. And he showed us the work we need to do to keep it going.

John was TELLING us to live differently, Jesus was SHOWING us how to live.

Think about the list of things that Jesus wanted John to know about. What do they all have in common?

Jesus cared for others. He healed, he fed, he taught, he brought good news. That was how he was working to bring the kingdom of heaven near.

When we care for others, we are continuing Jesus’s work.

Marsha Allen, whose been a part of our Tuesday Bible study for years always asks one of the best questions: What am I supposed to do with all this? How am I supposed to live?

So let’s ask ourselves that question: what would that look like to continue Jesus’s work here in our community?

In 2009, what we now know as the Talbot Interfaith Shelter began as a temporary shelter in our Parish Hall. It would be at Christ Church for a period of time and then it would move to another location and this continued until 2014 when they opened their first and current location at Easton’s Promise. Today they have two facilities, and their program for helping their residents’ get back on their feet is called the S4 Program—shelter, stability, support, success. They don’t just give people shelter, they help them get back their lives back—they give them hope.

A number of years ago, volunteering at the shelter one evening at just this time of year, I met a father and son there—the son was in elementary school. Their wife/mother died from cancer, but not before medical expenses they couldn’t keep up with left them homeless.

I can remember everyone had gone upstairs to bed and a few minutes later the boy came back down the stairs and was standing in the living room staring at the Christmas Tree. When we asked if we was okay, if he needed anything, he said, “No, I just like looking at the tree.”

His dad gave an incredible testimonial about how the shelter helped them, how much being there meant to them. Executive Director Julie Lowe and her team BRING GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR.

CarePacks of Talbot County began when Emily Moody, who was a social worker at Easton Elementary, noticed how many kids were going home on the weekends without healthy food to eat. She and Megan Cook began an effort that is now at place in every school in Talbot County, where packages of food are sent home every weekend to make sure the kids who depend on free breakfast and lunch at school can eat on the weekends. And once a month on the fourth Friday, people can go to CarePacks to pick up food for whole families. This kind of program is also in place in Caroline County and it being put in place throughout the Eastern Shore. THE HUNGRY ARE BEING FED.

Global Vision 2020 is an international non-profit organization, founded here in Easton by Kevin White. They go around the world, diagnose sight problems, and are able give glasses, on the spot, to people in the poorest countries. There are people who literally can’t see and that’s how they experience life. And with inexpensive glasses given to them then and there, their lives are changed.

When our Mission Trip goes to Peru next summer, helping give people sight through Global Vision will be among the work that Kelsey Spiker and the team will be doing. THE BLIND ARE RECEIVING SIGHT.

None of these things are miracles in the sense that we see in Scripture. But each of these organizations are very clearly continuing the work that Jesus started and gave us as a model of working toward the kingdom of heaven.

The reason I mention these particular groups is: not only are they all local, they were all begun by people who were parishioners here at Christ Church. And they have all received either outreach funding and/or volunteer support from the church over the years.

There are so many more examples in our community, all around us, which many of you support and volunteer for, and that need your help.

This is a time of year when people get stressed. Heating and electric bills go up, it’s colder outside for those without a place to stay; in many cases, parents just want to give their kids a good Christmas, but they are stretched too far. The Advent Angel gifts around the altar are another example of ways to help people in the community who are in need.

Here’s the thing though. In just the last 20 years at Christ Church, many new ministries have been started and borne fruit, and they have made a difference in people’s lives.

We don’t know what the next ministries are going to be looking out five, 10, 20 years. But recent history says that they will come from YOU—the vision, the work, the love, the hope will be raised up from people sitting right here who are open to the work of the Holy Spirit and who seek to follow and continue the work that Jesus began.

Advent is a season where we wait with hope. Where we listen for how we can help. Where we see and tell people about the work Jesus was doing, the work he gave as an answer to John.

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
The sick are healed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them

Think about those things. Think about caring for others. And at the end of the service when we say together “and now send us out to do the work you have given us to do,” let these words sink in and mean something.

This is the season where we say,

with our hearts
and our minds
and our actions

that Jesus was and is the one to come, and the one we give our lives to follow.

AMEN.

Taking Notes, at peace or in the wilderness

I am rarely without a notebook and pen. It would be fair for me to wear a sign on my back that says, “Will stop to write.” Mostly because otherwise I will forget. I will stop my longboard if a compelling thought jumps into my mind. And I frequently sit along a shoreline, in the woods, on a bench or wherever to take notes.

When it comes to church, for the readings and the sermon, I often just have pen and paper at the ready.

These are notes and thoughts after sermons and discussion last weekend at Christ Church Easton.

Last weekend’s lectionary readings were Isaiah 11:1-10 (The Peaceful Kingdom) and Matthew 3:1-12 (The Proclamation of John the Baptist). They will both speak to you if you let them.

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
    the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the spirit of counsel and might,
    the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
Isaiah 11:1-3

On our Sunday morning Zoom discussion, Fr. Bill Ortt unpacked the Isaiah reading.

Wisdom happens in the heart and soul. Understanding takes place in the mind.
Fr. Bill Ortt

That’s one to sit with. We comprehend things with our mind, but when something sinks into our soul, it changes us.

And as we got talking about how to take “the fear of the Lord,” Fr. Bill talked about the ocean–how it deserves reverence and respect; how it leaves us humbled and in awe when we think about its size and power.

My mind went to the stars. When I stare at a clear night sky and try to think about the distance and time that is between us and God’s artwork across the cosmos; if I see a shooting star or the recent eclipse, my sense of awe and wonder is beyond stoked.

In verses 6-10, Isaiah goes on to describe what the coming peaceful kingdom might be like:

The wolf shall live with the lamb;
    the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
⁷The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
⁹They will not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

This whole section is filled with hope for a people that need it. Maybe with what the world we live in feels like, looking forward with hope for a time to come might do us some good.

In Matthew’s Gospel, John the Baptist appears in the wilderness. He looks crazy, wearing camel-hair clothing and a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey. He tells people to change their lives, to live differently.

We got talking about the wilderness.

“Temptation in the Wilderness” by Briton Riviere, WikiMedia Commons

The kind of wilderness they talk about in the Bible is not a place we want to be. Wilderness experiences are those times we feel alone, lost, stripped down, exhausted, confused.

We talked about the need for recognizing those times in the wilderness, those times of desperation.

“Sometimes we go into the wilderness, but sometimes the wilderness comes to us.”

That was a comment made in our Zoom discussion. There is a lot of truth to that. Being aware of the wilderness, even if we don’t feel that’s where we are, can be a saving grace.

Wilderness changes us. It can make us wiser. It can help us understand what other people are going through. It can wake up our compassion. When we come out of the wilderness renewed, we want to be people who help others who are struggling to make it through.

Towards the end of Fr. Bill’s sermon in the church on Sunday morning, he tied it together:

“We need to know what it means to be people who have been healed, forgiven, and renewed.”

Amen.

Faith and Gratitude

Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. October 8-9 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for October 9 was Luke 17:11-19, where Jesus heals 10 men with a skin disease and only one, a foreigner, comes back in praise and gratitude.

“Faith and Gratitude”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. Over the past few weeks, we have seen him talking to and teaching his disciples. But today there is a bit of shift.

He’s approached by 10 lepers. What do we know about lepers during this time?

They kept distant from non-lepers.
They formed their own colonies.
They positioned themselves near trafficways so that they could make appeals for charity.
To be let back into society they had to be checked out by a priest, in a kind of certification process.
Leprosy was estrangement from both God and other people. It had a stigma.

When writing his novel, “The Name of the Rose,” Umberto Eco put it like this: “In saying ‘lepers’ we would understand ‘outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the city.’”

They were the fringe of the fringe.

The lepers are keeping their distance and following protocol and they call out to Jesus. And he SEES them. Seeing is important here.

He tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, which is how they would be able to get back into everyday life, to no longer be outcast or untouchable.

And “as they went,” they were made clean. Their healing was connected to their obedience—they did what Jesus told them to do.

One of the lepers, a foreigner, a Samaritan, SAW that he was healed, and his response was to turn back, praise God with a loud voice, and to lie on the ground in front of Jesus and thank him.

It’s notable that the leper doesn’t just thank Jesus as some great healer on the street, he knows the healing has come from God and he praises God before he thanks Jesus.

Jesus SAW the lepers and the one Samaritan leper saw that God had healed him through Jesus. And he was grateful.

We see a lot of healing stories in the Gospels, but in this case, the story Luke tells is less about the healing and more about the response of the one leper.

The three questions Jesus then asks are not really addressed to the grateful Samaritan but they underscore the point of the story:

Were not 10 made clean?
Where are they?
Were none of them found to return and give praise except this foreigner?

Why the Foreigner?

This is not a knock on the nine who did what they were instructed. They followed orders. They were healed. We don’t know what happened to them after—they may have gone on to spread their own stories and good news for the rest of their lives.

But the foreigner, the stranger was different. Why is that? What was it that made him turn around while the others went on their way?

I like a thought that Fred Craddock shared in his book, “Interpretations: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching—Luke.” In thinking through the stranger in our time, he said:

“It is often the stranger in the church who sings heartily the hymns we have long left to the choir, who expresses gratitude for blessings we had not noticed, who listens attentively to the sermon we think we have already heard, who gets excited about our old Bible, and who becomes actively involved in acts of service to which we send small donations. Must it always be so?”
Fred Craddock

I wonder, do I get complacent? Do we sometimes go about our business doing what was asked of us, but not stopping to give thanks and praise for both remarkable and everyday things that bring us joy? Or those things that connect us to God and to each other?

Reading Scripture: WWJD?

Studying Scripture has so many layers to it, any of which can give us pause, can make us think, can stop us and meet us where we are.

We need to understand the context in which something was written; we need to think about the audience the writer, in this case Luke, was writing for; and we have both God’s Word in the Bible and any number of great commentaries that have been written to help us understand it.

And then we also want to figure out the relevance of something for our lives. What do we do with what we read? Why does it matter? What is the “so what?” of ten lepers getting healed more than 2,000 years ago? Why should we care?

Fr. Bill Ortt often says to think about Scripture as a prism, where you can turn it around to see different facets of it. And if we do that in this story, we’ve got the grateful leper, we’ve got the other nine who were healed, and we’ve got Jesus. We may have a tendency not to put ourselves in Jesus’s place in the story, because, well, he’s Jesus and we’re not.

But these stories are shared for us to learn from. For us to ponder, to take in. And who is the main character in the New Testament who we want to learn about? Jesus.

And why? Maybe to be more like him. What’s the bumper sticker—what’s the saying that is used over and over again: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?

And how do you know, how can you consider what Jesus would do if you don’t read Scripture to get to know him better?

So in this story, what does Jesus do?

Seeing and Doing

First, Jesus sees the lepers who call out to him. Really sees them and what their problem is. And what he sees is human beings, not lepers. Luke illustrates this point over and over again in his Gospel:

When we meet the demoniac at Gerasene, Luke calls him, “a man from the city who had demons.”
Here, Luke doesn’t say 10 lepers, he says, “10 men with a skin disease.”

In writing his Gospel, Luke doesn’t define people by their afflictions, by their diseases, by what’s wrong with them. Because Jesus doesn’t define people that way. Jesus sees our humanity. And he sees the humanity of these 10 men.

And what does he do once he sees? He acts, he steps in to help, to heal.

If we want to model our lives after Jesus, where does that leave us?

We need to see. Do we take the time to see what is going on around us? We can look nationally and globally—the devastating damage in Florida from Hurricane Ian; the ongoing war in Ukraine; insert your news of struggle and suffering going on in the world.

We can also look closer to home: our family, our friends, our neighbors, and people in our community. We’ve got a lot of people barely holding on around us. Do we see them?

Then, what do we do when we see them? Do we reach out? Do we pray for people? Do we come alongside them when we can and walk with someone who is having a hard time.

Do we do…what we see Jesus doing time and time again in Scripture, and especially in Luke’s Gospel, and in today’s story? See, help, heal.

What do we see?
Do we see the needs, the struggles of others?
And what do we do?

Let’s take some pressure off of ourselves for a minute. Living like Jesus is certainly the goal, but wow, is that tough. Sometimes getting out of bed in the morning and getting through the day without telling someone off seems more attainable.

Gratitude

Let’s look more closely at the Samaritan who was healed and who came back. Let’s walk in his footsteps.

Back to seeing: what does the Samaritan see? He sees that he has been healed. He recognizes that God was at work. And he praises, he humbles himself, and he gives thanks.

We can do that, right? There are times when being grateful is everything. That’s a big part of my story and what has me standing here in front of you.

I caught up with a childhood friend who I haven’t seen in decades. We grew up playing little league baseball together in Oxford and he went on to fly F-16s in the Air Force for 20 years. We had lunch last week and what we both wanted to talk about was faith and spiritual awakenings. And he asked what prompted this calling in me.

My one-word answer was, and is, gratitude.

A little more than seven years ago my younger daughter had a bad seizure caused by brain swelling. She was visiting family outside Pittsburgh and she had to be intubated and flown by helicopter to Children’s Hospital, where she was in pediatric intensive care for 10 days and in the hospital for the next month.

Faith wasn’t a big part of my life then, but as I sat with her in the hospital, as I listened to doctors, as we tried to figure out what was next, people continually reached out to say they were praying and ask how they could help.

And what I could feel, could palpably feel, was a community of prayers changing me. I wouldn’t say I started out where the Grinch was, but my heart grew in significant ways that I am still trying to wrap my head around. And I felt a peace and calm in the midst of so much worry.

When we came home, I was full of capital “G” Gratitude. I didn’t necessarily know where to put it or what to do with it, but a friend invited me to church. That sounded like a good start. And that was the first step on a path that led here, and with gratitude every day it is a walk that is still going.

I saw healing. I felt a change, a kind of healing in me. And giving praise and thanks is my response.

Salvation

Let’s turn our attention back to the grateful leper. Jesus says to him, “Your faith has made you well.” Fred Craddock who I quoted earlier points out that the verb that was used for “made well” is the same word that is often translated, “to be saved.”

Jesus healed 10 people, but only one, the one who came back and was grateful, received something much bigger than physical healing. His faith, as expressed by his gratitude, saved him.

Alan Culpepper in “The New Interpreter’s Bible,” looks at this and says that the story challenges us to regard gratitude as an expression of faith.

That resonates with me. Gratitude feels like a way to express our faith.

Culpepper says further: “If gratitude reveals humility of spirit and a sensitivity to the grace of God in one’s life, then is there any better measure of faith than wonder and thankfulness before what one perceives as unmerited expressions of love and kindness from God and from others?”

Living with a Grateful Heart

What does gratitude look like in our lives? What do we do when we have a grateful heart?

I have one more quick example. When I started working here at Christ Church they gave me the office at the top of the stairs in the Rectory. I end up talking to just about everyone who comes up and down the steps—which aren’t the easiest steps to navigate.

Well, a few times a week, Bruce Richards would come up the steps and go into the bathroom, and when he came out he would stop in and share this amazing smile, and energy, and joy and gratitude.

It turns out at the time that all the Stephen Ministry books, brochures and pins were kept in the bathroom closet, and he would go in to stock up on whatever he needed.

So I had a running joke with Bruce that he had a Clark Kent/Superman phone booth in the bathroom and he would come out as a superhero for pastoral care. Except it wasn’t a joke at all. That’s who Bruce was.

As the years went on, Bruce was slower getting up and down the steps, but his joy, his smile, and his gratitude didn’t change.

We commended Bruce to God on Saturday and I have so many pictures of him on my heart. Bruce carried printed out prayers in his wallet and in his calendar and he sometimes gave me one if he thought I looked like I needed it, or he would tell me to pass it on to someone who did.

Bruce came with us to give Communion to a parishioner in Oxford who had fallen and couldn’t make it to church for a while. For us, it was a special visit, but Bruce did this all the time, in nursing homes, people’s houses, you name it.

And I have a picture of Bruce coming to his door on his 80^th birthday, during the height of the pandemic, when a group of us went to sing happy birthday to him with Brenda Wood playing the accordion.

Bruce was a grateful heart personified. He showed us what it looked like to live with gratitude and for him it looked like caring for others, so much so, that he helped begin a new ministry at the church, specifically to care for people going through tough times… by listening to them, praying with them, and walking beside them. And Bruce’s work of 18 years here continues today with all the Stephen Ministers, the care givers and care receivers, who are grateful and helping us create a church community of compassion.

Bruce saw people hurting. He acted, he did something about it, using gifts that he didn’t know he had, always giving thanks with gratitude.

I wish we didn’t have to lose people like Bruce, people in our lives who show us what it is to live with a grateful heart—people we are grateful for. But it makes me even more thankful for the time that we had together and the example he still is for all of us. What a gift to know people like that and to be able to continue their work in love.

Alan Culpepper has a thought here that I’d like to close with, which gets us to the heart of today’s Gospel:

“Faith, like gratitude, is our response to the grace of God as we have experienced it. For those who have become aware of God’s grace, all of life is infused with a sense of gratitude, and each encounter becomes an opportunity to see and respond in the spirit of the grateful leper.”

Amen.

A Sermon in the Books

Prologue

Sunday morning, I walked up to the church about an hour before the 8:00am service. The evening before, I preached a sermon–still a very new-to-me experience–on Luke’s gospel story of Jesus healing a man possessed by demons.

Christ Church Easton has multiple worship services each weekend and Saturday is the most casual. People in the service, priest included, wear regular clothes. I was myself–talking in jeans and a Hawaiian-ish shirt and Vans. On Sundays, those serving are vested/robed. I was on my way inside to get robed up for three Sunday services.

The sunlight was dancing in the garden next to the church and I almost walked by it, feeling like a needed to be on task. And then I thought about being in the moment, for as many moments as we can, and I stopped and walked over. And perched on a flower was a dragonfly, who stayed, and didn’t fly away.

The dragonfly, the sunlight, and the flowers set the tone. Be in the moment.

A little background.

This past year, I became a first-year seminary student discerning a call to the priesthood. I’ve been a full-time church educator for the past five years. Our rector/pastor is giving a co-worker/fellow seminarian and I opportunities to preach, each of us being scheduled one weekend every other month. We have an incredible congregation/community, who are encouraging us.

So there’s that.

In the Episcopal Church, what the readings are each week comes from a common lectionary, which rotates over a three-year cycle. Generally speaking, an Episcopal service on a given weekend anywhere you go, will likely have the same Gospel reading. And if you are preaching, that is the Gospel you want to make sense of for folks in some way.

The reading for my preaching weekend was Luke 8:26-39, the story of Jesus healing the Gerasene demoniac. You know, a story that anyone would be keen to talk about 🙂

But as I thought about the reading during the week, an angle presented itself–talking about why a seemingly dated, archaic reading, which to many people might not seem to be at all relevant, actually matters here and now.

So I set out to look at demon possession through a modern lens. And here is what I came up with.

Personally, I retain more by reading than I do from listening. So the text is below. A friend was able to record the sermon portion of our 10:00am traditional music service, which you can watch here. Bear in mind that this is among the earliest sermons of someone not inclined to speak in front of gatherings of people.

An alternative to being demon possessed

Leading up to today’s reading, in Luke’s Gospel story, Jesus has been walking through cities and towns “proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.”

The crowds are everywhere around him, so much so that when his mother and brothers come to see him, they can’t even get to him.

So Jesus does something that plenty of people on the Eastern Shore can relate to: he gets on a boat.

And he says, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.” Jesus falls asleep in the boat, and Luke gives us his account of the storm coming up, the disciples waking Jesus and Jesus calming the storm. The disciples are blown away that he can even command the wind and the waves.

So in our reading for today this boat ride takes them to the country of the Gerasenes. Jesus has gone over to the other side of the lake to get away from the crowds. And as soon as he steps on land, a man with demons meets him.

The funny thing, reading about the demon-possessed people in Scripture is that I think we dismiss these stories. Because we don’t talk like that anymore. Most of us aren’t worried about demons when we go into the grocery store or walk across town. So we say, okay, this story doesn’t apply to me. It’s not relevant.

Let’s think for a bit on this man and his demons. Here is a guy who is not in his right mind. His mind has been taken over by so many demons, they identify themselves as “Legion.” Here is a man on the opposite side of the lake from Galilee, meaning he is a gentile, not Jewish, which we further see by the fact that there are pigs around, which anyone Jewish wouldn’t have had. But what this area did have in common with Galilee, Jerusalem, the whole region, is that it had been taken over by Rome. And legions of Roman soldiers. So here is a man whose people had been conquered by foreign powers, and whose lives would have been affected accordingly. We might say that he was dealing with the spirit of the times.

Do we feel like the spirit of the times, of our times, might take over our minds sometimes? As Fr. Bill mentioned last week, do we feel like an unholy trinity of fear, leading to anger, leading to violence might carry us away with it sometimes?

Social media offers us more than a peek inside something like this. I have seen people who I know to be loving, caring, do anything for anyone people, say things on social media that certainly point to something taking over their minds and hearts—things full of blame and hate and anger and fear. Those are things, especially when they take over people who are otherwise loving and giving and caring, that lead us nowhere we want to go. And I get it, I feel those things too, I can be overcome with thoughts and feelings I don’t know where they came from and I wish they weren’t there.

We have dear friends and brothers and sisters at Christ Church who have shared their addiction stories and their journeys in recovery. Addiction is a disease that takes over someone, in a way that someone in Jesus’s time might well have described as demon possessed.

And when we look around the country at a new mass shooting each week, now including St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Alabama—it is not hard to make the case that we have people, here and now, who are not in their right minds; we are struggling and trying to understand and to help people through mental health crises, to help them know that they are loved and valued, at times when they are having trouble finding themselves.

We can see all around us that there are forces at work that have nothing to do with love, grace, forgiveness, or God.

All of this is to say, when we run into the demon possessed in Scripture, don’t be so quick to dismiss these stories—they still happen today, to us, just as much—with things taking over the way we think, feel, and act—which cause us to act in ways we normally wouldn’t.

And so in today’s reading, what do we see immediately with Jesus: these demons know him, and know that he has authority over them. They know he can get rid of them. Which he does and puts this man back into his right mind. And that is a great line, I think, when the people came out to see what happened, “they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”

And then there is one of the most curious, interesting lines. Seeing this guy back in his right mind, how did this make the people feel? “They were afraid.”

Let’s circle back to our times. If we know that love conquers all; if somewhere in our hearts, we know we could live differently, be more loving, but we would have to put down this armor, this way of seeing and being that we’ve become accustomed to… if we were asked to stop blaming people we disagree with, if we were asked to love our neighbor who lives differently or votes differently than we do: would we? If we are asked to love and forgive and do something about the state of the world around us—will we?

If we get so used to looking at the world through certain lenses, taking those lenses off, and trying on a different way of seeing, of living, can be scary. It requires us to change. It asks something of us.

So into this demon-possessed way of being, Jesus comes, and frees this man from the legion of things that cloud his heart and mind. Jesus, with power and authority, gives him, and gives us, an alternative way to be. A different way of seeing things and being in the world.

Jesus restores the man who was possessed by demons. And in the next chapter of Luke’s Gospel, we see Jesus calling the twelve together and giving them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases and sending them out.

We are called to be disciples of Jesus, right? I am going to speak for probably most of us, when I say I don’t know how well equipped I am for casting out demons and healing the sick. But there is some good news for those of us who don’t feel up to those tasks. And this season of Pentecost gives us a clue: He hasn’t left us alone to do this kind of work. He has sent us the Holy Spirit as our advocate, as our comforter, as our helper. We are never alone, especially when we are doing the work that God has given us to do.

A number of us have begun a three-week study of former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams’ book “Being Disciples.” And at the end of the first chapter, Williams has this profound thing to say about discipleship. He says:

“A disciple is, as we have seen, simply a learner; and this, ultimately, is what the disciple learns: how to be a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.”

We are learning how to be a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.

No pressure, right?

Let me tell you a quick story. Over the past month and a half, I have taken 20 minutes each morning for centering prayer. What that is, at base, is breathing, clearing my mind, and being in the presence of God. One of the ways I try to keep that focus is when I breath in, I think about breathing in God’s love. And that makes me smile. And when I breathe out, I think about filtering God’s love through me, and breathing out compassion, empathy, and love for others. And if I sit with that for a minute, and wrap my mind around spending more time breathing love into the world, than I do fear, or hate, or anger, that should certainly change how I act, how I see other people, and how I treat others.

This is maybe the exact opposite of demon possession. Instead of taking in all these things of the world that keep us from God, I try to take in, to dwell on, to feel God’s love and grace.

I’m not saying that centering prayer is the answer to evil in the world. But let’s ask ourselves, what are those things we can do to help us focus on God, on love, on healing and forgiveness, rather than the different forces at work that want to keep us from the power of God’s love.

Rowan Williams has a few suggestions as to things that can help. He says: 1) attending to Scripture, following the Gospels so we can better understand this life we are called to live. 2) He says coming together to worship, to baptize, to celebrate Communion together and to welcome others to do the same. 3) And he says looking to the lives of others around us that help us to have faith. We need each other for that, to help us focus on God.

And so what if all of us who think of ourselves as Christians spent even a little time each day trying to focus on God’s gifts for us; on God’s grace and his love, in whatever ways we find most nourishing.

And then what if, by our breath, by our thoughts, by our actions, we tried to put more love into the world—taking in God’s love for us—and putting that love, in our own special and unique ways, into our community, into our world. Would that make a difference? And if it would, are we willing to put the time in, to put the work in, to do it?

We are called to be those people. We are called to be that community. We are called to further this work.

Today’s story of a demon-possessed man should resonate with us in today’s world, if we use the language of our time. And Jesus having the power to heal, to drive out the demons that tormented this man, and many others, is still as true today as it was then.

The world we live in is a frightening and heart-breaking place too much of the time. Helping to set it right, helping to be places where the acts of God can happen in the world is the work we have been given to do.

But we don’t do it alone. We have each other, and we have the Holy Spirit. And that is enough.

Amen.

Oh, also. It helps to wear your preaching Vans.