Again, it has been a while since I posted anything.  That is largely because since August, I have not been preaching from a text.  This past Sunday I learned that I could record my sermon on my i-phone and I ended up with a record of what was said.  The problem you will see as you read this is that I don't talk in very writable form.  I apologize in advance for the punctuation in the following transcript.  I have tried to make it readable, but a proper edit would take me all week.  One of these days I'll figure out how to let you listen on the church's web site.  For now, here is the sermon.

Sermon Preached on the Second Sunday after Epiphany

January 15, 2012

Ok.  I’m looking for a show of hands here.  How many of us would like to improve the quality--the living of our lives?  How many of us have some idea that we would like to be better people?  How many of us have imagined a life where our living reflects our deepest, most heartfelt values even better than it does now?   Now, how many of us think we can get there on our own.  Yeah.  Welcome to Christianity.  

Welcome to the whole Judeo-Christian tradition, the story about the God who intervenes in the world in lives of people who long to make it to a better place, often a better place they can’t imagine.   They just kind of have this intuition, this hint.  They know there is a better place; they somehow know they can be more than they already are.  We are talking about a God who meets those people and says, “let me help you make the journey to that new place, let me get you out to that new place.”   Welcome to Christianity.  Welcome to our faith in which there comes a time in the history of God and people when God says, “you know, it’s time for a new way of joining you and leading you to the next new place, one that will be a surprise to you but that is really what your best heart desires.  I’m going to do that in a new way.”    

And so we get to the season we celebrate now, the season of Epiphany, where the new way of being among us to help us, to lead us, to help us make our way to the new place is a very up-close and personal way.   No longer are we aided by a God who has to be sought in a temple or has to be begged to come near--a God we only see as fire at night or something like that.  Our God is very near and comes among us in a very personal and up-close way, and that personal and up-close God has a name.  And the name of the personal up-close God is, of course, Jesus.

Now I’ve got to tell you that Jesus has not always been a word that comes quickly to my lips.  I was raised an Episcopalian.  I heard a lot and thought a lot about God.  I eventually began to get interested in the Holy Spirit because I knew there was something going on here but I didn’t know what that was about.  I didn’t use the word Jesus very much because I had heard that name used in a lot of ways that were sort of problematic.  When I was a kid and I would hear the other kids ask, “do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?”  I would say something like, “I’m an Episcopalian.  I don’t think we do that.”   That’s just where I was.  That’s what I grew up with.  That kind of talk just didn’t sound good to me.  Growing up there was always a draw to have that kind of a friend that these people were talking about, but it was coupled to what I always took as an off-putting rigidity about ways to understand the Bible and ways to behave, and I wasn’t sure I could do those two things together in any kind of way, so I just quit using that kind of language because the “J” word used to signal hard stuff.

As I grew up in the church I began to understand this evangelical business, you know, the people who say you have to have some kind of rousing experience of Jesus in your life--and you probably have to have a controlled and tight understanding of theology--I began to put that over in a category I wasn’t going to mess with.  I certainly never would have called myself an evangelical, wouldn’t call myself that today, but I’m not sure about what I’d say next week or next year.  Because what I am coming to understand more and more, the longer I stay with this business, is that Christianity is about nothing else really, nothing else but relationship with Jesus in which we travel with that up-close and personal God to the next place in our lives.

Now as much as I have tried to separate myself from all that evangelical stuff, it’s funny.   I was thinking this morning about this sermon and what I was going to say and decided to take a break from sermonizing and check e-mail.  There was my friend John, my life-long priest buddy John, whose theology I have shared since teen-hood.  He said, ‘we just had this guy come to our area and speak.  He caught my interest. He seems to be a progressive evangelical, have you ever heard of him?’  Even John’s getting into this stuff.  I wrote back and said I have one of his books on my shelf and I haven’t dusted it off in a long time.  Maybe I should take another look.  It seems this Jesus stuff is converging on me these days.  

There is a fellow here in town with whom I talk about prayer.  We pray and we get together every month or so to talk about how that is going.  We were talking this week about how it is only in the last year or so that we have both begun to use the name Jesus and to see Jesus as the one with whom we speak as we walk along through life--as we make our journey.  I have, for years, spoken to somebody that I have called God or Spirit, but I have been reluctant to use that Jesus word, but now, here my friend and I are in this place Jesus seems to work.  What I am finding as I go through my life and I live with this God whom I meet in all kinds of ways, is that I’m beginning to have a little different take on all this stuff.  Maybe the person I pray to is Jesus.  Maybe this person I walk with is Jesus, and maybe Episcopalians can know Jesus in some kind of up-close way.

I understand that you may think I’m strange for ever having said I didn’t pray to Jesus. You may also, though--and I think it is likely true for more folks in this place--think, oh,oh.  Baker’s going off the deep end.   Well Baker isn’t going off the deep end, but Baker is discovering, as life goes on, that Epiphany--the discovering Jesus among us--Epiphany is not a one time event.   It doesn’t happen all of a sudden.  It can happen slowly and gently over time.  Until one day you look up and say, by golly he is right here.  He is nearby.  He is close.  

Now there are all kinds of ways for us to know Jesus, and that is part of what I like about this story of Nathaniel and Jesus we have today.  Nathaniel kind of had this idea that one day someone would come along who could make things better, who could lead him to a better place.  He gets talked into--invited into--going to meet this Jesus and Jesus says, “yeah, I know you.  You’re a straight up person, you’re all right.  I saw you under the tree over there.”  And Nathaniel says, “that’s incredible.”  

Now think about that.  The beginning of this friendship is nothing more than a little bit of awareness.  Nathaniel is kind of aware of Jesus and Jesus says, “yeah, I have kind of noticed you too.”   Isn’t that how friendships--life long friendships--begin.  First there’s this, “yeah, I kind of have you on my radar, ok, I know who you are.”  And then you run into each other again and then maybe at work or in school, maybe someplace you begin to have some more interaction and the relationship changes.  And as soon as you’ve had an experience or two together, then the relationship deepens some and in talking with each other you can refer to those other experiences and it just gets richer and richer and deeper and deeper.  

I think that living with this up-close and personal Jesus who comes among us, whom we celebrate in this Epiphany season, I think living with that Jesus is about moving from one level of friendship and acquaintance to another as we grow and become more and more of what we might be able to be.  And I find that in that friendship there are wonderful little changes.  This is the Jesus who loves us, forgives us before we can think about asking for it, who is just extravagant in the way he offers himself for us, and is also the one who challenges us--is also that little voice of conscience, is also that other little voice in the conversation in our head that comes up with a bit of wisdom or a nugget or something we needed to remember, and in that way, manages to change us.  Not in huge ways, I never change in any huge ways, but a little bit.  Maybe a little realization about compassion, maybe a little realization about how to take something that people say to you, maybe a little realization about how to give the tiniest bit of love back.  Little changes that may not seem like much to the people around us if we told them about them, but that seem like scaling some big mountain to us because we’ve done something we didn’t know we could do until that friendship helped it to happen.

I’ve known Jesus in all kinds of ways.  Back when I was a kid taking bread and wine, I knew something important was happening there, I just didn’t call it Jesus.  When I hear that voice of conscience sometimes--I used to try to get it to shut up--now I may try to listen to it a little differently.  I’m beginning to understand there’s more here than I thought.  In exchanges with some of you, in exchanges with others, in receiving love, affirmations, hope--and challenges-- from the people around me I am beginning to understand that’s who’s been there all along.  

And so I guess my message to you this morning is this Epiphany business, this Jesus who becomes manifest among us as God up close and personal--I know that’s a little weird for some of you--but up close and personal, that Jesus becomes known to us over and over again in brand new ways so that maybe at some point in our lives, if someone comes up to us and asks, “do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and savior?” you can just substitute for personal Lord and Savior a word like friend and say, “oh yeah.”  Or companion and you can say, “sure.”  Or mentor, tutor, coach.  Any of those will do.  But the goal I think for us in Epiphany is to end up in a place where we can all say, “yeah, I know this one.  I know this one who showed up among us, who bears God to us in a new way and who is leading you and me to the new place that we can only barely imagine.”   Amen

Long Time No Posting


Dear Friends,


I see that I haven't posted a sermon since June, and it seems a little funny that when I finally get around to posting one it is about money.  
Here's the thing. 


I really haven't been writing sermons down since June.  I was in Longport for the first three weeks of July and I have always just wandered the aisles and talked to those folks.  I left Longport and went to my first residency with the Shalem program in August, where the subject of my next Sunday's sermon sort of came to me while I was running one morning.  That meant I had a sermon a week before I needed it, which most of you know is pretty rare for me.  By the time that Sunday came around, I had decided to wing it, to work without a net, as it were, and I have just been doing that ever since.  I sometimes have some notes written down, but not something together enough to publish here.  This past Sunday I wanted to talk about money, and I was as nervous about the talking as some of you probably were about having to listen.  At 8:30 I stepped into the pulpit and tried to preach from a text which is part of the sermon that follows here.  Walking in at 10:30, my faithful associate, Elizabeth, mentioned that the sermon could use something more.  As the gospel reading wound down, it became apparent that I just needed to trust and talk.  I had enough of this one written that I was able to post it.  


I will work on some way to record and transcribe in the future.  I'm having fun preaching without notes, and I am sometimes surprised at what I hear myself saying.  Thanks for checking out the blog.  JB

A Sermon for Sunday, October 23, 2011

As I begin this sermon, I am thinking about a legend concerning a Virginia priest who enjoyed working youth camps in the summer.  I have always liked youth and church camp, and I know the challenges involved in opening up discussion lines about tabu subjects.  The story on this priest is that he would gather the kids early in the week and take them into the woods where he would proceed to say all kinds of things that he knew they would never say in front of him and that they never expected to hear a priest say, ever.  The idea was to plow down the barriers to real conversation early in their time together.  I was told all this by a camper who fondly remembered the experience some forty years after his time as a camper.

I think about him because I am up against a tabu subject this week and I have been thinking about how to begin the conversation.   I thought about singing you a song.  The subject is so ingrained in our culture that any number of great songs have been written about it.  The Beatles did one almost fifty years ago.  My favorite is Pink Floyd’s offering on the classic Dark Side of the Moon album.  Unfortunately the one that got stuck in head--the one that has been with me all week is one by Lyle Lovett.  And the verse that keeps playing over and over I hope will leave me after this morning.  No finance, no romance.  That’s how she told me goodbye.  First she took my love and then she took my m-o-n-e-y.  Yes, friends.  It’s time to talk about money.

Most years, when this time comes, I try to work some stewardship ideas into a sermon on one of the propers.  This year I decided to just talk as plain as possible about giving to the church.  I haven’t really paid much attention to today’s readings.  I do understand that many people don’t want their preacher talking so plain about money in church, but we’re going to get through this.  I’m going to try to make it easier on you by looking at all those reasons you might not want me to talk about money.  We’ll get through this.   Breathe.

One of the first objections is the idea that You shouldn’t talk about money in church--That somehow, our spiritual lives and our fiscal lives need to be kept apart.  Nothing could be farther from what Jesus taught.  Jesus talked about money all the time.  He talked about treasure and investments and about the concern caused by one lost coin and about the pitfalls of great wealth.  He talked to anyone who would listen about their personal finances, about how they did or did not share their money and the importance they placed on their savings.  Jesus understood with painful clarity the connection between our money and our spiritual growth and he talked about that relationship in ways that made people uncomfortable.  

When Karen agreed to chair the fall stewardship drive, she thought of getting people together to do some reading.  Last year and this year she handed out books and encouraged folks to read, not about giving or about money, but about their spiritual lives.  She’s been at this for a while and she understands what Jesus was talking about when he said where your treasure is, there will your heart be as well.   

Another objection to this talk is I’ll feel bad about my giving.  I can help you with that.  Let me read you a list of what everyone in this parish gave last year.   Just kidding.  Breathe.  I don’t have a list of who gave what.  I do have some numbers though.  Seventy-two families gave some amount between a few dollars and three thousand dollars.  Twenty-two families gave between three and five thousand.  Ten families gave between five and ten thousand, and four families gave ten thousand or more.    Wherever you fit in this line-up, you have company.  You are not alone.   The folks who gave more have mostly just been at this longer.  Their giving has grown over time.  

Maybe the squirmy feeling we sometimes get when the talk turns to money has to do with another concern closely tied to feeling uncomfortable about our level of giving.  The preacher will ask for more than I can give.  I won’t.  Giving grows over time.  Where you are is ok.  You are on your way.  For the last ten years or so, Mary and I have given somewhere between ten percent of our gross income and ten percent of our adjusted gross income.  We certainly didn’t start there.  My first pledge was four dollars a week when I was in college.  At least one of those checks bounced.  The first time we tithed, we did so by accident.  We opened a business in 1980 and our income dropped to the point that what we gave the church amounted to more than ten percent.  Later, after I’d been ordained, I heard a priest friend giving a talk in which she said that she gave ten percent off the top.  I asked her later,  “you do?  Really?”  and she answered, “You don’t?”  


My giving has grown over the years, but my reason for giving has not changed.  That first pledge was made as my contribution toward the good work and the life a community.  My mother had died when I was a teen, my father was not well.  One sister was married and the other had gone to live with another family.  That first year in college I was wondering how my life would end up.  Where would I find support, people to walk through life with me, people to help me figure things out.  The congregation was my group.  They were my people and I was a real person in the life of that community. I belonged. I have always given, not out of a sense of any obligation, but out of a sense of participation.  

You will hear church folks talking about that ten percent number as if it is the only one that counts, but it is a goal, one Mary and I  have worked toward for our thirty years together.  Ten percent comes from Hebrew scripture where it was held out as the part of one’s production that should be returned to God as a thanksgiving for all the rest.  It is a number written deep in our tradition and it has been a standard and guide for many of us as we work at deepening our sense that God is at the center of our lives.  

Mary and I recently attended a workshop on retirement planning put on for clergy by the church.  We were sitting there with fifty other priests when the financial planner put a budget for retirement on the screen.  He had written in five percent for giving to the church and as soon as it went up, several people in the room said, hey what’s that.  You’ve got that number wrong.  That planner left having learned something.  Ten percent was our number.  It is a good number that has helped shape a lot of people’s faith over the years, but it is not the place to start.  

The best way to approach growth in giving is to look at your giving in terms of what percentage of your income you give and then trying to increase by say, a percentage point.  Even more important than that ten percent number is the concept that what we give is related directly to what we have received.  Thinking in terms of percentage-giving keeps that important relationship in view. 

I won’t ask you to give more than you can.  I will, however,  challenge you just as I challenge myself to work toward giving more.  

And maybe the last question I want to address ties back to that first one about spirituality and money.  The question is what are we being asked to support?  Should we finance buildings and staff and programs or should we be feeding the poor?  My response to that question could go on a ways, so I’ll try to be brief.  I have come to believe that the money I give to support the parish is leveraged by the way lives are changed in a faith community.  It’s like the old adage about giving someone a fish or teaching them to fish.  The worshipping community is where we are shaped over time into people who do more and more out in the world to serve others in the name of the Christ.  We are fed and strengthened for that service in this community of friends and fellow travelers.  We are called to support the life of this congregation for each other and through each other for the world.  

And one last word, not a question as long as I am plain-talking about money.  A word about pledging.  A pledge, of course, helps the leaders know what they have to work with as they plan for the coming year. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of making a pledge.  I want to tell you that a pledge is just an estimate of giving--it can be changed if need be--so maybe “pledge” is too strong a word.  But it can also be more than an estimate, it can be a goal as well.  Stretching to meet your “estimate” can be a part of your spiritual deepening process.  Growth always involves stretching and reaching a little beyond what we have done in the past.  If you have given in the past but but not filled out a pledge card, please consider making a pledge, not just to God and this community, but for yourself.  

In the next few weeks you will receive a pledge card and a return envelope in the mail.  When it arrives, I hope you will see it as an opportunity.   JB

A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

June 5, 2011

Acts 1:6-14

Our ministry is out there. In the world. We hear it often. This Sunday worship is where we are encouraged, fed, strengthened for our work. Out there. In the world. This is where we prepare, refresh. Here we are forgiven and empowered. Here we are called back to love, which is our work in the world. In this place we remember that we are loved and in that remembering we find purpose we can take with us as we go to our various ministries. Our ministry--the ministry of Christ’s Church--is out there. Each week in our last prayer together we say, “send us out into the world, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you.” And then we go back to our families and children, our desks, our jobs, our volunteer responsibilities, our friendships, our chance encounters with strangers. Our ministry is in the world. We say it often because our work in the world is at the core of our baptismal covenant and our faith.

What I don’t say very often is that we all have a ministry here in this setting as well. Our work out there is grounded in our common life of prayer and communion, of sharing and celebration. And because it is easy to get confused about what is sometimes called “lay ministry”, I don’t talk very often about the important ministry we have to each other and with each other in the worship we do together.

Too often in the church’s life, “lay ministry” has called to mind the work that lay people do during the service on Sunday. Chalice bearers, ushers, readers of lessons and prayers are all ministers in worship, yes, and since the arrival of the current Prayer Book in the 70’s there has been a strong emphasis on the ministry of the laity in worship. That inclusion is a great gift of what we old timers still call the “new” prayer book. It is just that with a stronger emphasis on lay ministry in worship services we have to be reminded that the real ministry of the people of God is in the lives we lead outside this room and this gathering. So I try to remind us all often that our ministry is out there. But today seems like a good day to talk about the work we share here each Sunday and what the call to love might mean for us as the community gathers to be fed.

When they went to the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.

One of the most basic ways we can help each other in our various ministries in the world is to show up here on Sunday. All week long we are challenged in our call to love. What is the right thing to do? Where is justice in this situation? How do I answer him? Do I really need to make that phone call? Why did I respond like that? What should I do now? Our lives are full of questions and they are full of opportunities to be a little more caring, a little more hopeful, to go the extra mile in the service of some good. Every week we will nail some of the questions we live with good answers and actions and we will stumble and struggle with others. We walk through the doors of this place on Sunday looking for grounding, forgiveness, encouragement to go back out and do it all again, maybe a little better. One of the things that can give us courage and hope and strength is knowing we are not alone, that others are struggling and succeeding and growing alongside us. Just showing up here is a sign that you expect to find something here. Showing up is a testimony to what you have found here in the past. Some of us come through the doors each week not sure why we are coming or what we hope to find, and in such times the community becomes the answer. We are all here looking for something--we walk in and see that they are all here looking for something, they must be expecting something, this must be a place of hope. Look around. The people you see right now need your presence. Showing up makes a difference.

All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer. I sometimes hear questions about the relationship between prayer and worship and service to the poor. Someone on the Vestry retreat this year asked what will happen to our emphasis on outreach at St. Aidan’s if the rector signs up for a program centered in contemplative prayer. There are always questions in parishes about whether it is ok to spend money on bricks and mortar when there are so many in need around us. We live in a tension, a good tension between the call to action and the call to prayer. We need to be serious about both.

If you are familiar with the cycle of the Church year, you know what’s coming. Next Sunday we will celebrate Pentecost, the day when Jesus’ followers were empowered by the Holy Spirit for their ministry in the world. Today, though, Luke wants us to know that as they awaited the strength and call to go out and do, the disciples spent their time in prayer. And they prayed together. In John’s gospel today we hear Jesus praying that his disciples may be one as he and God are one. Jesus drew his strength for ministry, his call, his identity from his relationship with God. He was steeped in God in such a way that he found the strength he needed for amazing acts of healing and truth telling and even suffering. I had always heard in this prayer Jesus asking that we might be related to God as he is, but his prayer is that they may be one as we are one. That suggests that the relationship meant to strengthen us for our work in the world is our relationship with this community. The relationship that identifies us as agents of God’s love in the world is our relationship with this community. The prayer life of the community fuels and feeds our work in the world.

The community needs each of us. Who knows what our contributions will be? Who knows where the next vision for St. Aidan’s will come from? Luke’s telling in Acts of the disciples gathering in prayer lists eleven apostles. Before the Pentecost story, the eleven will have elected Matthias to take the place of Judas Iscariot. The company must be complete. Everyone is needed.

And of course, if we are looking ahead to next Sunday, we will be thinking of the day when the Church caught fire and began to grow. If you know something about that tension I spoke of between prayer and action, if you want to see the Church get to work in the world, then you know we need all the help we can get. Just as our presence here on Sundays reinforces the importance of our calling and mission for those we already know, it can serve as a powerful witness to those who are looking for a way to make a difference, in the world and in their lives. Those eleven who gathered in prayer mark a beginning, but they were just the beginning. You and I are a part of the great company who have been drawn into the life of prayer and service that defined their little community.

Everyone is necessary, even people we have never met. Everyone has gifts, stories, dreams. Everyone has troubles, shames, pains. We who would love the poor and the needy must learn to love each other and ourselves. The work of the Church is nothing less than the work of love. That work begins right here where we are welcomed, accepted, and loved, simply because we are children of God. Look around one more time. That is what we share. We are welcome, accepted and loved simply because we are children of God. Let that message sink in in this place over and over again. Then you will be ready to go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Amen

A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Easter

May 8, 2011

This morning’s story of the walk to Emmaus is probably my favorite gospel story. It has everything. Clueless disciples, to help us easily find ourselves in the story. It has Jesus whom the disciples don’t recognize even when he is walking next to them, which again sounds all too familiar. And then it has this great message about how we will discover what is most important in the most unlikely ways--in a chance meeting, in the blessing and breaking of bread, and in the whispers or the burning of our hearts. This story does such a wonderful job of opening up a place of mystery and possibility around the risen Christ, that I don’t want to tamper with or set limits on its meaning by dealing with the story as a whole. I’d rather focus today on one little line in the Emmaus story. I’m interested in what the disciples said after their experience with the Risen Christ. “Weren’t our heart burning within us?” They had had a clue about who their companion was and they had missed it. I wonder if we don’t all do that more often than we know. Chances are, we could all use some practice at listening to our hearts.

We spend most of our time in our heads where we plan and calculate and solve puzzles. Our brains are marvelously crafted so that we can keep all sorts of problems in front of us at the same time, working on several levels at once. We can drive seventy miles an hour while thinking about how much fuel we still have in the car as we listen to and maybe even sing along with our favorite driving music, all while noticing that the car we are passing is the one that passed us just a few minutes ago, and oh oh, is that a blue light up ahead….. and isn’t the sun on those tree tops amazing. We rely on our brains and our thinking ability even when we we’re not thinking about our thinking ability. What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable….and think how far we’ve come since Hamlet.

We create machines as if they were extensions of ourselves, from Swiss watches to smart phones we prize that which functions swiftly, dependably and with great precision. We rely on our ability to use our heads. We expect so much from ourselves, and those around us. The one-word office sign you used to see sometimes said it all…..THINK! It is as if that is the commandment for our species in our time. THINK! Our brains can be fine tuned, taught, filled, sharpened. What a piece of work indeed.

Our hearts…..our hearts on the other hand are messy. While we can take charge of our heads and train them in the ways we would have them go, as it were, our hearts are almost by definition, unruly. They will not be tamed or taught. Hearts feel pain and love and yearning and joy. Hearts leap and break, they swell and ache. Our hearts speak to us in a language we don’t always understand, in a language we are not even sure we want to learn. Our hearts can surprise us, interrupt us in our daily routine, they can change the course of lives we have carefully put in order. Maybe the best defense we have against the messy incursions of our hearts into our ordered lives is to try to ignore our hearts as much as possible.

We can fill our time with all sorts of busy-ness in order to try to drown out the calling of our hearts. We can keep moving, drive to the store, watch TV, read the paper, manicure the lawn, twitter, read the statuses of a hundred of our closest friends, surf the internet. We can oil and tune our brains, work our way up to evil level Sudokus. We have a million ways of tuning out the voice that speaks from deep within and still it tries to get our attention like my cat scratching at the back door. “Go away, you can’t come in.” “Then I’ll just sit and stare at you through the glass.”

Of course we all live and work out of a mix of head and heart. We practice caring for others, we work at relationships, we sometimes seek out a friend or someone else to talk to, someone who can listen with us to what our hearts are trying to tell us. But in the busy, business world of high achievement, in the day to day world of simple chores, our hearts can can be drowned out by the storm of all that has to be accomplished in a day. And because our hearts are so uncontrollable, we can’t easily imagine how they can help us get our work done, so we turn up the radio and get back to work.

But here is the thing. It is precisely because we can’t control our hearts that we need to listen to them. Our hearts aren’t meant to be used as tools, they’re not meant to be trained or focused by us, they are meant to instruct us….to lead us…..to speak speak to us about deeper, less graspable things. Heart does speak its own language, and we can practice, not so much to change and shape our hearts, but to let them change and shape us. It is in our hearts that God is creating us, singing to us, whispering deep truth that we might miss unless we are very attentive. I find it interesting that the disciples who walked with Jesus that day were involved in a deep discussion about scripture and all the while they missed the message their hearts were trying to deliver. It is in our hearts that God touches us, becomes real for us, greets us.

John Wesley said of his profound experience of deepening faith, “my heart was strangely warmed.” St. Augustine said “our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.” And Mary treasured the promise of God delivered by the angel in her heart.

We don’t have to choose between head and heart, we have been given both because we need them. It’s just that since we spend so much time in our heads, most of us could use some practice learning the language of our hearts.

So…. and I hate to say this as the days are getting pretty and the beauty of nature is beginning to call, but I am beginning to understand those who tell me that they can be with God in their gardens just as easily as they can in church. In the quiet of such times we have a chance to listen deeply, to be aware of the one who is always with us. I have no doubt that many people encounter God in the garden or at the beach. They say the same thing about golf, but I don’t believe them. I’ve played golf. Learning to recognize the language of our hearts involves spending some time in solitude. If we can commit just some of our time to being present, available to God--if we take our hearts out for a walk or sit with them in silence or let them fall open as we pull wild onions, we, like those disciples on the road, may discover our divine companion right there beside us, known, familiar, greeting us as friend. We desperately need the council of the voice only our hearts can hear. Only by giving our hearts some room in our days can we ever come to trust them. Only by believing in our hearts can we come to know that the messages they would bring us are as important as anything else in our day.

“Were not our hearts burning within us” they asked. Would that it were so for all of us.

A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter

May 1, 2011

Today we have the story of Thomas. One of my favorites. I have always loved Thomas the skeptic, the pragmatist who isn’t going to be taken in by wild stories and emotional outbursts. Thomas who’s motto is, “seeing is believing.” My people come from the show-me state so I’ve always liked Thomas because his story suggests that there is room in this faith of ours even for people like me.

So...every year on the second Sunday of Easter I get to go off about the great contributions doubters and skeptics have made to Christianity down through the ages. I like to use this Sunday to remind all you doubters and skeptics in the congregation that you--that we--are a necessary part of the mix, that we are welcome here and needed.

So when I realized I was preaching this Sunday, I was all ready to get on my soapbox again and do my doubters-are-faithful-too routine. But then something happened and I find myself paying attention to Thomas in a new way this year. I’m not even sure after all these years if this story really has that much to do with doubt and skepticism. Maybe it has more to do with how difficult it can be to reveal and claim our deepest longings, and to hold any hope that they might be realized.

Mary and I have this great new screened porch with a couple of rocking chairs. That porch and rocker have already made a great difference in my spiritual life. It’s a great place to sit and meditate and read. A place for thinking about sermons. Recently I have been reading a collection of articles written for the Shalem News by Gerald May. The Shalem Institute here in Washington has provided support for contemplative living and leadership for thirty years. They train lay people and clergy in deepening their personal spiritual lives and connecting that spirituality with their work in the community. Gerald May was a teacher, mystic, and writer in the area of contemplative theology and psychology. I have been reading the articles he wrote for Shalem because I will be doing some work with Shalem over the next year and a half and I want to find out more about what I am getting into.

As I was reading the other day, I found myself pulling back a bit from the words on the page. Something there was a bit uncomfortable, and I soon realized it had something to do with his talk about love. May was talking a lot about love. He used the word a lot. He was talking as if love was really at the heart of everything. He was speaking in such a personal way about love that I thought I was hearing things I shouldn’t be hearing. And then I heard myself ask a question that surprised me. I asked, to no one there on my back porch, “do guys really talk like that?” Now let me assure you right now that this isn’t going to be a sermon about men and feelings and the need to open up and all that sort of thing. I just mention the reaction because it surprised me. Soon I was thinking about all the ways that love can mean trouble. I thought about all the ways that love can change the landscape of one’s life and realized that I was going to have to get past some barriers if I want to get serious about deepening my spiritual life.

Thirty years ago, before I started courting Mary, I got my pilot’s license. I had a couple of friends who flew for the airlines and who owned little planes. We would sometimes spend a whole Saturday out by a little grass strip, tinkering with engines and wires and such and flying over the farms and fields of northern Mississippi. One of my flying buddies, Jim, reacted when I told him about Mary. I said I had started dating someone and was in love. He said, oh that’s too bad. “Love’ll really screw up your flying.” And of course he was right. My relationship with Mary really cut into my flying time. I haven’t flown in over twenty years.

As I wondered about my reaction to Jerry May’s articles, I began to think about love and how much trouble it can be. I thought about all the great love-is-hard songs. Great country moaning songs about the pains of love. Folk, country, rock…..Love is a hard waltz…..Love Hurts….and the songs of encouragement….Give yourself to love…. If you listen to the radio at all, or read or are awake on the bus, you know that our culture talks about love all the time. It fascinates, frustrates, wounds and woos us. We can’t let go of the idea that it holds something we need…..that it can make us...complete us.

And…..

We are smart, self-reliant people who know enough to protect ourselves. We have all been fooled at some point and we aren’t going to be taken in easily. Loving too quickly can expose us to pain. Loving too broadly might demand too much of us. Love is...and I love this word...fraught. Some of us discover the depths of love for the first time when it is lost, a death...a leaving. Having loved someone to the brink of sobriety, a relapse exposes love’s danger. Love makes us vulnerable, so we tend to be cautious. We are advised to be cautious. But if everything does depend on our opening up more and more to love, then how do we ever get there? In our Easter story, Jesus helps us by giving it all up first. The story is that Jesus loves us until it hurts, until it does him in completely, and in the end that ultimate kind of love is redeemed.

So as I pondered my reaction to Mays writings, I was put in touch with how much I long for the call to a deeper level of love….and….I was very aware of my defenses against that same love. And then I thought about this sermon and looked at today’s story from John’s gospel. There stood Thomas, not unbelieving, but torn between his deep hope that there might be some truth in the others’ story about the resurrection that there might be something real to answer his longing--caught between that hope and the habit of protecting his heart from disappointment. Sometimes the strength of our hesitation is directly proportional to the depth of our longing. And then something finally tips. For Thomas it took a lot of help and an invitation from Jesus. Touch me. Feel my side. Your longing is not in vein.

So that’s where I was as I turned the corner with this reading. Thinking about that invitation from Jesus. Wondering where this sermon would end up. I went back to my rocker read a little further. Instead of telling you about what I read, I just want to read it to you.

May says about this piece: At the end of a Shalem, Psychology/Spirituality Day I read some words that seemed to be whispered by God to me.

I know what is inside your heart.

I see your courageous impotent love, and your fear,

and the tears you would cry if you could.

And I do so love you.

I feel how you hate your own selfishness.

When you see the poor ones in the street,

I melt as you detest your defenses against them.

I feel your deep heart-secret:

You wish you would not run away

but could embrace those poor ones, kiss them,

love them completely, caress their souls.

And I do love you so.

I know how you feel, deep, so deep,

when you bar your doors and secure your house

and invest your money and try to enjoy your possessions.

I know your dis-ease, your unrest,

And I love you.

and I drink from your discomfort, and find it good.

No, it is not guilt, nor shame;

I know the tastes of them, and spit them out.

It is your impotent love, your stifled love, your helpless love,

your yearning love that feeds me,

Yet I starve, I thirst. With you.

You are so rarely aware of me,

how I embrace you as you read the morning paper,

My arms cradle you, my breath is on your hair

as you listen to the news.

I know your unspoken feelings, for II am closer to your heart than

you are now or will ever be.

I feel your love, screaming out against injustice,

bleeding, wounded from the pain of others,

love become revulsion when the agony is too much,

The starving children, the hungry homeless, the tortured innocent,

and all the broken, broken hearts.

You cannot bear it, so I must

almost alone.

I drink up what I can from your love

in little sips, but I starve, thirst, and ache for you.

And I love you and cry for you when you cannot,

And I love you and cry in you when you must turn away

and go about your business.

ANd qwhen you can cry, I kiss your blessed tears

and drink them.

You feel my pain, you see my beauty,

You ache for my goodness,

And that is me, loving you and birthing in you,

Again and again, coming to you

in utter surrender.

Oh how I wish you could know

How completely I am surrendered to you,

For if you knew that, even just a little,

You could not help but surrender to me.

Your love would awaken

And we would become a mountain spring and a sparkling ember

And we would grow, into river and flame,

into ocean and lightening

Cleansing, searing, burning, renewing the earth.

Your love would grow wings of power and wisdom

And together in unbearable passion we would fly and die and fly again;

Our courage would encompass the heavens.

Knowing nothing but our love we would look

straight into the heart

of every broken being, every creature,

every plant and mountain

And live in them and caress their wounds,

and bring them nourishment,

and die for them and with them.

We would be relentless, my love.

We will be forever.

Gerald May in Living in Love, 2008 Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation

Sermon for Easter Vigil, 2011

Matthew 28: 1-12

In this morning’s Washington Post, David Waters asks what seems to be a very strange question. He asks whether ordained people should seek public office. “To put it bluntly,” he says, “the question is can ordained people serve God and government.” David used to write for the Commercial Appeal in Memphis where I read him often. These days he lives in our area and writes on religion for the Post, including a blog where I’m sure his question has been tossed around all day. The flaw in his question is so basic that when I read the teaser for the blog I was surprised he had asked it. My guess is he was fishing for a particular answer and he posed the question expecting to slyly sit back and let his readers make his point. Being an old-fashioned newspaper reader, I’ll probably never go to the blog, but I am glad he printed the question in the version of the paper that lands on my lawn. It feeds right into what is speaking to me this year in Matthew’s telling of the resurrection. But we’ll get there in a minute. First I want to deal with David’s question.

The question suggests that faith orders the lives of ordained people differently than it does the lives of lay people. Otherwise, he would have asked whether people of faith can serve in the government and of course, we all know they can and do--thank goodness. The question he asks suggests that somehow clergy have a more pressing commitment to the moral and ethical demands of their faith than those who are not ordained--that somehow people with collars are more deeply formed Christians than those without collars. Well I’m here to tell you that just isn’t the case. If I thought that was how this business worked I’d be out of here tomorrow. The vows that clergy take have to do with specific service in a specific capacity among the faithful. The vows that might--that should--affect the way we approach our public lives and our work are the ones we will hear and renew this evening. I know we just sprinkle water on people’s heads these days, but the symbol of the water represents a full-immersion rite that makes us Christian from head to toe. You will never be any more Christian than you are when you are baptized.

So my answer to David’s question is, Yes. Of course ordained people can serve God and Government. This faith of ours belongs in the world. In fact, everything we do here in this place of worship is meant to fuel us and feed us so that we can live our faith well when we leave here. That seems to be the message for this evening, for we hear tonight that it is out there, in the world where we can expect to find Jesus.

Three times in the resurrection story we just heard Jesus’ followers are told that he will meet them in Galilee. Not here, but out there. Not right now, but out in their future. Tell them to go, he says, I will meet them.

Years ago I read a commentary that suggested Galilee was not the best of neighborhoods. Some people in the gospel story ask about Jesus whether anything good can come from such a place. I have had some fun over the years playing with the idea that Jesus was from the wrong side of the tracks. This year, when I looked up Galilee in another source, the Oxford Companion to the Bible, the Oxford folks made a point of saying there was no basis for thinking Galilee was some sort of unappreciated backwater. Galilee, they said, was home to many devout Jews as well as Gentiles, it was known for good and abundant produce, and in the first century after Jesus it became a home to schools and communities of pious Jews. They made Galilee sound like a pretty ordinary place, not much different from anyplace else in that part of the world at that time. I felt a little sad reading that because I had always liked the other version, where Jesus had that rebel-outsider stain to heighten his irritation of the rich and proper. Jesus told his disciples, go to Galilee and I will meet you there. And Galilee turns out to be nothing special at all. Maybe that’s the point.

Tomorrow we will fill the room with flowers and sing great hymns of praise about the amazing thing that God has done in raising Jesus from the dead. Tonight, though, we are told that our meeting Jesus is yet to come and we are told that meeting will take place in the most everyday parts of our lives. Matthew, Luke and John all tell stories in their gospels about Jesus appearing to the disciples. Mark’s gospel, the earliest, has several endings in the ancient texts. The shorter and supposedly older version has no appearance of Jesus. Just a young man sitting in an empty tomb telling the disciples that Jesus would meet them later in Galilee--out there, in the plain old, ordinary world where they would live their lives, where we live our lives.

I am persuaded by those who say that the stories of the resurrection appearances in the the gospels have a lot to do with the experience of the early Church. I can imagine people discovering the truth of that simple message--you will meet Jesus in the world--and telling all kind of stories. I have stories of meeting Jesus, of being loved better than I deserved, of being called out of myself by another’s need, of being challenged to amend my life, of being touched by awe. I have had heated, impassioned, intimate conversations with someone nearby and unseen, real and present. I have been surprised by Jesus in the the strangest, most ordinary moments. I’m pretty sure Jesus has asked me for spare change, and I know he has asked me to contact my congressman. Out there. In the real life world. Do Christians belong out there in the real world. We have been sent there by the one who promised to meet us there. We had better run for office and more.

So, Robert, Grant, Vance. The good news is that being baptized tonight won’t keep you from becoming president some day if that’s what you want to do. Being baptized will make you a Christian, though, as much a Christian as anyone can every be, just as much as a bishop or even a pope. And the promise that Jesus makes to you as the water is poured over you is that you will encounter him, in this moment yes, but most importantly, in the life that lies ahead of you. Keep your hearts and minds and eyes open and you will see him. In Galilee. In the plain old every day world. JB