Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on Feb 25, 2018
Preaching text: Mark 8:27-38

In the aftermath of the recent FL shooting, Texas teacher Tanai Bernard wanted to ensure her 10-year old son, Dezmond, was taking his school’s active shooter drills seriously. So she quizzed him on what they did during the drills. Dez, as he is known, calmly rattled off the instructions that he’d received, that he and 3 other boys were to block the door with a table while the teacher blacked out the windows with construction paper. He then concluded by telling his mother that his classmates were then to stand behind him.

Mindful that her son is African-American, Tanai wondered aloud why the class would be standing behind one of the only two black kids in this otherwise white class. Dez explained, “I volunteered. If it came down to it I would rather be the one that died protecting my friends then have an entire class die and I be the only one that lived.”

And Jesus said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” I don’t know if Tanai Bernard takes her son to church. I don’t know if they are believers. But I do know that Dezmond Bernard, this 10-year-old from Texas, gets it. He understands what Jesus was saying even if he’s never heard it before.

Suffer the little children to come unto me, for the kingdom of God belongs to ones such as these. Ten years old and he understands what it means to take up the cross and lay down one’s life for others. Far too many of those who sit in pews like these each week don’t. No wonder Jesus had such high praise for children. They get it, usually far better than we adults.

There is a part of me, I am ashamed to admit, that is very resentful of my stepdaughter. Everything is a big joke to Emily. Everything has something to laugh at. I envy that. I deeply envy that, because the older I get the more bitter I find myself becoming about life. Life has beaten the crap out of me over the last several years. I’ve gone broke. Was in a horrific car accident that seriously injured my wife. Lost my home. Had my car repoed. Been in the hospital three times in the past three years for either life-threatening or life-altering conditions. I’m beat up and worn out. I find very little in life to laugh at. Very little that’s a joke. Very little to smile at anymore. It’s all deadly serious.

Along with that bitterness comes a poisonous selfishness. My faith compels me to fight against it, but I fear it may be losing battle. When I say, as I have in these past few weeks of sermons, that we are our own worst enemy, I know what I’m talking about. The temptation is so very strong to make it all about me. Me, me, me and to hell with everyone else.

And I’m not alone. Life beats the tar out of all of us. Many of you can point to calamity within your own lives that put mine to shame. Many out there can do the same. Many may claim they’d love to have my problems. But this constant abuse is getting to all of us. It makes us hard and cynical and bitter inside. It makes us selfish; we look out for #1 because that feels like the only way to survive these times.

And what it does is create a vicious circle that our whole society is now trapped within. Life hurts us, so we turn inward. We neglect and ignore the needs and dreams of others, and they are hurt by that. So they turn inward, and the process repeats over and over again. It’s a disease, a plague, and it’s spreading.

Just listen to the way people talk. The whole debate over guns that’s erupted yet again in light of the recent violence in FL is particularly telling. Has anyone here heard an argument against the banning of certain semi-automatic firearms that can’t be boiled down to “My pleasure at owning this weapon trumps your desire for you and your children to be safe.” My pleasure at owning this weapon trumps everything, because it’s all about me. What I want. What I like. What I enjoy. You, you don’t matter.

That’s a particularly timely example, but there many others. “Why should I have to pay more for other people to have healthcare?” “Why should I pay more in taxes so other people don’t have to starve?” Why should I care the poor, the disabled, the homeless, the mentally ill, the sick, or anyone else? They’re not me. Why should I care about why black lives matter? I’m not black. Why should I care about LGBT folk who want the same rights as the rest of us? I’m not gay. They’re not me.

There's also a flip side to the coin. Ask anyone of the generation who presently claims all the power, all the influence, and all the money, has most of the CEO positions and politicians, whose fault it is that our country is the way it is? It's the young people, the millennials, who have no power, no money, no influence. It's all about me, until it's about responsibility and blame and then it's "Everyone but me."

This is why our country is the way it is. We’ve stopped caring about one another, we’ve made it all about us. A nation of 326 million kings and queens who care only for themselves. Myself included. And we dare to call ourselves a “Christian nation?” There’s nothing about that that is remotely Christian.

Jesus shows us a better way. Living not for ourselves but for the sake of others. That’s what taking up the cross really means. Giving all that we are to make life better for our neighbors. It’s not easy. The world will not stop its abuse of us if we try. We not stop getting hurt. But Jesus knew that. Look what happened to him.

The world beat him with rods and staves. It rammed a crown of thorns onto his brow. It nailed his arms and legs to a rough wooden cross and then left him exposed to the elements to suffocate or freeze to death (whichever came first). He was God incarnate. There was no reason for him to allow that to happen to him except one: To reveal to us that our lives are more important than even his own. That’s God’s love for us, a love that says boldly “You matter more than me.”

God Almighty, incarnate as Jesus, said that of us. Of you and me. That’s how much you’re worth. That’s how precious you are. And now he asks that we show that same sort of love to one another.

That’s the love Dezmond Bernard shows his classmates. Tanai, I doubt you’ll ever hear or read these words, but you should be proud beyond words of your son. He is a young man of quality and character and this total stranger is very happy that one day it will be people like him who are running the show.

We can do the same. We can love like that if we can let go of our bitterness and our hurt and try to love again as Jesus did. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

Imagine what the world would look like if we did. When life takes a shot at me, I know that one of you, if not all of you, would help pick me up again. When life takes a shot at one of you, you can be assured that I and others would stand by your side. We are stronger together than apart. We can nurse one another’s wounds, give shoulders to cry upon, and we can love another. 

This past Thursday was the 75th anniversary of the execution of Sophie Scholl, who as a young college student stood up to the tyranny of the Nazi regime and lost her life for it. She was 21 years old. (And a little child shall lead them. Isn't that proving properly prophetic?) Her final words are telling, “How can we expect fate to let a righteous cause prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up undividedly to a righteous cause?”

Our neighbors and their well-being are a righteous cause. Let us take up our cross and live not for ourselves, but for one another. And by doing so, create a new world. Amen.

Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on Feb 18, 2018
Preaching text: Genesis 9:8-17

The more I study it, the more fascinated I become with the myth of Noah’s Ark. And, yes, I used the word “myth,” because that’s essentially what it is. This is not a historical story. It is not fact. It is instead a richly woven parable in much the same fashion as Jesus also told, telling us truths about the Kingdom of God.

The ancients took stories of some long ago (even for them) cataclysmic event (There is evidence of massive floods of this sort throughout the prehistoric Middle East) and used them to inform us of truths about God we otherwise choose to ignore or forget. Their wisdom about our human nature is profound and timeless. These truths revealed in this story continue to be forgotten or ignored even today as we try again and again to refashion God into our own image.

Turning this tale into literal history is another such deflection, but I digress.

In the story, God essentially goes to war with humankind. He looks down upon the Earth and sees our utter and complete depravity: rape, murder, violence, hatred, destruction. And God seems to ask himself, “What have I done? I haven’t created companions with whom I can be in relationship. I have made monsters, creatures hell-bent on destroying themselves and the world in which they live.”

So he unleashes his power upon us. He spares a small remnant in Noah and his family and them wipes the slate clean. Nearly all of humankind wiped out, destroyed, drowned and gone forever. And almost immediately after the last raindrop falls, God regrets what he’s done. He’s annihilated his precious creation. Worse yet, he hasn’t really solved the problem. The seed of human sin is still within even righteous Noah and his family. It will start all over again.

So God then does two things. One, he pledges to never again destroy the Earth to punish humankind for sin. He sets down his weapon of war, his bow, in the sky as a sign of that promise. The rainbow is a symbol of peace because it is God’s reminder to never wage war against us. Because that doesn’t work. That doesn’t help anything.

The second thing that God does is that he begins to seek a new way. That will lead us to Abraham and the Chosen people. That will lead us to the Old Covenant and God’s promise to bless all the families of the Earth. That will lead us eventually to that blessing, born in a manger, grown to a man, crucified on a cross, and risen again on the third day. God will go the Jesus path: the path of redemption, not destruction.

This is what the story of Noah’s Ark is really about. It’s ancient writers and storytellers reminding us that God does not seek our destruction but our salvation. Never will he destroy us. Writers and storytellers that never even knew of Jesus and perhaps not even Abraham, but they knew God. They understand that above all else, God must be good and will therefore seek the path of peace, justice, and mercy for his people.

Besides, it’s not like we need any help destroying ourselves. You want to know what the Antediluvian world was like? The time before the flood? You’re living it. Right now, here in America. Turn on the news. See the utter depravity of humankind. Seventeen dead at a school in Florida. And our leaders will undoubtedly again cave to their corruption and cowardice and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to stop the next one. Doesn’t matter whether we’re talking gun control, mental healthcare expansion, or whatever. We do NOTHING and the blood keeps pouring out in our streets, in our homes, in our businesses, in our churches, and in our schools.

In the ancient world, the world of the Bible, societies that sacrificed their children to their gods were considered the most heinous of barbarians, little better than animals. And what does that make us, when money and guns matter more than the lives of our children?

This is who we are. This is America in the year 2018. The savages of the ancient world are not so much a relic of the past as we would like. We are the savages now. Hundreds of dead in schools and businesses and churches across the country bear silent yet deafening witness to that. Is truly who we want to be? Is this really how we wish history to remember this great nation? A land of brutes who slaughtered their own children.

Last week, I said the worst villain we face in life is ourselves. It’s our complacency and apathy in the face of these sorts of atrocities. We let these things happen by falling silent when we need most to speak.

In 1992, during “Senior Skip Day” at George Washington High School, a kid with a gun showed up and started shooting in an argument over beer. Two kids were dead when he was done. That was my high school, where I graduated a year earlier. But we were silent and it kept happening.

In 2007, at Virginia Tech, a student went on a rampage that killed 33. That was my college; the bulk of the murders took place in classrooms that I sat within when I was a student there. But we were silent and it kept happening. It’s still happening as the news this week grimly reminded us.

Don’t presume that this is some faraway problem. It happened at two of my own schools. So what happens when it’s Eastern or Red Lion or York City schools that plays host to a shooting like this? Are we going to stay silent or are we going to fight to see that it never happens here?

God put down his bow in the sky because he saw something in us worth saving. He began this long elaborate plan from Abraham to Jesus to the Church because he saw something in us worth saving. Can we do the same or at least try?

We are at war with ourselves and people are dying because of it. People are dying because our weapons are too available, our hatred too intense, and our blindness to one another’s value too overwhelming. Precious, beloved, unique, wondrous individuals dying because the people of otherwise “good character” will not speak up and say “This is wrong. It stops now.”

We need our own rainbow moment, when we pledge to bring an end to the killing. Because people are worth saving. The ancients wanted us to see that, so they told the story of Noah’s Ark, reminding us that God would not wage war upon us. It goes further than that. God himself died on a cross for us. That’s statement enough to our value. Can’t we see it? Can’t we see what we’re worth? Can’t we stand up and speak with one voice “Never again?” Our lives are too valuable. Too precious to throw them away like this. Amen.

Sermon for the Sunday of Transfiguration

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on Feb 11, 2018
Preaching text: Mark 9:2-9

It’s not as much of a hobby now as it once was in my life, but I continue to be at least a marginal fan of “anime” (i.e. animation and cartoons from Japan). Many anime series are sci-fi themed with aliens and spaceships and superpowers and great conflict between good and evil. Not all that different in many ways than the blockbusters coming out of Hollywood here in America. There are, as many philosophers have noted, certain universal stories that are shared across cultures, regardless of geography, culture, or language. Certain universal truths that we all cling to.

One of those anime stories is Tenchi Muyo. It was released in the mid-90s and still has spin-offs being produced today. The premise is an interesting one: Various young alien women (a pirate, a princess, and a police officer) crash land on Earth and end up befriending a high school boy named Tenchi and wacky hijinks ensue. But there’s a dark undertone to the series. An ominous villain in the background who seeking something that Tenchi and his family have been guarding for many years.

Eventually, the villain Kagato shows up and the series’ tone shifts dramatically. It’s not so funny anymore as Kagato abducts one of the women and threatens to destroy the Earth to get what he wants. Tenchi is shocked. Things had been fun, goofy, full of laughter. Now he’s torn. He’s being called to do something he’s never had to do before. And he’s just a kid. What hope does he have of winning against this villain? His grandfather then says something to him that has stuck with me. “For every man, there is a time when he must fight.”

Twenty years since I first heard that, I’ve come to realize how true that is. And by fighting, it doesn’t always mean curling up your fists and beating the crap out of somebody. It doesn’t have to be violence.  It can be a fight with words or ideas. And despite the gendered language in the anime quote, it’s also not a male thing, but a human thing. We all come to that moment when the rubber has to hit the road and we have to do what must be done. A time when we realize there are things in this world WORTH fighting for. And so we go.

For Jesus, that moment is the Transfiguration.

Mark structures his Gospel very intentionally. We begin with the baptism and end with the crucifixion. In the very middle of the narrative is the story we have as our Gospel lesson today: Jesus on the mountaintop with his disciples, encountering the Father and his mission very directly. Everything before that, the miracles, the calling of his disciples, the teachings, the parables, all important, but merely prelude to what Jesus is really here for. Now, on the mountaintop with the law and prophets literally bearing witness to his purpose, with God speaking again from the clouds, Jesus goes forth to fight for this world. And his way of fighting is to die on a cross for you and for me.

The rubber hits the road now. “For every man, there is a time when he must fight.” This is the beginning of Jesus’ moment.

And go forth he does. He goes to Jerusalem. He is betrayed by Judas and arrested. He stands before the Sanhedrin and before Pilate. He is condemned, tortured, and then nailed to that cross. In dying, he wins a victory for all of us. ALL of us. Inside these walls and outside.

I mentioned last Sunday that the disciples in Mark’s Gospel are generally content to just “hang out” with Jesus as are many Christians today. They, or perhaps more accurately, we are not eager to do the work of discipleship, to embrace our calling to be the people God has called us to be. And sure, when it comes to saving the world, Jesus does the bulk of the heavy lifting. He’s the one who dies and rises again, not us. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a part to play. And so I am compelled to ask a question. At what point does the rubber hit the road for us? At what point do we realize the time is upon us to fight for what is right and good and just in this world? At what point do we stop with our version of wacky hijinks and start doing what must be done?

I’m really curious about that, because we live in a world that’s terrified and despairing. Terrorism, crime, bigotry, threats of war, of cataclysmic weather and other natural disasters. Our leadership across the board is failing us. They’re too greedy, too inept, or too selfish to care about  common ordinary folk. People are desperate for hope. They hunger for it. And meanwhile, we here in the Church lament that our pews are empty and no one ever comes anymore. Those two truths are related to one another more than we care to admit. Here we worship a God that loves us so much that he even died for us, a God that cares, a God that takes care of us. A God that gives us the freedom to live without fear. That hope they hunger for is here and in abundance.

But that’s not what the people out there see. No, what they see is a group of people determined to preserve social privileges and mores that went obsolete decades ago. What they see is bitterness, hostility, judgment, and hypocrisy. They don’t see hope. They don’t see love and compassion. And they sure as hell don’t see Jesus. We’re in the way.

And heaven forbid one of us stand up and say that maybe we should rethink the way we do church. Or treat other people. Heaven forbid someone say that maybe we shouldn’t stick our heads in the sand about the nightmare that is living in these times. That maybe we should speak up about racism or economic injustice or the cruelty we show towards those different from us. But no. How dare they!!! Run them off. Silence and censor them. God forbid they suggest we change!

Well, transfiguration is about change. That’s literally what the word means.

“For every man, there is a time when he must fight.” I am increasingly convinced that time is now for us and harder still for us to swallow is that the one against whom we must fight is ourselves. It’s our laziness. It’s our fear. It’s our entrenched prejudices and hatreds. It’s anything and everything that keeps us from being the disciples of Jesus that he’s called us to be. It’s anything and everything within us that prevents the world from seeing who Jesus really is and what he’s about and what he’s done for the sake of the world. That’s what we have to fight and it’s inside every single one of us.

That’s what needs to change. And until it does these pews are going to stay empty. And until it does the world out there is going to continue in despair and hopelessness. They aren’t coming to us anymore. They don’t want to and honestly I don’t blame them. A wise man once said that the leading cause of atheism is Christianity and truer words were never spoken. That’s an indictment of the Church and of Christians like you and me.

Lent, the church season into which we are moving, is meant to be a time of self-reflection and repentance. When we take that hard look at ourselves and see the things that we don’t want to admit are there. And while we may blind ourselves to our vices and flaws, they are well known to those outside and they are big part of the reason people do not turn to Christ for the hope they seek. Lent calls us to repent of those things, to cast them off, to CHANGE the way we think, act, behave, and believe.

Jesus Christ came off the mountain to save this world. To save you. To save me. To save everyone if possible. And to do that he died the most horrific death imaginable. Let that sink in for a moment. God died for us. That’s how much he loves us and everyone else too. And we have a choice to make. We can keep on doing things as we’ve been doing them, both individually and collectively, and it’s so obviously working great [/sarcasm]. Or we join Jesus in saving the world, one life, one soul at a time. We can work to get over ourselves and get to the work that God calls us to do. The time to fight is now. Amen.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on Feb 4, 2018
Preaching text: Mark 1:29-39

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in my sermon that one of the characteristics of Mark’s version of Jesus’ life shows the disciples to largely be buffoons. Fools, idiots, who do not truly get Jesus and what he’s about. The whole Gospel is, in many ways, a bit of a joke, one that we as the reader are in on. Hah hah, those who were closest to Jesus in his time here on Earth did not understand him, but you do.

If the disciples didn’t understand Jesus, why did they follow him? Well, I think our Gospel text today gives us some insight into that. This is good stuff. They’re witnessing amazing impossible things, people healed, demons exorcised, crowds of fawning admirers who are equally awed and impressed by Jesus. And there I am, standing next to him, basking in all his glory. Everybody loves us! We’re the talk of the town, the countryside, everywhere we go the crowds gather and sing our praises.

For a bunch of ordinary fishermen, standing next to the “next big thing” must have been like heaven, an opportunity they never thought they’d have to BE SOMEBODY. They’re like the roadies at a rock concert. “You want to meet the big guy? Heh, come talk to me. I can get you backstage.”

The funny thing is not much has changed. The numbers of disciples are far greater, but many are still just content to stand next to Jesus and look important. And they don’t really do much else. They’re there for themselves, to look good, to seem important, and nothing else. In fact, I’d argue the VAST majority of people who claim to be Christian are like that. They, like the disciples in Mark’s telling, don’t get what this is really about. They don’t realize it’s not about them and it never was.

In fairness, there are those who have earned the privilege of standing next to Christ and doing nothing else. I think of Roger, for instance. Roger was the treasurer at St. Paul in Charleston, my home church. He did that job diligently for years. Went to Bible Study. Held that church together in many ways in its final years. I would guess he’s in his late 70s, if not 80s, now. He’s done his time. Well done, good and faithful servant. But most of those folks standing there next to Jesus are not like Roger. They claim the title of disciple without doing the work of discipleship. And why not? Because they are afraid.

Deep down, they know what Jesus will ask of them. Deep down, they know what he DOES ask of them. And they know that being a real disciple is hard work. It’s frightening work. It forces us to change our perspectives, our attitudes, our prejudices, our opinions, nearly everything about ourselves. He’ll make us grow and transform and become something else, and growth is never easy. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes downright painful.

If in your encounter with Christ everything doesn’t change about you, something went wrong.

Most of you folks know me by now. You know I’m not shy about my thoughts or opinions of the world around me. I make very plain my feelings about the world as it is now. What might surprise you however is how I didn’t use to be this way. Twenty five or so years ago, I was pretty much the exact opposite. Conservative in my politics and opinions and theology. Not quite bigoted towards, but certainly very suspicious of and stand-offish towards people of color. Very homophobic. Very Islamophobic. Ironic, perhaps, given how libertine I was during many of those years, but humans are complicated and often illogical. None of us are really an exception to that, myself least of all.

And then I went to seminary. Dove right into the heart of the Church in many ways. Dove into Scripture, but perhaps most important of all was I met people. People who were very different from me, people who were likewise Christian and seeking to become pastors. People who I could not avoid on that tiny campus in Philadelphia. That setting matters. Intimate, yet surrounded by one of the most cosmopolitan cities in our nation.

There was John, who was just this big gregarious black man. Loud, boisterous, no inside voice, everything about him is BIG. You probably know the type. Scared me to death and for some crazy reason he chose to befriend me. He showed me the city through his eyes. Took me places I would never have otherwise gone. Told me stories about what it was like to be him, to be a black man in America, about how it didn’t matter how good or kind or intelligent or dignified he was, for some he would never be anything other than a nigger. And it broke my heart. And it broke all the more because I knew that I, with all my attitudes and mindset and privilege, was a part of that. All the hells he’d walked through in life because of his race were there because of people like me.

And there was Steve and Sean. They were upperclassmen, students who assisted the professors. Helped teach me Greek and Hebrew and theology and philosophy and so much more. Some of the smartest people I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. But they were also gay and they were happy with their partners, in good loving and caring relationships. But this was back when that was a taboo in our church and they worried and wondered what would happen to them. Would they be denied ordination? Denied the chance to serve the church and the Christ they loved? They spoke openly of these worries and again, it broke my heart that such fine people would be denied that. And it broke all the more because I knew that I, with all my attitudes and mindset and privilege, was a part of that. Those taboos that stood in their way were there because of people like me.

That’s why people are afraid of being true disciples. They know what Jesus will do. They know that he’ll drag you out of your car at those intersections where the man is standing with the sign. They know he’ll not just compel you to give a few dollars or a bag of chips and a soda. He’ll tell you to look him in the eye and talk to him and get to know him, find out who he really is, and why he’s ended up where he is. They know that Jesus will break your heart. He’ll make you look at yourself and make you ask yourself is there something you’re doing or believing or thinking that contributes to this tragedy. And he’ll ask you to do something about that, to repent of it, to correct it, to do better for the sake of others. Because it’s not about us, it’s not about me, it’s about them. That’s what it means to be a disciple.

It means to do as Christ did and give all of ourselves for sake of others. What Jesus did for you and for me, he tells us to do for others. We take up our cross, metaphorically if not literally, and die for them.

Jesus asks a lot of us. He asks everything of us. I know. I’ve been there. Because I love my Jesus and because I know he loves me, I’ve had to leave behind all of who I once was. And I’m still working on that. I ain’t done yet. I probably won’t ever be done. In fact I know I won’t. I know that sins and flaws and vices are not something I can ever fully overcome on my own. But I have to try. I have to try because I know what my life cost our Savior. And you know what your life cost him too. He gave us life eternal by his cross and empty tomb, by his death and resurrection. He gives freely but what shall we do in gratitude for this wondrous gift?

So we come again to that great question of the Christian life. What now? What are we to do? We don’t get the pass that Mark gives the first disciples. (For what it’s worth, their pass ran out in the long run. There came a time when they too could not simply stand there anymore.) We understand what faith is really about. It’s about following one who came to change the world one soul, one life, at a time.

He standing before us, pleading with each one of us. “I love you. I died for you. I rose again for you. Let me transform you into the person you are meant to be. So that you can help me transform this world in what it’s meant to be.” How do you answer? Amen.