Category: Sermons

Michael Curry video screenshot

Conversations with/in Scripture

Kyle 3 Comments

A sermon for Proper 20

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Psalm 79:1-9; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13

First of all, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.

If you’re like me, you heard or read these words and thought some version of “here we go again.” Here we go with Paul or his imitators encoding the social values of their time into scripture, and our having to deal with it.

We can’t escape that this passage from 1 Timothy just kind of exudes empire, and a particular approach to living in one as a religious minority.

“Keep your head down. Stay out of trouble. Trust that the lords of the realm were put there by God and that your conditions are under God’s determining control.”

Of course, we know that many Christians of this time took a more active and sometimes antagonistic approach to the powers that be. Christian martyrs defied convention and authority with deadly consequences. The early church embraced patterns of relationship and community that flew in the face of social convention—and the people around them noticed.

Some of this we know actually know from scripture, and I think that points us to a disconcerting but ultimately empowering reality: Scripture does not speak with one voice. The authors of scripture are always in conversation with each other and even themselves, sometimes copying what came before and sometimes arguing with it, but always engaged. [Big shout-out here to Judy Fentress-Williams of Virginia Theolocial Seminary.]

Amid all this witness bound together, not every school of thought is so blase about the notion of kingship. There’s a stream of thinking in the Hebrew Scriptures that’s ambivalent and sometimes even hostile to the notion of monarchs. [Technical term: E-Stream. More here.] Also priests, usually, and generally any source of centralized or hierarchical authority.

One representative of this school is the book of Deuteronomy, the second law, the law for living together in the land of promise. Here mutuality rather than hierarchical authority is the primary mechanism for keeping the peace—so you better not move your neighbors’ property marker.

The prophet Jeremiah also belongs to this tradition. The King mentioned in the passage we heard this morning, sought after but unfound, isn’t one of the kings in the line of David, nor a conquering foreigner. The King here is God Almighty, and indeed this school’s very point is that when you put someone besides God at the very center of a community’s life together, bad things happen.

For Jeremiah and his ilk, “pray for the king” is strange advice, even if it’s true that the king too is subject to God. Jeremiah would say, “Pray for repentance. Pray for the deliverance and restoration of our people, for a balm in Gilead. Pray that God would write the law upon our very hearts so that we each may keep it, and find favor in God’s sight.”

Now, it’s not like the Book of Jeremiah and the First Letter to Timothy are polar opposites or describe a relationship with a different God. They just have different perspectives on the life of faith in community.

This, I think, is a very good thing. It means scripture speaks in different ways to different people, or to the same people at different points in their lives. It gives the scriptures resonance no matter the social or political season.

That these ancient writings can still speak to us so powerfully is a testament to the working of the Holy Spirit and to the surprising unity that can be found among the diverse chorus of biblical voices.

**

If you’ve been reading your Looking Ahead these last two weeks, you may be getting an inkling that all this talk of conversation is leading toward a preview for next week’s Social Media Sunday. Well, you’re not wrong.

If scripture is a conversation, then it’s also an invitation. The church may have decided long ago to stop adding books to the canon, but that doesn’t mean we’re not supposed to contribute to the ongoing dialogue.

God writes the covenant on our hearts as we gather to reflect on what it means in our lives. Jesus is made present to us and others not just by the media of bread and wine but by our stories of how his grace and mercy have made a difference for us. Our collective participation is key.

I think Jeremiah would dig the whole social media phenomenon. Of course, his assorted public relations stunts (like burying his underwear) would get tons of shares and retweets, and we have to assume that the guy liked the attention. But I think he would also love how these media connect us. If we let them, they can put us in deeper conversation with a broad community of believers for support and companionship amid our own daily cycles of captivity and restoration.

As a sort of warm up for next week, let me share a couple examples.

For starters, I recommend that after church you google “Michael Curry video.” High in the results should be a teaching clip our Presiding Bishop released this week.

Not only does Bishop Curry present a very concrete vision of how what he calls “The Jesus Movement” should look in the Episcopal Church, he also gives us a helpful mnemonic device by which we might identify the common message of this movement:

Loving, liberating, life-giving.

If you wanted a concise way of summarizing for others what the Episcopal Church is all about, you could do a lot worse than to share this video. Or remix it. Or post some other response. I guarantee you Bishop Currie would love to have your voice in the choir.

Even more germane to this notion of scripture as conversation is a fascinating app known as Parallel Bible. The idea of Parallel is that anyone with a camera can illuminate the words of scripture in an app, just like the medieval monks did on the printed page.

Members of the Parallel Bible community post photos to accompany particular verses, often reflecting on how the verse is meaningful in their lives. Browsing the app, or Parallel’s printed edition of the Sermon on the Mount, is a great way to peek into the lives of fellow disciples.

Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from illuminating a verse of scripture on whatever social media platform you prefer. If you’re connected to me on social media (and yes, that’s an invitation), you’ll see that I took a stab at a verse from today’s rather challenging gospel passage, which I’ve otherwise managed to avoid this morning.

**

Speaking of avoidance, you’ve perhaps noticed that in this conversation with scripture, I’ve been a little short with the author of 1 Timothy. I’ve not exactly bent over backwards to appreciate the broader point of this passage. Let me briefly do so now.

We keep our heads down and pray for the king because we have work to do. The reading goes on to remind us that Paul was “appointed a herald and an apostle,” a direct messenger and brand ambassador for the “loving, liberating, life-giving” message of Jesus Christ.

This tiny piece of the conversation is important because we have received the same charge. Smartphones and broadband Internet aren’t responsible for giving us this mantel. We put it on at our baptism.

But smartphones and broadband Internet have added to the countless means by which we can practice this vocation. If you haven’t considered that possibility before, in the weeks to come you’ll get a chance to practice if you so choose.

But whichever means we choose, I hope this week each of us will rise to the challenge of sharing the message of love, life, and liberation. Join the conversation in ways appropriate to our own voice and our own context. That’s what it means to go forth in the name of Christ. So here we go again.

Lord's Prayer altar

Sermon: (The Lord’s) Prayer

Kyle 2 Comments

Proper 12

Hosea 1:2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19); Luke 11:1-13

I spent most of the last week in Alexandria wrapping up my formal employment at Virginia Seminary. Among the many joys of being with my colleagues one last time was learning that a book project I’d been rooting for is moving forward.

The book is a biography of one of my spiritual role models, a brilliant and holy man named Mark Dyer. Bishop Mark dined with kings and lived in monasteries and studied obscure theologians. But he was also, as they say, the kind of guy you could have a beer with.

Bishop Mark was incredibly kind but not afraid to let you know he disagreed with you. He was “in love with the life” of Benedictine religious community, but he was still excited by the prospect of a visit to Universal’s Harry Potter theme park.

And over the course of maybe ten conversations, he taught me more about Christian living than probably anyone except my parents.

Like all great spiritual teachers, Bishop Dyer knew how to help people cut through the clutter of their life to address the things that really matter. He told me that he spent his life trying to convince people that Christianity and especially prayer should be simple.

Not easy. But simple.

I think of Bishop Mark and of this point when I hear passages of scripture like today’s reading from Luke’s gospel. “Lord, teach us to pray,” a disciple asks. That sounds like the kind of complicated question you better buckle in for.

Yet Jesus’s primary answer is just 42 words:

When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.’

Besides advice on prayer, this is simple, direct, concrete theology. Jesus tells us we should address God as someone who will care for us, someone who wants a relationship. He reminds us that this God is holy and is actively working to bring about a better world.

He challenges us to depend on God for our needs—especially the daily inspiration to choose reconciled life with our neighbor. And he gives us permission to be honest about the fears we face.

That’s it. Nothing about how often to pray or for how long. Nothing much about fancy prayer techniques or precise formulas. Nothing about what happens if we don’t do it, nor much about what happens if we do. Though he does tell us in parables that God will listen and respond by giving the good gifts we ask for.

Indeed, if Bishop Mark were here, I think he’d tell us it’s no coincidence that the only real commentary in this passage involves this issue of being honest with God and ourselves about what we want and need.

I love Jesus’s first illustration: a friend knocks on our window late at night and shouts in that he needs to borrow some bread. “Sorry dude! Kids are in bed, candles are out, not gonna happen.”

But Jesus knows what we know: we’re not gonna leave our friend hanging, especially if that friend is persistent about it.

God won’t leave us hanging either. We don’t know what form our answered prayers will take, but we can be sure that God is listening and will respond, even if that response is just the strength to make it through another day. I think the more honest we are about our needs, the more likely we are to notice when God answers our prayers.

I remember seeing Mark after a long and painful summer. I told him about the poor decisions I’d made and all the bad habits I’d fallen into. “How’s your prayer life?” he asked. I gave him some answer that basically boiled down to “it’s complicated,” and his reply was that it shouldn’t be.

“Your first prayer in the morning should be for yourself,” he said. “Tell God how you’re feeling and what you want. Don’t hold anything back. Think about the psalms—the people who offered those prayers didn’t withhold a single negative thought. God is big enough to handle whatever anger or sadness or fear you might be dealing with.” God is big enough to handle it.

At a time when negative feelings seem to drive our public discourse, I can’t help but wonder how different our world might be if we first brought our anger, sadness, and fear to our discourse with God.

I think this simple and honest approach to prayer gets to the core of why we do it in the first place. We shouldn’t pray because we think it’s our duty. We shouldn’t pray because we think God wants to be buttered up before responding to our pleas.

We should pray to consciously invite God into our lives. Whatever else we add, it should help us feel close to God, dependent on God, loved by God. The living Christ is already pleased to live within you by the power of the Holy Spirit. Prayer should help you remember and celebrate this reality.

I know this passage is about the Lord’s Prayer, but let me tell one last story about Bishop Mark and the psalms.

“When you’re reading the psalms,” he said, “just stop when you hear that verse where God seems to be speaking right to you, right in the place where you are today. Wherever it connects, just stop and sit with it, even if you’re praying in church.”

He told me that he’d at first had a problem with this advice when he received it from his novice master, the senior monk supervising his formation: “But what if we all stopped at the same time when we’re singing the psalm together?” Mark asked. His master replied, “Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful.”

The final measure of our prayers isn’t their beauty or their length or even their regularity. It’s their ability to bring us close to God, to make God real for us wherever we are, present in and among the many real challenges we face each day.

Honesty and vulnerability are all that’s required. Words? Very much optional. But especially on the days when you’re at a loss for them, remember Jesus taught us a simple prayer that has everything we need.

Photo credit: “Lord’s Prayer” by Ryan Stavely via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Syrian refugees waiting for a train

Sermon: Imagination and empathy in the season of the Incarnation

Kyle

Second Sunday after Christmas

Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15,19-23

Audio | Text:

Happy second Sunday after Christmas. The prayer book says we are in the season of the Incarnation, but I prefer to think of these days between Christmas and Epiphany as the season of imagination.

I believe our primary job as disciples is to claim the Christian story as our own, to learn to find our strength and our hope in the great saga of God’s loving relationship with the world. If that’s true, then there is no better time to practice than when we gather around the manger and marvel at the Christ child.

You see, I have a hard time imagining myself in the place of, say, Paul, making courageous and unpopular speeches before hostile crowds and rulers. I make a lousy imaginary Peter, afraid to drop everything and follow a teacher who challenges me to let go.

When I read the story of Jonah running away from God, that one immediately resonates. But my imagination has thus far not been dexterous enough to find a proper analogy to being swallowed and regurgitated by a giant fish.

But it’s Christmas time, and let me tell you I have played this role of a shepherd. I’m 32 years old and don’t have children. That means if you call me up and say you want me to come meet your new baby this weekend, even this evening? I am all in.

Even if we’re not that close, even if you send a messenger instead, the answer is “yes, I would love to stop by and meet your baby.” If it’s OK with you, it’s more than OK with me. Gloria in excelsis. Demos gracias a Dios.

I don’t really mean to be flippant here. When I held my godson at his baptism, I understood that he was not the savior of the world. But holding a baby, even just beholding, especially a newborn? I don’t think there’s any surer route to contemplating the mystery and the miracle of God at work in the world, or of the saving power of love.

I don’t know exactly what it would be like to look at a child in a manger and somehow to know he was God’s only begotten son. But I think I can imagine it, and I think this season is special because we’re invited to try.

Of course, as we all know, imagination is also dangerous, biblical imagination perhaps most of all. Not every story is shepherds keeping watch by night, or calling us each by name, or opening wide the gates of the sheepfold.

And in years when we have two Sundays before Epiphany, we’re forced to grapple with this sad fact faster than you can say “We Three Kings.”

As we heard just a minute ago, our story this morning actually fast forwards slightly: “After the wise men had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”

So much for “all is calm, all is bright.” Too quickly, this becomes a story of violence in the streets, of fear and bereavement for too many.

Even our fortunate holy family does not get off easy. We can well imagine the impact of their secretive travel to a strange land. On the long road to Egypt, and in the difficult months that followed, I wonder what Mary and Joseph would have thought about. How they made sense of their plight. How those reflections would have shaped their future identity as a family.

We might imagine Joseph thinking about his namesake, the Joseph of the Book of Genesis, who was first left for dead and then sold into slavery before coming to prominence and power in Egypt.

That Joseph was quick to point out how his whole misadventure-turned-deliverance was intended by God for good. Those parallels could have been some comfort to a young refugee couple doing the best they could for their son.

Turning back to the text, we notice even the family’s return is plagued by uncertainty and displacement. Because of still another unjust leader taking power and best avoided, the family receives another dream, sets off on another journey, and settles not in Judea, as they seem to have planned, but in Galilee.

Luke tells this story differently, of course, and we’ll never know how things really went down for the holy family. But whether or not they spent time as refugees in Egypt, they seem, like many poor people, to have had some kind of itinerant existence, an existence these gospel authors are trying to get us thinking about.

And if we let our imaginations continue to doodle in between the lines of their narratives, it isn’t hard to picture these experiences as fundamental building blocks of Jesus’ later character and teachings.

I wonder, might the story of a family encounter on the dangerous road have served as a kind of experiential first draft for Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan?

I wonder, might growing up in a family with a refugee consciousness have opened Jesus to the kinds of socially transgressive exchanges he was always having—with foreigners, with single women, with children?

I wonder, might that same ethos have set Jesus on his own wandering, itinerant path? After all, he could have become a more place-bound guru like John the Baptist, or a refined city slicker like Paul. He seems to have preferred the road.

I wonder if distant memories of hunger on the road might have made Jesus the teacher of crowds all the more insistent on feeding them before their long journeys home.

Here’s what I’m getting at: Might we imagine today that Jesus’ family experience shaped his imagination, his ability to look with love and compassion on those he met? And might we use this occasion for committing ourselves to that same empathetic curiosity and caring?

The year we have just begun will be another year of grappling with how to welcome the stranger, how to offer safe refuge and generous hospitality to those who, like Mary and Joseph, fled terrifying violence and now seek a safe and humane place to raise their children.

We live in New York City, and this is an election year, and the violence in places like Syria, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala shows no signs of stopping. The question isn’t going away just because it resists easy answers.

What I do know is this: the power of imagination is essential to our flourishing together.

We might begin by imagining ourselves in Mary and Joseph’s shoes, or what passed for shoes in their time. With God’s help, we might continue by imagining ourselves in an overloaded ship on dangerous waters, or what will pass for a ship when the reality at home becomes sufficiently terrifying.

With God’s help, we might learn about the work of those already serving refugees here and abroad, like Episcopal Migration Ministries and the UN Refugee Agency. We might explore where we fit into this important work.

Most audaciously of all, we might imagine that a tiny baby in Bethlehem two thousand years ago has the power to inspire us to loving actions large and small, including actions that make life a little more bearable for families like his.

Image credit: Syrian Refugees in Vienna by Josh Zakary via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

St. Peter's VBS

Moses says: Learn by (re)living

Kyle

Proper 17, Year B

(Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)

Preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in the Bronx on August 30, 2105.

Audio | Text:

It’s Friday evening at about 6:10 pm. We’ve reached the play’s penultimate scene, which apparently not all of the cast has seen.

“Fr. Kyle, is that a llama?” a girl of six or seven asks me.

“Well, Zury, I think it’s supposed to be the golden calf, but it looks like a llama to me.”

If I’m also looking a little shaggy and haggard to you this morning, it’s because I’ve been in the desert all week, just like that golden calf. I’ve been helping with a Vacation Bible School aka VBS, and our story was, as you might have figured, the life of Moses.

My wife is the new curate at St. Peter’s in Port Chester, and taking the lead on el Campamento Biblico de Verano was one of her first big projects. And as it happens, my day job is at a seminary teaching and learning resource center, and one of our specialties is supporting VBS planning for congregations all over the country.

So my boss gave me permission to go on what I started calling a “VBS ridealong,” a chance to help out, observe, and take a few craft and game ideas through “play testing” in a real congregation.

To be honest, I was a little nervous at first about our theme. We had a very wide range of ages, as well as wide variation in the language skills and preferences of both participants and volunteers.

I didn’t relish the thought of describing some of the more grisly Plagues of Egypt to a six-year-old, or trying to do so in my still laughably basic Spanish. One prominent VBS leader says that the theme of any such program is “I love you and God loves you and that’s the way it should be.”

So I figured we’d have some explaining to do regarding, in order of appearance, Hebrew infants thrown in the Nile, the plague of the the firstborn, and dead Egyptians on the Red Sea shore. This story has a lot of unlovely details.

But it’s safe to say that I was very wrong. Yes, there are ways to tell the story with integrity to a child of any age, and, yes, our tendency to over-sanitize the Bible does more harm than good. But to understand what really brought me around on teaching Moses at VBS, we should have a listen once again to Moses’ words for us on this, the 14th Sunday after Pentecost.

In the opening chapters of the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses is reminding his fellow Hebrews how far they have made it: from slaves in Egypt to fugitives on the run, from wanderers in the desert to receivers of the law to—almost immediately—transgressors of that law. And did he mention wanderers in the desert?

And now, finally, forty years later, they are preparing to become inheritors of God’s promised gift to Abraham: the land of Canaan, a place to build houses and plant crops and live a settled life with countless offspring. Indeed, part of the reason for this Deutero-nomion, this second book of law, is that the people would now need guidelines that governed an entirely different lifestyle and pattern of relationship with God, self, neighbor, and the environment.

But notice that Moses isn’t here obsessing over new rules or old ones. Sure, he’s reminding the people to follow those rules, but he’s more concerned with the story of how his people received them and what they mean:

You must observe them diligently, [he says,] for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’ For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him?

Here the law is a sign of God’s covenant with the people, of God’s closeness to them. This is Torah: God’s direction, God’s instruction. And not primarily because punishment will be doled out to transgressors but because these teachings are designed to foster justice and mercy and most importantly the giving and receiving of love.

Now here’s the really cool part. Moses continues,

take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children.

He says don’t forget the things that your eyes have seen. Not: don’t forget what you’ve been told.

So in his final pep talk, Moses is saying “Take particular care to remember what we’ve been through.” He knows that that will be Israel’s best hope: not to be mere keepers of the law but to be stewards of the story, the story they lived together as a people.

If you’ve been fortunate enough to attend a Passover Seder, you’ll recognize this principle immediately.

Why do we eat the Matzah? participants ask. Why do we eat the bitter herbs? Because our people left Egypt in a hurry, before their bread could rise. Because the lives of our people were made bitter at the hands of Pharaoh.

The experience of eating and drinking and praying and singing along with the story is an attempt to capture it in its fullness years later, to tie its contours to sensations and circumstances that are accessible to us today.

And that’s what experiences like Vacation Bible School or camping ministries are so good at. They immerse us in the story in ways we will never forget. Moses knows how important that immersion is, so it seems fitting to borrow his teaching style to tell his story.

This week we touched the desert sand and sang “Go Down, Moses” and pretended to be the frogs of the second plague and raced to make bricks for Pharaoh’s building projects and, because we couldn’t resist, brought marshmallow hailstones down on those same buildings with homemade catapults. (That’s plague #7 if you’re keeping score in your pews.)

On Friday I even realized that our portable water slide and ice cream day were basically the promised land.

To borrow the well-known phrase from today’s Epistle lesson, this kind of teaching and learning made the people of that St. Peter’s “doers of the word, and not merely hearers.”

Now, I haven’t had the pleasure of spending an intensive week getting to know this St. Peter’s. But just a glance at your website shows me that you practice many hands-on ministries that help teach members and neighbors of any age that “you love them and that God loves them and that that’s the way it should be.”

We can say it until we’re blue in the face, but it’s ministries like your Love Ktichen, Love Closet, Love Pantry, and Cephas Arts Program that make this love incarnate, that help us see and serve the Christ in one another.

So here’s my challenge for you … and for me as well. In the so-called “program year” ahead, let’s be on the lookout for even more chances to bring to life the captivating story that is the love of Jesus Christ set loose in the world.

Maybe that means more hands-on, active learning in our Christian formation gatherings and experiences. Maybe that means volunteering in an outreach program if it’s been a while for you, or seeking out a new way to serve. Maybe that means telling someone a part of your faith story, and showing them how that story is shaping your life in concrete ways.

As Franciscan Richard Rohr put it in his email meditation this week, quoting Pope Paul VI, “The world will no longer believe teachers unless they are first of all witnesses.” I think that’s basically what Moses is telling us today.

“Take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children,” and, I hasten to add, to everyone one you meet.

How and Why

How & Why: Big questions in the spiritual life

Kyle

Proper 15, Year B

(Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34:9-14; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58)

Audio | Text:

I’m an engineer by training, which means I’m fascinated by how things work. HOW can be a big question, a noble question. HOW can set us at fascinating tasks, send us on great quests.

It can also really mess up a pleasant afternoon. If you’ve ever walked into a room in horror to find that your child, significant other, or coworker has taken something intricate apart—something you probably needed—you may have had an encounter with the implacable pull of HOW.

We are fascinated, many of us, with interconnections, mechanisms, lines of reasoning. The world is held together by these pieces and processes, and our God-given curiosity tells us there’s an underlying structure to it all and that to know that reason is, perhaps, in a small way, to know the mind of its Creator and Sustainer.

**

Of course, HOW can be a dangerous question. I’m a fan of science fiction and fantasy, and in these genres HOW is a tightrope. On the one hand, many of us are drawn to these stories because we want to know how these worlds work. The HBO series Game of Thrones and especially the books on which it’s based keep many of us riveted because they let us examine how the webs of influence in Westeros respond when one link in the political machine is strained, or cut, or removed altogether.

On the other hand, HOW can also be a distraction, or even a travesty. If you’re looking forward to the next round of Star Wars movies, you’re probably hoping for a little less HOW than in the much-maligned prequel of the early 2000s. I’m thinking in particular of the film’s relationship with “the Force,” the mystical energy that binds the Star Wars universe together and gives the Skywalkers their power.

I won’t bore you with the details if you don’t know them already, but the prequels reduced the power to control “the Force” to a simple blood test. The boy who would become Luke’s father had a count of little Force bacteria that was off the chart, apparently. And so to be selected as a Jedi Knight became not a matter of mystical discernment but basically a box that might be checked by the technician at the interstellar Lab Corps.

The point is, Star Wars fans’ questions about the Force are not HOW questions. They’re WHY questions: Why did Luke’s father turn from good to evil? Why does the Force seem to desire a kind of balance between light and darkness, good and evil? And, perhaps, why does the Force exist at all?

**

Jesus is a master of turning us toward the WHY. Many of the moments when he brings his opponents up short—or brings us up short—come from his keen insight about the WHY of a given situation. He knows that the person asking HOW is usually trying to justify himself, or trap Jesus in an intenable position, or turn a complex issue simple, or a simple one complex.

We see a typical example of this phenomenon when Jesus encounters the learned religious leaders in today’s passage. He’s claiming to be “the living bread that came down from heaven,” and they understandably want to know: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

After all, it’s an audacious claim: eternal life bestowed, and the indwelling of one spirit in another. It’s also a truly strange one. It doesn’t add up for these anxious onlookers. They don’t see how it would work, or why they’d want it to, this eating of Jesus’ body. Which is fair enough, but also not the point.

Rather than even engage with their HOW-oriented thinking, Jesus keeps right on going with his teaching about WHY: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.” It’s like he’s saying “don’t ask how, just *think* of it, for a moment, what I’m offering.

As we’ve been exploring in the gospel readings these past few weeks, Jesus’ discourses on the Bread of Life are about who he is, who God is, how we depend on God, what God wants for us. They’re about the gift of grace, and the means of human flourishing. They’re not a HOW-to manual. They’re parables of WHY.

Why eat? Why follow? Why serve? Why love? These are the questions that animate our lives, and Jesus knows what we seldom admit to ourselves: that we get so bogged down in *how* to do these things that we lose touch with the reasons why we even embarked on the journey.

Or maybe we use our anxiety about how as an excuse not to ask why in the first place. Perhaps in a work meeting, or even a vestry meeting, you’ve seen a skeptical colleague shoot down an important idea with this often toxic question: “But how would that actually work?”

The worst is when it’s not even a question. The phrase “I don’t see how that would work” has an air of finality, especially when it comes from someone in power. Which is why it’s all the more remarkable that Jesus stood up so often and so successfully to the HOWs of the authorities.

**

Now, they’d revoke my engineer’s card if I stood up here and told you HOW wasn’t important. And I hope also my priest card as well.

Practicalities, matter. Jesus was a man of action as much as of reflection. God wants us not only to think big thoughts and dream big dreams but, as we prayed today in our collect, “to follow daily in the blessed steps of [Christ’s] most holy life.” We have to walk the walk, and that means knowing and taking the steps we need.

All this has led me to believe that WHY and HOW are inextricably linked in the life of the Spirit. Perhaps Jesus is always asking us WHY because it’s easier for us to see God there. But God is just as present in the HOW.

A marriage is a leap of faith where we trust that the importance of the WHY will provide the HOW when we need it, that this love we have been given will abide amid the inevitable challenges and setbacks and it will be enough. The same goes for the choice of a field of study. Or a move to a new job or a new home.

A good friend of mine recently reminded me of the full extent of the connection between WHY and HOW in what feels, in my life at the moment, like a final frontier. That, of course, would be having kids.

I see so many friends whose lives seem to have been totally undone by the challenges of children: sleepless nights, cancelled vacations, trips to the emergency room. My knee-jerk annoyance at every potential nice dinner out that needs to be changed to a picnic lunch with rotating playground duty confronts me with an overwhelming sense of my own selfishness. I wonder HOW I will ever be up to this sacred duty.

Without my even asking the question, during a recent visit my friend Becky, one of those new parents, answered it:

I just didn’t know it was possible to have SO. MUCH. LOVE.

HOW turned out to have the same answer as WHY.

Perhaps the way of wisdom is little more than integrating these two questions, coming to trust our experiences of a savior who calls us to be with him (there’s the why) and then nourishes us throughout the journey (that’s the how).

So the next time Jesus throws the pharisees, or you, a curveball made of WHY, or you’re tempted to shoot down someone’s big idea with a hostile HOW, remember that in the issues that matter, the answers to these questions converge in a synthesis only God could orchestrate.

When a task seems too daunting, or a truth too strange or even too wonderful, like the flesh of a savior offering eternal life, remember this simple Q & A.

How? By the gift of grace. Why? Always, ultimately, for love.

Image credit: “How and Why” by Roadsidepictures via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

 

If ye love me

Loving “on command”

Kyle

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

(Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17)

Audio (or via Dropbox) | Text:

In chapter 14 of John’s gospel, Jesus says these familiar words: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” That’s a pretty tall order, no? Kind of a lot of pressure?

It gets even more incredible when we arrive at today’s elaboration on what those commandments actually are. Here in this morning’s passage, Jesus gets to the point: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Oh is that all?

Actually no. Jesus continues, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Those are some seriously high expectations. If Jesus is the example we’re shooting for, we seem doomed to fail. And yet that is his commandment to us.

How can we think differently about texts that can seem so unrealistic? How can we make sense of the idea of loving “on command”?

**

Those of you who came to the rector’s forum on Anglican thought a few weeks ago know I have a fondness for Richard Hooker, arguably the first great Anglican theologian. Hooker has a helpful perspective here, because he sees law and commandment as an especially suitable metaphor for God.

The created order is held in being according to law, says Hooker. Here’s the line from his masterwork that interprets everything that follows: “[t]he being of God is a kinde of lawe to his working: for that perfection which God is, geveth perfection to that he doth” (Lawes I.2.1). Boy is that an Elizabethan mouthful. Here’s the gist:

Hooker says that what God is, who God is, is reflected throughout the great chain of being: angels, humans, animals, plants, rocks, seas, everything. God’s law connects God’s works one to the other and carries God’s perfection to them. God is a sort of wellspring of order, structure, right relationship.

So we do not so much comply with the law or obey the commandment to love one another. Notice that in the language of our gospel reading we keep the commandments, we abide in God’s love.

This is language of reception: love is a gift. It comes to us and to all creation from our Creator.

This is language of participation: to love is simply to get swept up by God’s love, be pulled along by it, become woven into its very fabric—and it into ours.

Here the familiar words of the King James Version serve us poorly, hiding the meaning John seems to be getting at. “If ye love me, keep my commandments” is not supposed to be a threat or a guilt trip or even a challenge.

It’s a promise: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments, it will just sort of follow.” That’s better but still imperfect.

What’s the alternative? Well, I don’t know, and I think that’s why these writings of John’s community (the gospel and the letters) are so circular and repetitive. There’s always more to say. We can never quite capture it.

For my part, I’d want to put it this way: Loving Christ and keeping his commandments are the same thing.

Loving one another as God has loved us is less a matter of imitation or even grateful response than it is of recognizing God, assenting to Christ’s presence in us. I appreciate Henri Nouwen’s point that God’s love is the first love and we share and return our own. But I think it’s better to say that there is only one love. It is of God and is God. We do best to notice it with gratitude and let it do its work in us.

We are included in a community of love, of obedience to this commandment in the fullest and deepest sense, when we receive the gift of the Spirit and become one with the Savior who is law and love already for us and in us.

**

OK, we need to bring this conversation with scripture out of the stratosphere. Let’s make it a bit more concrete by considering, I presume, an all too familiar example.

Let’s think about our overbearing coworker, or our unpleasant relative, or someone who simply gets our goat on a regular basis.

Knowing that love for such people is, shall we say, elusive, we tend to focus on “loving actions.” We can do our best to relate well, putting our frustrations aside and focusing on the task at hand in those times we need to be together. We can go out of our way to practice kindness, smiling, doing favors, remaining open, and essentially pretending we love this person until it sort of becomes a habit and sticks.

I’m a huge proponent of this approach. But there are certain folks for whom we just can’t get it off the ground, people with whom we’re so defensive or uncomfortable or outright hostile that the very thought of “fake it ‘til you make it” love seems almost laughable.

This is when I try to take my shortcoming to God in prayer, abandoning “loving action” to grasp at “loving response”: “Oh God, you have showered me with so many blessings, forgiven me so many evils, loved me so totally and completely. Help me to extend just a fraction of that generosity toward this insufferable human being …”

You probably see where I’m going here. If the love depends on us, there are always going to be people with whom we come up short. No amount of meditation on the sufferings of Christ or the unshakable faithfulness of the God of our ancestors seems to get us over the hump.

Sometimes, the best thing we can do to love someone is admit to God that we can’t. Sometimes, maybe more often than we think, our prayer should be something like this:

“God, I do not know how to love John in accounting, or cousin Sally, or that neighbor whose dog always poops in my yard. It is beyond me. But I know it is not beyond you. I know you already have a love for this person that is vast, complete, and unconditional. When it is time, please share it with me.”

For my money, that’s the only prayer that has a chance with the people who drive us nuts, to say nothing of those who have hurt or abused us.

**

Jesus’s commandment that we love one another only makes sense when we accept that the love of God and neighbor is a gift of grace. It is already present in and through the created order, in which we are all interconnected. It is already present by the Word of God, Christ who is all and in all. It is already present by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ’s own first gift for those who believe.

The love of God is already in us. We keep the commandment of Christ by giving ourselves over to it as best we can, as often as we can.

Image credit: “if ye love me” by Tom Woodward via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

New Fire

We have been this way before: An Easter Vigil homily

Kyle

Great Vigil of Easter

We have been this way before.

Once again, Jesus gathered us together in community. Once again, we left our betrayals and our brokenness at the foot of the cross. Once again, we were there when they laid him in the tomb. Once again, he proved to us that the powers of sin and death are as nothing compared to the power of the grace and mercy of our God.

We have arrived at this place by the telling of the story. And there are only a couple of required chapters. One of them is the story of the Exodus, the crossing of the Red Sea, the liberation of the Ancient Hebrews from their bondage in Egypt.

If you know that story, you know it is more a beginning than an ending. The same is true for us this night. *

We too have been set free, free from the bondage of sin, free to embark on a journey into the unknown with our Redeemer.

Where will we meet the Risen Christ along the road? What will we do with that most precious gift of redemption and new life?

We have been this way before, but what happens next is another holy mystery.

Beloved, we are God’s children now—redeemed, renewed. What we will be has not yet been revealed.

* This is, if memory serves (now), where I drew a total blank, said something halting and lame, and ended the sermon. Preaching with out notes at the Vigil? Much more perilous than doing so on Palm Sunday, apparently.

Photo from St. Paul’s, K Street, website.

Family prayer

Resolving to practice faith at home: A sermon for the Feast of the Holy Name

Kyle

Feast of the Holy Name

(Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21; Psalm 8)

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Some of you know that my job at Virginia Seminary is as a coach and curator in the area of Christian formation. So I spend my days immersed in the world of best practices for teaching and learning about faith, for claiming and practicing and living faith. It’s my job to distill and share what church leaders, researchers, curriculum writers, seminary faculty, and others have learned about passing on this great gift of God.

One of the chief lessons of this work might surprise you: Studies have shown that the most significant factor among those that help faith “stick” in adolescents and persist into adulthood is what researchers call “family religiosity”: talking about faith, participating in household devotions, serving those in need as a family. In other words, faith is formed, or not, in the home—more so than in church, it turns out. And adults benefit from family religiosity too, both of their family of origin and their faith at home practice as adults—even single adults.

This is both an intimidating and an empowering reality. Even if we sometimes feel unsure about adapting or creating family prayers, rituals, and other practices (and I don’t mind admitting that I do), it’s nice to have this concrete reminder that the way we live our everyday lives matters not just to God but to the corporate lives of even our smallest faith communities.

That, in my opinion, is why it’s worth rising early-ish on New Year’s Day to celebrate this Feast of the Holy Name, or what the 1662 prayer book called the Feast of the Circumcision.

The story of Jesus’s first day on earth is dramatic, what with the full inn and the manger, the shepherds and flocks and heavenly hosts crying Gloria! The story of the baby Jesus’s eighth day of life is briefer and relatively ordinary: “After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:21).

The circumcision and naming was just the first rite of passage for Jewish boys in Ancient Israel. It almost certainly took place at home, and not in the Temple as some Christian art portrays. But this art may be confusing the Circumcision of Jesus with the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, which happened next. Luke tells us this later rite took place partly in fulfillment of the Torah’s command to redeem firstborn sons by the sacrifice of a lamb or, in the case of poor couples like Mary and Joseph, two “turtle-doves or young pigeons” (2:24b).

We don’t know much else about the faith practices of the Holy Family, except for a yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And Jesus did not live to reach many later life-stage transitions. But he did famously attend a wedding feast, and use that particular rite of passage as a metaphor in much of his teaching. We also believe that he instituted the Eucharist in another bit of at-home religious observance: the sharing of the Passover meal with his friends.

Even those of us who are terrified of praying or talking about God at home have probably been attending to family faith during the holiday season. We made ready our homes with decorations. Perhaps we lit Advent wreaths. And we almost certainly gave or received gifts or participated in a festive meal. I believe these practices and the holiday season in general can be a source of valuable momentum for this particular aspect of Christ-like living.

So in addition to its primary meanings, I submit that we might think of today more broadly as a feast honoring rites of passage, a feast celebrating everyday faith.

To observe it, let’s spend some time considering how in 2015 we might attend to our faith not just at church but in our households of whatever size.

  • What new or additional ritual might help faith stick a bit more for us?
  • What practice with friends and loved ones could regularly gather us around the light of Christ?
  • What rite of passage or other life transition might provide an occasion to give thanks for God’s many blessings or even to share with God that we’re ready for better?

There are so many resources to recommend, but we might make a start by taking a look at the Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families found on page 136 of the Book of Common Prayer. And if they don’t appeal to you, ask your fellow parishioners or one of the clergy for some ideas. The most important thing is that you find a practice that works for you.

So Happy New Year. Happy Feast of the Holy Name. And happy hunting at home for new ways to engage and deepen your faith in the God who came among us in an extraordinary—and also ordinary—human life.

Image credit: “Thanksgiving 2008” by Matthew Self via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

March for Justice in Washington DC

Psalm 126 and National Lament: Black Lives Matter

Kyle 2 Comments

Advent 3, Year B

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

With profound respect and gratitude to the many people whose writing and witness helped me prepare, including Remington Gregg, Osheta Moore, Mike Kinman, Broderick Greer, the Theology of Ferguson/StayWokeAdvent/DearWhitePastor crew (especially Micky Jones and Jake Dockter), Mike Angell, and Emily Scott.

PDF | Audio (soon, or via Dropbox) | Text:

Our psalm today is the perfect prayer for the season of Advent. It’s a song of in-betweenness, then as now. Of hope, yes, perhaps, but not a cheap hope. Maybe a hope in the midst of lament. Let’s hear the translation from our prayer book:

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, *

then were we like those who dream.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter, *

and our tongue with shouts of joy.

Then they said among the nations, *

“The LORD has done great things for them.”

The LORD has done great things for us, *

and we are glad indeed.

Restore our fortunes, O LORD, *

like the watercourses of the Negev.

Those who sowed with tears *

will reap with songs of joy.

Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, *

will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves. (Psalm 126, BCP)

Of course, the poetry of the original Hebrew and this artful translation is much of the initial appeal here. Both the music and the message of those final verses are simply stunning. When the Lord restores the fortune of Zion, it is a bountiful harvest for those who have been in waiting.

It’s not hard to imagine this psalm being a favorite of the young Jewish man who went on to preach over and over about the upside-down kingdom of God. There is an unmistakable pattern to Jesus’s teaching, to Jesus’s promises, to Jesus’s prophetic actions, to Jesus’s presence with us still by the power of the Spirit. The message is that God cares about the suffering of God’s people, especially the most vulnerable. And God will deliver them. God longs to grant release, recovery, redemption, restoration.

It’s all those “re”s that make this psalm powerful, and hard. In the opening verses, the people remember a time of great promise:

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, *

then were we like those who dream.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter, *

and our tongue with shouts of joy.

Then they said among the nations, *

“The LORD has done great things for them.”

The LORD has done great things for us, *

and we are glad indeed.

But here’s where it all comes crashing down; here’s where we realize where we are and what’s at stake. Here the Psalmist speaks to God in the imperative voice: the command form, you may have heard it called in language classes. But here it is a plea:

Restore our fortunes, O LORD, *

like the watercourses of the Negev.

That one shift in perspective changes everything. Now we realize we’re in the midst of what one scholar calls a National Lament: O Lord, we remember the bounty, the optimism, the reputation in the sight of our neighbors. They are lost to us. Restore our fortunes. Burst forth in the desert like a river when the rains came.

Those of you who have studied the narrative arch of the Hebrew Scriptures, perhaps in Pilgrims class, perhaps while studying The Story last year, will recognize here one of the “troughs” in the cyclical ups and downs of the life of the people of God.

God reaches out. The people respond in faith. The people get complacent. Complacency turns to disobedience. Disobedience turns to hostility at the bearers of God’s message of repentance. Finally, God chooses a messenger that the people cannot ignore. The people repent. God forgives. And the cycle begins again.

Of course, it wasn’t only so for the Jews of the Ancient Near East. Advent 2014 has coincided with the deepening of our own sort of national lament.

We’re not pleading for a bountiful harvest, or the restoration of our homeland, not literally. Our songs today are punctuated with different refrains: Hands up, don’t shoot. I can’t breathe. Black lives matter.

The killing of African Americans Mike Brown and Eric Garner, and the subsequent grand jury acquittals in recent weeks of the white officers who took their lives, have brought an urgency to the conversations about the racial injustices that still plague our nation, and still grieve the heart of God.

On Thursday, black staffers on Capitol Hill staged a walk-out in solidarity with those who are suffering. Senate Chaplain Dr. Barry Black led the prayer: “Forgive us when we have failed to lift our voices for those who could not speak or breathe themselves.”

Among those who have helped bring these conversations home for me is our parishioner Remington Gregg, who shared these reflections a week or so ago on Facebook and gave me permission to share them here:

This is not a question of pro- versus anti-law enforcement. Nor is it a question of absolving those who died. One of the reasons why so many people are enraged is because there seems to be a complete lack of comprehension by some to admit that there is even a problem. That there is suspicion among some—I stress some—members of society when they see a black man … People cross the street. Security guards follow us whilst shopping in Brooks Brothers. And executives disregard our resume because a name sounds too ‘urban.’ Many just want an honest conversation about how, in 2014, the United States still propagates individuals who see pillaging in Seattle and call it ‘shenanigans,’ but see the same thing in Ferguson and call folks ‘savages.’

Somewhere in the cycle of sin and repentance comes the point where the people have that honest conversation. I don’t think we’re there yet, but we’re making progress. This psalm is an excellent spiritual song to sing on our way together. And this season, with it’s call to keep awake, is the perfect time to continue making steps forward as a nation.

For those of us who don’t have first-person experience of violent discrimination, waking up means tuning in to the voices crying out. Osheta Moore of the Shalom in the City blog recently wrote, “I wonder if the love that is spun in the words, “I’m listening and I’m sorry” can change the very fabric of this world? I think so. I think this is who our God is …” She goes on to name the various ways she is listening, including this one:

I’m listening to Christians who don’t want to acknowledge racism. I’m sorry it’s unsettling to look this darkness in the face, but Jesus looked darkness in the face for you. In his very body he suffered pain and abuse to express your great value to God. In light of this, can you look darkness in the face by listening to me and millions of black women when we cry out unsettled by the devaluation of the bodies of our black boys, men, fathers, and brothers? Will you ask God what you should do with such a precious gift?

No matter what our race or color, let’s make sure we’re not squandering God’s gift of life. Let’s make sure we’re not avoiding uncomfortable conversations or assenting to the status quo with silence.

Of course all lives matter, as some have started shouting in misguided reaction to our growing cultural refrain. That’s not the point for the time being, in the wake of so clear a message that our systems of law and justice continue to be broken for some. At this time, in this season, black Americans feel understandably exhausted and betrayed. It is the responsibility of all Americans and especially all Christians to claim for themselves the message that black lives matter, and to stay awake for opportunities to make that proclamation more than just a slogan or a hashtag online. But slogans and hashtags are a start.

In this nation, in this city, in this neighborhood, it should be impossible to hear “then were we like those who dream” without remembering or at least being reminded about a time when people of goodwill throughout our nation were inspired by one man’s dream, claimed it for themselves, and responded with integrity and courageous action.

It will take no less commitment from all people of goodwill today to tackle a problem that too may still believe has already been dealt with. May we remember that our walk with God and neighbor will always be of a more cyclical character, our progress always hard-won and fragile.

And may Advent 2014 continue to be a time when we keep awake in hopeful expectation for the time when we can all proclaim—not only with our lips but in our lives—that black lives matter. Restore our fortunes, O Lord. Your people need you.

Horcrux: The locket

Horcruxes, podcasts, and singleness of heart: A stewardship sermon

Kyle 2 Comments

Proper 24, Year A

Isaiah 45:1-7; Psalm 96:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22)

PDF | Audio (or via Dropbox) | Text:

Of all the profoundly adult spiritual insights J. K. Rowling explores in the Harry Potter series, the most fascinating to me is an object the wizards call a horcrux. Over the course of the series, we learn that the seemingly immortal dark lord has maintained his grasp on earthly life by dividing his soul into pieces and hiding them in objects of personal and social resonance.

These objects become both the signs and the anchors of his twisted power and indeed his very existence. Our heroes’ shared journey is a race to find and destroy the horcruxes before doing battle, one last time, with what’s left of the man himself.

If there’s a sense of inevitability as the seven books pile up, it comes not from the vague idea that good is going to triumph over evil but from the specific notion that the Dark Lord Voldemort is a house divided against himself. He has passed beyond any unity between his actions and his humanity. He may be single-minded, but he lacks the virtues named in our Rite II post-communion prayer: “gladness and singleness of heart.”

***

It’s tough to read the entire Harry Potter saga in a self-aware way without reflecting on the horcruxes we create in our own lives, the vessels into which we pour our own divided souls according to an alchemy that will always leave us diminished.

A bank account can become a horcrux, or a smartphone. The perfect home, or body, or professional portfolio. Dare I say a bookshelf? Dare I say a church building? And yet we know that no earthly object was meant to contain our souls, not even our earthly bodies in the end.

Only the very heart of God can contain, uphold, and embrace our fullness. There is no lesser altar onto which we should pour out the sacrifice of our lives. In a sense, the alignment of our intentions with God’s will be our very salvation.

***

The biblical writer known to scholars as Second Isaiah profoundly understands singleness of heart, of purpose, of vision. Twice in these seven verses we hear the following words: “I am the Lord, and there is no other.”

That’s not just an empty refrain. This passage declares that the creator of the universe is also at the center of human affairs. Cyrus the Great, who didn’t know the God of Israel from Adam, has become God’s chosen servant. A foreign conqueror has been selected to show the whole world that there is no other God but the LORD.

We see no division here between the political and the spiritual, between the economic and the religious. It’s a unitive vision of our world. Everything belongs to God and will serve God’s ultimate purposes.

Jesus, too, warns us about dividing our souls into pieces, about parcelling out our loyalties, about sectioning off the difficult parts of our lives. Recall his admonition that “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (6:24).

Against that backdrop, it’s peculiar at first to hear today’s gospel saying, about giving to Caesar what what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. And then we remember that our coins may not bear God’s image, but we do. What does God expect from us? Our very selves, our souls and bodies, our wholeness.

Isaiah, Matthew, and our Lord agree: In the life of faith, the question is never “God or …” or even “God and …” but rather and finally “God in …” If Jesus gives a “God and …” answer to a “God or …” question, it is only to make a “God in …” point: “Give to God the things that are God’s,” and remember that that is everything.

Our God who is in all wants us to be all in.

That doesn’t mean Jesus is raising the biblical tithe to 100%. It does mean that God should be fully present in our budgeting process and our giving decisions. God wants our full awareness, our full commitment, an all-embracing relationship of love and service.

Even if it meant giving zero dollars to the church, I guarantee you that God would rather have that fullness than ten percent of any sum given without a second thought to its impact on the church’s mission or our individual discipleship. But to be all in in spirit, most of us need to give substantially of our time, talent, and treasure.

***

I’m wary of stewardship sermons that seem to let the preacher off the hook, so here’s a personal example that helped make this idea real for me this week. I have long been an admirer and user of WorkingPreacher.org, an online sermon preparation resource from Luther Seminary. It is an effort of incredible scope and quality. Almost 300 scholars from dozens of schools have contributed more than 2,000 commentaries on weekly readings. And the commentaries are just the beginning.

The real inspiration to me is the Sermon Brainwave podcast, a collaboration of four Luther Seminary professors. For those of you who don’t know, a podcast is like a radio show whose episodes can be individually downloaded for on-demand and often on-the-go listening.

I produce a biweekly podcast as part of my work at Virginia Seminary. We’ve been at it for a year or so and just recorded episode 25. I can tell you that it is a ton of work. That these busy faculty members have recorded and distributed 378 episodes is nothing short of astonishing.

When I look at this project, I see a team that is all in for the mission of God. No one would fault these professors for focusing more narrowly on current students, or on their own research and writing. But Rolf Jacobson, David Lose, Karoline Lewis, and Matt Skinner have made a decision about God’s call for them, and they reaffirm it every week when they press record. They give their time and talent to produce a free resource for preachers all over the world, one for which they receive no royalties and, I fear, precious little esteem from their colleagues in the academy.

As I reflected on my own stewardship this week—and made use of Working Preacher to prepare this sermon—I realized I needed to be all in too. I decided not to live with a divided consciousness, benefiting from this remarkable resource but ignoring its need for my support. Maybe some of you have had the same experience during a public radio fund drive.

So I finally made a gift. It’s not going to pay anyone’s salary, but it was a good deal larger than the token donations I routinely make—donations that, if I’m honest, I know are intended principally to get phone volunteers or the tickling of my conscience to leave me the heck alone.

With a click and a monthly credit card deduction, the Spirit’s prompting helped me bring my actions into slightly better alignment with my values. I took a baby step toward singleness of heart. And, not surprisingly, I found the gift of gladness there as well. Working Preacher became, for me, in that moment, a sort of anti-horcrux, an earthly well of grace, and opportunity to nourish my soul on the inspiration of God’s Living Word, and to help share that richness with others.

So there’s a little part of my story. But let’s bring it back to St. Paul’s. In the weeks ahead, I hope that our prayerful discernment, our frank and perhaps uncomfortable conversations, and at last our decisive action will be marked by a profound desire to live united. What delights and inspires us about this community? What challenges us and helps us grow? We all have amazing answers to those questions. So whatever the quantity of time, talent, and treasure we contribute to these efforts, let’s let the quality of our support be whole-hearted.

Let us pray.

Gracious Lord, grant to each of us that precious gift of your Spirit: singleness of heart. Help us find peace, meaning, and gladness in the fullness of our support for your mission among us. And help us offer to you what is yours: the fullness of our lives. Amen.