Sermon, Pentecost 2020

Sermon for Pentecost 2020

May 31, 2020

This Pentecost we find ourselves in an unfamiliar new world in which we are called to make a difference.  Click Here to listen to Sunday's sermon.  

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Easter

April 19, 2020

St. Aidan's Episcopal Church

John 20:19-31

This is one of my favorite Sundays because I have always loved Thomas.  I continue to learn from him and people like him. 

You can listen to the sermon here.

Sermon for Christmas Eve

December 24, 2019

We had such a great crowd for this service. Preaching was a joy and in that wonderful way that sermons sometimes go, I ended up hearing things in my own sermon that I did not know I was going to say.  I love Christmas with its blurring of divine and human........

You can listen to the sermon here.

Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost

September 1, 2019

Luke 14:1,7-14

The Gospel for this Sunday worked better for St. Aidan's day than the one appointed for St. Aidan.  Aidan's island community on the Isle of Lindisfarne, provided a new look at Jesus' story about the host who invites his guest to "come up higher."  You can listen to the sermon here.  

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

July 7, 2019

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

I have long wondered what do we mean when we talk about the good news of Jesus Christ.  We all seem to mean different things when we use that familiar term.  An answer came to me as a bit of a surprise in today's gospel reading. 
 You can listen here.

A Sermon for Easter Morning

April 21, 2019

This year, what is speaking to me is community, and how we can be connected to God and others in ways we are not always aware of.

Listen to the Easter Sermon

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

March 31, 2019

I was hoping to get to talk about sin during Lent, but Lent really isn't about sin.  Maybe another time. What Lent is about is love that fills in when we run out of resources.  You can listen to this week's sermon here.

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

March 24, 2019

Exodus 3:1-15

"I am the God of 'Father of many.' I am the God of 'He will laugh.' I am the God of 'He supplants."  

We hear God often described as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Do we remember when we hear those names that they are all embedded in story, in the experience and journey of those they describe.  The God who is calling Moses today is the God of story, of their stories and of our stories.  Remembering that God is part of all our stories may help us to think about God as near and involved in ways we might otherwise miss.  I invite us all into a bit of a Lenten meditation by asking, what might your name be in the language of your God story?  JB

You can listen to Sunday's sermon here.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

February 17, 2019

Luke 6:17-26

I ran across this passage from Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her introduction to Joseph Campbell's, Hero With a Thousand Faces. 

It filled me with hope for healing a torn world.  

She tells us about the ancient Hebrew concept of Tikkun Olam. which she says

…..is a daily, perhaps hourly commitment to a way of right conduct, a form of living meditation, a kind of contemplative pragmatic.  Giving one’s attention and resources to repairing that part of the world that is right before you, precisely within your spiritual, psychological, and physical reach.  

…and according to soul’s sight, not ego’s alone.  

I understand the artful methods of tikkun olam, handed down generation to generation, to be of the most simple and humble kind: the spiritual insight that has enough of a glowing heart behind it to see beneath the suffering of things; to care for others beyond oneself; to translate suffering into meaning; to find the edges of hope, and to bring it forward with a plan; a willingness to find insight through struggle; an ability to stand and withstand what one sees that is painful; and in some way, to gentle the flurry; to take up broken threads as well as tie them off; to reweave and mend what is torn, to patch what is missing; to try for perception far beyond the ego’s to-often miniscule understanding.  

You can listen to Sunday's sermon here.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

February 3, 2019

Luke 4:21-30

I was interested in story telling, and how stories connect us to each other and to the larger concept of God and community.  You can listen to this week's sermon here.

A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

Luke 4:14-21

January 27, 2019

I had an old man experience when I met with the youth group last week, one of those moments when I realize I am from another century if not a whole other galaxy.  We were playing a game that required us to put the names of movies stars or musician, well known people in a hat.  We would then draw names and have to act out our person for others to guess. I think most of my offerings were unknown to the group, but the one that really got me was John Wayne.  Not one kid had heard of John Wayne. I’m feeling really old after that.  So please tell me you know field of dreams……Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, baseball, shoeless joe Jackson….corn field? 

I’m hearing this story about Jesus today and thinking of the movie but I’ll get to the movie in a minute.  First let’s look at the story.  In our story, Jesus reads a passage from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue, a passage about the end of oppression, and recovery of sight, and release of prisoners, about the year of the Lord’s favor. And then Jesus tells his audience that this prophecy has been fulfilled in their presence.  The scripture Jesus reads is Isaiah telling Israel that he has been sent to proclaim the good news of God’s activity in and among and for the people of God.  Isaiah was speaking about his own day and about an end to the misery of a people scattered into slavery and exile who longed for a return to their homeland and the promise of a life blessed by God.  Surely some of those who heard Jesus read the passage heard it as a promise about their future, about a time when Rome would no longer be in charge and they would be free again. 

This familiar story about Jesus suggests that Jesus will be the one to solve the problems still plaguing Israel.  

We western Christians with our strong work ethic easily hear that Jesus is the answer to the world’s woes and that peace, freedom, and reconciliation will come about if we just work with him to help make it happen.  But here is something worth noticing about this little passage.  Jesus doesn’t say he has come to fulfill the hopes of Israel.  He doesn’t say the promise will come about in time.  He says, quite clearly that the fulfillment has already occurred.  “This passage has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  It has already happened. The promised new life is available right now.

Jesus is proclaiming a new reality, a new way of seeing life and of being in the world. The salvation he announces is already here. So maybe our work has to do with becoming aware that the kingdom of God is already here, not out in the future somewhere, but here and now.  This moment is the moment of new sight, release of captives, good news.  This is the time of the Lord’s favor.  This story comes early in Luke’s gospel.  Jesus will spend the rest of the gospel narrative calling people to open their eyes and hearts to the presence of God which is all around us, and in which we all swim.

And that’s what brings me to Field of dreams.  Kevin Costner plays Ray Kinsella, a novice corn farmer who tears up part of his corn crop to build a baseball diamond.  I’m thinking of that great scene at the end where Ray’s brother in law finally sees the ball players that have been there all along.  He looks up and asks when did these guys get here.  In that moment of his new awareness of an unexpected reality, everything shifts.  His priorities change and he is willing to take risks to support what he has come to see. He is no longer worried about the impracticality of having a baseball diamond in the middle of a corn field.  He now believes in the baseball players, yes, but it is more than that.  He isn’t just a believer, he is living in a new reality.  So the question for us this morning is how do we open ourselves to the fulfillment of the promise that Jesus says has taken place?  How do we live into this new way of being.

I find an answer to that question, not in some new aged, orthodoxy-questioning, emerging view of Christianity, though I know that is where you would expect me to go on this.  No.  I find an answer in the writings of one of the most respected thinkers in the Orthodox world, Christos Yannaras, who says faith is not about a set of intellectual convictions or beliefs, but is a mode of being.  Being a Christian means being in the world in a particular way.  This mode of being involves an awareness of the immediacy of God’s reality within us and between us and around us. 

How do we enter into, become aware of and live in that mode of being?  That is our work, it is a life process.  Yannaras says we enter into that new mode of being by surrendering our cogito and desidero.  Now generally, I have little use for the latin and greek terms slipped into sermons, but these two words are worth a look.  The words have to do with thinking and desire, but Yannaras puts them in the first person to make his point.   He says the new life involves surrendering our “I think,” and “I want.”  Not thinking and desire, but the very particular personal “I think,” and “I want.”  He suggests that loosening our attachment to our way of understanding reality,  surrendering our desires and expectations is the beginning of  opening ourselves to a new way, a new possibility.  He would say that we can only do that letting go by being part of a community of those who are also trying to live into that mode of being. He would say that the Church is our salvation, not because it points us toward God, but because in the church we are freed from our own stuck-ness regarding our desires and opinions and we come to understand truth to be held by and revealed in community.  

Maybe the easier way to say that is that if we can let go of our assumptions, just a little bit, in a good community of fellow travelers, we may notice amazing things that others can see that we can’t.  We may learn that we have our own piece of the truth puzzle to contribute.  

Jesus talked about this all the time. Expand your thinking, he said.  Give up your assumptions about those who are in and who are out of your community and learn from Samaritans and sinners and Romans.  The kingdom of God is all around you.  Love your neighbor and you will begin to see it.  

So….back to the ball field.  Ray’s brother-in-law comes to see what is true and yet unseen when Ray’s daughter falls and is choking.  In the crisis of the moment the brother-in-law lets go of his agenda for a moment, shifts his “I think” and his “I want,” and is filled with concern for the child.  It is in that letting go that he sees the real.  It is also in that moment that he truly enters into community with his sister and with Ray.  He becomes alive in a new way and is filled with awe and amazement at what he has discovered.   Life is changed.

I am thinking today also of that great Verna Dozier quote where she says the institutional church is where life is lived differently not just for the church, but always in order that life may be lived differently everywhere.

Maybe that passage too has been fulfilled in our hearing.  We just have to live it.  JB  

A Sermon for Second Sunday after Epiphany

January 20, 2019

Many years ago Mary and I took a group of church folks to Greece to follow in the footsteps of Paul and learn about the early church.  A group of us ended up just wandering around Athens one morning and stumbled upon a cathedral where a service was in progress. The church was on  a large plaza and all the doors were open.  People were coming and going and music was coming from inside so we wandered in.  It was amazing.  Gold and icons were everywhere. Chanting and incense filled the air, and the players in the great procession winding its way around the nave wore vestments as ornate as the rest of the sanctuary.  We stayed and watched for quite a while and finally figured out, when someone started reading, that all that glitter was the gospel procession.  Ten minutes of elaborate liturgy to read a two minute story about Jesus. Just like at St. Aidan’s.  Right. 

In the adult class we are looking at the difference between Jesus as he came to be known in doctrine and dogma, and Jesus the first century rabbi.  It is only in the last century that scholars have tried to separate those two ideas of Jesus, and many of us have found the expanded view of Jesus very helpful.

With only the church’s Jesus in mind, we easily imagine a God-become-human who knows exactly what he is about in life, what his mission is, one who is surely up to the task of fulfilling that mission.  The Church’s Jesus focuses us on the idea of God’s son, the savior, a part of the Trinity.  When we hear stories of Jesus like the one we have today, it is difficult to hear anything besides a story about God.  Jesus was God, he must have known he was God doing what God would do in the world.  The Church’s story is laced with words about Jesus like “fulfillment”, and “as it had been written.”  Jesus is seen as God moving among us.  It can be difficult to imagine Jesus as just another human being trying, like we all do to figure out his life and find his calling.  And yet that is in our stories and our tradition too.  It is the stated heart of the tradition—that Jesus was fully human—but we have crafted so much doctrine around Jesus, that it can be hard to imagine Jesus as one of us.  

We hear Jesus’ story in sacred settings, places of worship filled with sacred music and holy books and ancient rites designed to make us aware of God…..we hear the stories in settings like this and it is no wonder that we end up hearing them as God’s story and not our story.  But the story of the God-become-human only works if it speaks to lives like ours, if we can find our lives in the human life of Jesus.  

The story of Jesus turning water into wine is a good example of a human story overpowered by the God side of the story.  It is a miracle story, so of course it has to do with God.  It is told today as the first miracle Jesus performed, and therefore as an early sign that there was more to Jesus than meets the eye.  It is told in the season of Epiphany because the season is all about the world discovering that God has come among us.  This story has all the glitter of a good church story.  And….it is the very human story of a guy who has to be nudged—by his mother no less—to take up his calling, to step into his life’s work. 

I am interested in how Jesus didn’t think it was his time yet.  He had to be encouraged to start doing what he was to do.  I am thinking about how he responded to the need of the moment and the needs of those around him. How many of us find our lives in community, in response to the needs of others, in being encouraged by others to bring forth what we might offer the world……..our gifts, our contributions.  Our people draw us out.  It is true for kids and colleagues in all kinds of settings.  Most of us have stories of someone who helped us find our way, our calling.  Maybe a teacher or parent or friend who saw something in us and helped us believe in ourselves, helped us believe that we had something in us worth sharing, someone whose vision of us made us want to be worthy of that vision by living into it.  

I was in Memphis this past week and I had a good visit with the junior high art teacher who encouraged me and helped me believe in myself in a time when that was not easy.  I was able to tell him that.  I needed to tell him that, to thank him.  He heard what I said but didn’t engage there.  He moved on to another story about some other part of life.  I came away from that exchange with the understanding that what I had thanked him for was nothing special.  It is just the way life is meant to work.

Epiphany is a season of “church” stories.  Last Sunday we heard a voice from heaven saying Jesus was God’s beloved son.  This week get the first miracle.  Next Sunday Jesus reads from Isaiah and tells the people in the temple that the reading has been fulfilled in their presence.  You can expect a great haul of fish and preaching on the mountain in the coming weeks.  

Epiphany seems to be all about God being revealed among us in awesome deeds and mighty acts. But it is about so much more.  It is about God being revealed as present in the daily work of just being human, of listening and discerning and being called again and again in community, through those around us into the fulfillment of our lives.  It is about our work in helping others find their gifts, their lives.  None of us becomes who we are meant to be on our own. We grow, become; we  are “saved” or made whole in community.  We need each other.  Just like Jesus needed his mom and all those people at that party hoping he’d come through or them. 

Today’s story isn’t the only one in which Jesus needs a little help from those around him to find his way into what he could be, what he was meant to be and do in the world, and that gives me great comfort and hope.  

It is worth remembering too that this season where the sparkle and magnificence of God is on display, follows the short season in which we celebrate the birth of a very human, fragile, vulnerable child. This season seems at times to be all about the magic, but it is also about the mundane.  In fact, one could say that it is about the magic in the mundane.  That give me hope as well. Amen

Sermon for the Feast of the Epiphany

January 6, 2019

So I want to begin this morning by having us do something we should maybe do more often around here.  I want us begin by giving each other other a blessing.  We will use a very ancient blessing.  I want you to turn to the person next to you and look them in the eyes and repeat after me. “May you be covered in camels.”  That blessing is embedded in our reading from Isaiah this morning and I just couldn’t leave it alone.  Being covered with camels may seem a little strange so far out of its moment and context, but Isaiah saw it as a really good thing.  It must have been a good thing for somebody sometime, so may we all be covered with camels.  

As recently as this Friday we had a camel in the neighborhood. Some of you may know Aladdin, the camel that comes to Mount Vernon every year at Christmas time.  The Baker clan walked down to visit Aladdin on the day after Thanksgiving and found him just recently arrived and still settling into his holiday shelter.  In fact, when we arrived, there was just a simple fence, no warning signs, no one around to tell us not to, so we made friends.  The kids fed him leaves and everyone marveled at the softness of his big nose which he was happy to rub against a friendly face.  Daughter Margie got a couple of good selfies cheek to cheek with Aladdin before he got too playful and decided to nip her on the shoulder as she tripped the shutter.  If we had a projector here in the church I would be sharing a great picture of a surprised photographer and a laughing camel.  Hanging out with Aladdin was certainly a high point in our holidays.  We felt connected with George’s camel.  May you be covered with camels.

And I was surprised just two days ago, so long after Christmas, to find Aladdin still around when I took a walk down to Mount Vernon for a little exercise.  There he was in his shelter, guarded by two fences and lots of “no touching signs.” No one talking to him or interacting with him.  It was clear and kind of sad that shortly after our Thanksgiving visit the powers that be had gotten their fencing finished and their signs up and thousands of people had passed by that camel and seen nothing but a mangey looking hay eating machine.  They would never know the softness of his nose, or the smell of his cheek or his love of stealing the show in a selfie.  Some things you just have to experience.  They can’t be appreciated from a distance. 

Ah well……I really didn’t mean to talk so much about camels this morning.  What I really wanted to talk about was the experience of God, what it can be like to have an encounter with the divine, what it is like to be reminded in a moment that there is more to the universe and the cosmos and our lives than we are normally aware of.  I want to talk about epiphanies on the feast of Epiphany.  So I’ll move from Isaiah to Matthew, from camels to wise men—who may well have been riding camels, but enough about camels.

As I think about Epiphany and epiphanies and those wise men discovering Jesus, I am thinking we don’t talk much in church about what it is like to experience the divine breaking into our world.  We certainly don’t talk much about what are often called “religious experiences,” which if we have them we tend to keep to ourselves, and if others start talking about them, we are not sure what to think of such intimate information.  Some Christian communities thrive on sharing and seeking and celebrating such experiences, but Episcopalians and most main-line protestants, and Catholics tend to shy away from any public airing of extra-normal or mystical experiences.  We participate in a religion that grew out of those sorts of experiences—life changing encounters with the numinous or with angels or with the risen Christ—but if such things are still happening, we don’t hear much about them.  We’re not sure we want to hear about them because we haven’t been taught to expect them.  Religious experiences can be messy.  They can change our direction, our focus, they can make us ask new questions and altar us in ways that might make the people around us uncomfortable.  I’m thinking of the oft repeated movie scene where the two pilots in the cockpit encounter a UFO and look at each other and say, “I didn’t see anything did you?”  “Nope. I didn’t see anything either. Let’s go home.”  I could ask us to look around the room at each other again, and wonder who has a story they aren’t telling.  What does it mean, all these years after Moses and the desert and after Jesus, what does it mean to experience God?  Is that even possible in our time so far removed from the original stories?  Can we really expect to have some sense of what started this whole God thing anyway?  I think we can, and we do experience God all the time.  And noticing that experience has to do with how we think about experiencing God.   

I have been talking just now about what are commonly called religious experiences, and yes, people still have such experiences, but those are not the the most common experiences of God.  We don’t all follow a star to a once-every-other-millennia show of God’s light shining from the hay.  We aren’t all knocked off our horse on the way to Damascus, we don’t all get licked by the camel.  If those were the only kinds of real connection with the divine most of us would walk away sad for having missed our chance.  Those experiences, when they happen, are a total surprise.  They can’t be forced, or made to happen.  They may happen once and never again, or not at all.  John says the Spirit comes and goes as it pleases and we don’t know about that coming and going.  What we can know about, what we can encourage in our lives and train our hearts to notice and appreciate are the everyday experiences of God that are available to all of us, the ones Jesus talked about when he said the kingdom of God is all around us.  

Many of our experiences of God are fleeting and fragile, sometimes no more than deep intuitions.  They are experiences of the possibility of God, or the otherness of God mingled somehow into our everyday lives.  They have to do with feelings, the feeling of being touched by love, or by a greater reality, by truth, by feelings of awe or of participation in nature and the cosmos.  They are reported as moments of vision, insight, glimpses into another reality.  We don’t have to be mystics to have such experiences.  Where do those qualities of the God experience surface in your life?  The reality of love.  The feeling of connection to something more.  The surprise of being lucky enough to notice something that brings a smile and makes you forget yourself for a moment.  We don’t have to wait and hope for those fleeting moments of connection.  Jesus suggests that an awareness of God’s presence is possible for all of us and is very near to us. And, we can practice listening and watching and being attentive to that presence in our lives and it will make a difference.  

We’ve all had the experience, I suppose, of having a subject in mind, or being involved in a particular bit of life journey that we begin to notice all around us just because it is on our minds.  The realm of the divine can be like that. The more we hold open the possibility of noticing God’s presence, the more we will notice that presence.  Liturgy, silence, meditation, long walks, sitting on a porch and watching the birds, listening to music, being around art, can all open our hearts to the possibility of God’s presence.  We can make time for any of those things in our lives.  The more we notice the experience of God among us, the more we will notice the experience of God among us.  I mean, sure, I’m glad the wise men didn’t know this, but the place to make ourselves available to God, to meet God,  isn’t on some mountain top, or across some far desert, but right in our own back yards.    

So I leave you with the you with what I hope will be some helpful advise. Never pass up a chance to rub noses with a camel…..and I leave you also with this reflection from one of my favorite preachers, Mary Oliver.

Every day 

   I see or hear 

      something 

         that more or less 

kills me 

   with delight, 

      that leaves me 

          like a needle 

in the haystack 

    of light,  

       It is what I was born for—

            to look, to listen, 

to lose myself 

    inside this soft world—

        to instruct myself 

             over and over 

in joy, 

    and acclamation.  

        Nor am I talking 

            about the exceptional, 

the fearful, the dreadful, 

     the very extravagant—

         but of the ordinary, 

              the common, the very drab, 

the daily presentations.  

     Oh good scholar, 

         I say to myself, 

             how can you help

but grow wise 

     with such teachings 

         as these—

             the untrimmable light 

of the world, 

     the ocean’s shine, 

          the prayers that are made 

              out of grass?

Sermon for The Third Sunday in Advent

December 16, 2018

St. Aidan's

Luke 3:7-18

A sermon about Big Questions and big questions.  
You can listen to the sermon here.

Sermon for The Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

November 18, 2018

Mark 13:1-8

When are wars and rumors of wars and temples being torn down not terrible news?  The hope is all in that last line..........

Listen

On the killings at Tree of Life Synagogue

I'm not preaching this week, but I wanted to get this out in the newsletter and since it ended up sounding sermonish, I thought I'd add it here. 

As we try to take in yet one more senseless act of anger, hate and fear, I find myself wondering about the place of the Church and if maybe we are not as clear about the gospel message as we might be.  Because I have always been interested in people who don’t participate in a faith community, I wonder often what those who are not part of a church think this Christianity we represent is about.  I imagine them thinking we are gathered around unbelievable stories and the hope of getting into heaven after we die.  I imagine them learning about Christianity from the culture battles waged and reported in the news and worry that they think Christianity has to do with setting ourselves up as judges of those around us.  I wonder sometimes if many of those who only see Christianity from the outside end up saying, as Gandhi was reported to have said, that they might want to be a Christian if they didn’t know so many of them. I worry that others imagine that we are all focused on our own salvation, our own righteousness, our own misguided agendas.  

I am pretty sure I could get a clipboard, go into the city and ask people what they think Christianity is about and not many would say, “Oh, Christians, they are those people who gather in communities so they can learn to better love everyone who crosses their path. They are the people who are trying to change the world by changing themselves.”  I’m pretty sure that is what we are really doing in our little congregations, at least I hope so. I’m just not sure that message is getting out.  In a world where people point at others saying they are not as good as we are, Jesus says that might be true, they may be better at loving than you are.  Let me tell you a story about a Samaritan who found this guy in a ditch. In a world where we so easily point out others’ failings, Jesus talks about taking the plank out of our own eye so we can see to take the splinter out of someone else’s eye.  In a world where we cling to old anger, Jesus says, let go.  Forgive.  Just quit holding onto that stuff that makes life so hard for everyone. Bringing in the kingdom, says Jesus, is not about telling others what they have to do to get there, but about becoming honest about our own lives and participating in our own transformation. Of course there are times for righteous anger.  Jesus went there too.  Of course there are times to call others on their bad behavior.  Jesus never shied away from that either.  But we cannot separate our criticism of the world around us from our examination of our own lives.  If we want to change the world, we have to be about changing ourselves.  Jesus was very clear on that. And maybe that message can be some comfort as we read the headlines this week.  

Part of the shock and sadness we feel in the wake of the Tree of Life Synagogue shootings has to do with the feeling of helplessness.  In the face of destructive forces we can’t understand or even imagine how to contain, we are left asking what we, or anyone, can possibly do to change what is happening around us.  The answer is breaking through loud and clear, if we are attuned to hear and see it.  The news images and sounds of Jews, Muslims, Christians, and those who practice no religion gathered in prayer and song and mutual support send the true message about all of our religions.  The real power of our faith isn’t in a pointing finger or a book of laws.  It is in humility, love, forgiveness, community, and hope.  And we could all get better at all of those things.  And that is where we are not helpless, because we can all get better at all of those things. Even in these troubled times, we can make a difference.  We change the world by changing ourselves.  JB

Sermon for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

St. Aidan's, October 21, 2018

You are not alone.  That is our message.  That is the good news.  

The incarnation says, you are not alone.  

The resurrection says, you are not alone.  

The birth of Jesus is a cosmic message saying the great loving power in the universe has not forgotten us.  We are not alone.

The risen Christ who became known among the little band who gathered to remember Jesus still can be found among us and the message is the same.  We are not alone.

Now that introduction may not give you a heads up as to where I am going in todays’s sermon.  I didn’t set out to preach about this boiled down version of the gospel message, you are not alone, but it kind of arose naturally out of the topic I did come to talk about today, and it seems such an important part of the message I thought I should begin there.  You are not alone.  We are not alone.

What I did sign up to preach about this morning was giving, stewardship, returning a portion of what we have been given by God to fund the ministry and mission of St. Aidan’s.  

Yes, my friends, you have come to church this Sunday hoping for some good news and stumbled upon the annual stewardship sermon.  I suppose that is another reason I wanted to start with that business about us not being alone, because it is, I think, the good news at the heart of the gospel and the good news lived out in the lives of the people of this congregation.  Most of us are here because we have discovered that in this place, we are not alone.  And this community and its work is funded by the money we all pledge to keep the lights on, the grass cut, to pay the staff, and buy insurance and supplies.  Everything we do is funded by what we give.  

It is my job today to encourage you to think of your pledge as an opportunity to give thanks to God by returning a portion of what you have received. There.  I’ve said it.  The message-from-this-station part of the sermon.  If this were an NPR campaign, we would be reminded that we all know what we receive and why we want to support this good cause.  It is that part of the commercial that made me want to talk about us not being alone.  

Each year when it is time for the fall campaign, I think about all the reasons why people might say they give.  I try to imagine what different families and individuals might say they get out of belonging to this parish.  Every year I know I will be saying we give in response to what we have received, but that what-we-have-received can be very personal, and it won’t be the same for all of us.  I worry sometimes at this time of year that I will fall into preacher-talk and go on about the “good news” or the “gifts of God” without ever connecting those grand sounding ideas to real lives.  I end up wondering some years if there is any way to talk about the good news that draws us together and that we are charged with carrying into the world that everyone here might recognize.  I end up wondering some years if I have just fallen into an old Paul Stookey comedy routine.  

You remember Paul Stookey, of Peter, Paul, and Mary.  Well when Pater, Paul, and Mary played in concert, Paul often did a little stand up comedy routine as a part of the evening.  He did a piece one time about how the airlines kept promising something they never actually delivered, though they thought they had.  He said, you get on the plane, get all buckled in and the pilot comes on the intercom and says, “we’d like to thank you for flying American.”  Paul says, that sounds good, yes, that would be nice, ok, go ahead.  Thank me.  He says, they never do.  

Some years at stewardship time, I end the day wondering if I indicated I wanted to talk about the good news without ever actually doing it.  Which is why I wanted to say, right from the beginning and often today, “you are not alone.”  I think that may be a way of talking about the good news that we would all recognize.  

If my job today is to help you connect giving with what you have received, then my message is that you are not alone.  As I think of the people in this community, about moments in your lives, about our time together, about our worship and outreach, about pastoral care, teaching, book groups, prayer groups, study groups, I see people who have found support for their lives in this community.  I talk to people here all the time who have discovered they are not alone in their hunger for meaning, for depth and connection to something larger and grander than their every day experience.  I see us living the not alone message in the work and fellowship that bring us together in the choir, tree sales, Octoberfest, in the hypothermia shelter, and altar guild and so much more.  I see us living the not alone message when we provide comfort, meals, presence for those going through hard or challenging times.  And of course, I see us living the not alone message in our worship, where we celebrate community not only with those around us but with God who is in our midst.  In the very traditional Christian language of reconciliation and forgiveness, the answer is always that we are not alone.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God.  That was Jesus’ message and he urged us to continue that message by gathering in communities like this one, by living the message and spreading the word that no one is alone.  I can not imagine trying to live in the world today without a group of friends who share the hope that there is more, that the God of love is present in our lives in ways that are uncovered in our shared life, in our not being alone. 

I hope you received a pledge card and information this week and a letter from our senior warden Kimberly Martin.  If you put on your we-are-not-alone glasses and read her letter you will hear about her having found a haven in this place, you will hear about her finding resources and support among the people of St. Aidan’s.  I hope you go out today thinking of all the ways you are not alone because of your belonging in this community.  I hope you will think of all the people around us who need to hear that simple message, who need to experience it, and find strength in it.  And then I hope you will make a pledge for the coming year, in thanksgiving for the God who comes among us in so many ways to deliver the good news that we are not alone.  

Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost

St. Aidan's, September 30, 2018

Mark 9:38-50

Religion Can be Scary

Many years ago, in the process leading up to seminary, I was required by my bishop to spend a few days in a tiny hermitage at the diocesan retreat center.  The hermitage was near a little house cared for by Father Stevens, an Episcopal monk who, after decades of ministry in Liberia, had returned to the states to live a quiet life as a spiritual advisor and host to those who came looking for a little quiet in their lives.  Signs around the property encouraging silence, and sightings of Father Stevens’ with his long white hair, beard, and robes set the place apart as being a little off the beaten track.  The house had a chapel and meditation rooms open to anyone who needed them.  For those of us who were interested in that sort of thing the place stood out as a little spiritual island in the middle of a demanding world.  Not a bad place to visit.  It never occurred to me to wonder what those unfamiliar with the concept of contemplation and silence might think of that set away place with its story-book looking monk.  I got a glimpse of another take on religious life one afternoon while sitting outside my little hermitage.  

The diocese had built two nice little cabins that sat on a ridge overlooking a meadow with wild flowers and a little path worn down the middle.  The retreat center included 200 acres of property, fenced, but easily visited by kids from the local neighborhood.  I was sitting on a log, looking at that meadow, just watching the clouds and feeling the breeze, very happy to be alive when I heard them coming through the woods.  I heard them before I saw them.  Four boys, 9 or 10, talking, enjoying the adventure of having come in under the fence to what must have been a magical kind of place.  Of course adventures need to include a little danger, and I was soon surprised to learn that I had a role in their outing.  I was sitting rock still on my log and they were a good ways off when I heard one of them shout in a frightened voice, “hey look.  There’s one now.  Run!”  It took me a minute to realize they were talking about me. I found it very entertaining to be so frightening simply by sitting on a log. I began to imagine the stories they must have heard and told and amplified about the old guy in the white robe with the long beard and what kinds of things must go on in such a place. Very scary stuff.  Religion can be like that. 

I was told many years ago by the rector of the first parish I served that I would never get many people interested in “that contemplative stuff.”  I wondered if he was right.  I had always been leery of people who took their religion too seriously. I still am sometimes. Truth is, I had not been happy when my bishop made me take that time at the hermitage.  I didn’t want to go hang out with that old monk. I didn’t want him messing around in the fragile beginnings of my spiritual wonderings.  But by the time I was taken by those kids for a frightening “religious” guy, I had come to appreciate the quiet, the birds, the simplicity of just rocking and watching the woods and fields, even my simple meals and the lack of a phone and screens and news.  

I probably would have told you before that weekend that religious life was about having to follow Jesus in ways that meant giving up all kinds of things and becoming some sort of a zealot.  But by the time the kids ran away that afternoon I had figured out that my weekend was about simply being, being present to myself and with myself in a restorative way.  I wasn’t thinking about religion or monks, I was listening to my own breathing, to the wind, to the grass being blown around, to the birds.  When the kids shouted “run” I was enjoying being fully present in that fine moment, as I’m sure they were too. Go figure. So much we had in common that we would never share.

I have been reminded this week of all the people who approach the church, who approach and live at the edges of the faith community.  I have long been interested in those folks who I imagine must need something they hope the church can supply, but are put off by some of our ways, our talk, our strangeness. 

I hear Jesus saying this morning that if they aren’t against us they’re with us.  

That is a hard enough message to convey to the insiders, Jesus’ followers, who must have thought they should be suspicious of others who hadn’t had their particular set of experiences.  

I wonder if those others who were healing and doing good things outside Jesus group, the ones his disciples pointed out, I wonder if they ever heard that they were already included among Jesus’ friends.  I hope so.

Many in the faith community, and here I’m speaking not only of Christians, but Jews, Muslims, Hindu, people of all kinds of faith….are looking at our era, our place in history and seeing a new movement in the direction and nature of faith.  Christians have been talking for some time about a new reformation, that after five hundred years another major shift is coming in how we understand what we are about as Christians.  One writer, known for his work in interfaith dialogue says we are at the beginning of a new axial age in our understanding of faith, one marked by the possibility of a deeper encounter between world religions, one where we begin to discover the creative core at the center of others whose lives and ways we have not known.  One writer sees a move from the age of belief to the age of the spirit, a move from defining ourselves by doctrine to coming to see ourselves as participating in the “something more” that all religions try to approach.  Another writer searching for common ground among religions and found that the concept of the trinity runs deep, not only in Christianity but in any faith where God, Creation and Humanity are the field of discussion.  

I welcome this new axial age or this new reformation.  I hope we are moving to a time when we in religion focus not on our differences, but on what we hold in common.  That is where the real work is and has always been……hard truths, risky sharing, tentative approaches to sacred halls where the promise of living from our “soul depths” is held out.  I hope we are moving to a time when we can learn from the depths of those strange others whose faith we may encounter for the first time.  I hope we are moving to a time when we can truly say that those who aren’t against us are with us.  I hope we are moving to a time when we can be a little less proud of our own way and discover surprising gifts discovered in some new-to-us expression of what it means to live in the presence of “the great other.”  All that sounds good to me.  But I want more.  

I hope too that we can find a way to tell those who do not believe themselves to belong in the world of faith and religious longing that they too are needed, wanted….that they not only have a place among us but that they bring gifts that we, from our limited perspective might not recognize.  Only when we begin to risk sharing our humanity, something of what is at our own core can we begin to trust ourselves to the care and friendship of those strange others.   Religion can be scary yes, but maybe the best kept secret, the one that if we can expose it might help us welcome those who hang around the edges of the tradition, is that religion is scary for all of us, even those of us who consider ourselves insiders.  Religion is always about taking in the unfamiliar, about moving beyond our comfort zone, and maybe that’s what those “other people over there” have to teach us.  If they can risk coming among us to share and seek nourishment for their “souls,” then maybe we can too.  Maybe we can all learn that those strangers over there are not only not against us, but are indeed for us.  I hope that is where we are headed.  Amen

Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

St. Aidan's Episcopal church
July 29, 2018

This old, familiar story had the ring of a dream to it when I read it this time.  I like dreams and what they have to tell us about our lives........

Listen here

Homily for Ian Roberts’ Memorial Service

Saturday, June 16,  3pm

St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, Alexandria, Virginia

Any number of possibilities present themselves as ways to go about preaching Ian’s service this afternoon. Calling Ian Roberts a multi-faceted human being would be an understatement. Probably the easiest way to proceed would be to simply have as us all look at the picture on the cover of the bulletin. Take a look.

From here we all could wander off into memories of Ian’s welcoming expression, his approach to the world, to the greeting we expect from his smiling face. Ian was husband, friend, parent, counselor…we all have stories.

Or I could talk about all the things Ian shared with those around him. About his desire to invite others into higher purpose, to give, to make the world a better place. A few years ago when he took over the CROP walk to alleviate hunger, he was a force to be reckoned with. I still see him in his yellow CROP Walk tee shirt.

What stands out for me today though, is the most recent experience of being with Ian in his final days and watching a side of him I had known but not experienced to the extent that I did in Scotland a few weeks ago. I had on our recent trip the great joy of experiencing Ian closer to his home setting—geography I had heard him talk about for years. Mary and I had gone to Scotland for the first time two years ago, and in the run-up to that trip it seemed like Ian was in my office every week with a map, or a book, or a new list of parks, mountains, and lochs we had to see. We ended up making a detour at one point to see what Ian swore was a dinosaur’s footprint on a beach on the isle of sky.  

Ian was persuasive. 

With that understanding of his love of the country and it’s marvels, I sat with him on the ferry as we made our way from Oban to Mull. He was totally captured by what he was seeing out the window.  He was fully alive. Then I watched him on the bus as we crossed Mull. I was near the back and he in the front. I watched him pointing and commenting and laughing and delighting in seeing others experience what had always brought him so much joy.  In his last days Ian was as alive and happy as I had ever seen him.

He appreciated the beauty of the world, of his homeland in a way that suggested he was seeing more than just mountains and streams and beaches.  His face and his expressions and his reaction to the beauty around him conveyed a truth offered in the fourth century by Gregory of Nyssa who said the beauty we see fills us and draws us further toward the beauty yet to be seen. 

In Ian’s descriptions of what he loved and was fascinated with one always had the feeling that he was seeing more, and trying to share that something more….that he’d already had a glimpse of what lay beyond and wanted others to catch that vision too.  

As I was thinking this week about Ian and about what I would say today, I ran across these words, written by Walter Pater in his conclusion to a book of poems by William Morris.  Pater says: 

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation.  Every moment some new form grows perfect in land or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood or passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us—for that moment only.  Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself is the end…How should we pass most swiftly from point to point and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?  To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.  

Ian showed us all what it looks like to live a successful life.  

And here’s the thing.  With Ian, that fascination, that observation wasn’t reserved for just the beautiful, but for, and maybe especially for, hidden beauty—the beauty in the mundane, the mystery and glory in what is easily overlooked.  He looked for that hidden wonder in each of us and in everyone he met and we knew it.  One of the books of photographs he published and shared with friends was titled, “Hidden in Plain Sight” because that is where he looked for the amazing, the worthwhile, the more than worthwhile.  

When Ian fell ill and was taken to the hospital in Oban, Kathy went with him and the rest of us made the short crossing to Iona. Kathy stayed in touch by phone and email, and at some point she mentioned Ian’s propensity for searching among the neglected and unnoticed for what was truly remarkable.  We all recognized what Kathy was talking about and that way of Ian’s became a part of our week.  Though he never made it across that last mile of water to the island, Ian was with us the whole time.  More than once at the end of the day’s hiking and wandering in the beauty of nature someone would report having spent the day looking at the world “the way Ian does,” searching out what might be missed because of its humble setting or seeming insignificance in the presence of so much beauty.  On that tiny island, as prayers were offered for Ian at every service in the abbey and as the story spread, our little band became known as “Ian’s group.”  His presence and influence were palpable for people who had never met him.  We would expect nothing less from Ian Roberts.  Ian himself is still hidden in plain sight on Iona. Even in death, Ian was shaping and guiding and creating community.

My understanding of church and salvation has to do with being made whole in the community that gathers around the Jesus stories.  It is about becoming aware of that “something more” which we all intuit and of which we are all a part.  We learn from each other and are shaped by each other’s stories, by sharing the experience of living, its joys and its challenges.  We learn, grow, and discover in community in ways we never could on our own.  Community is where we become what we might become, and hopefully, in the process, discover that part of the divine life that is ours to reveal through our living and acting to others in the community.  Ian found his calling.

Jesus was always encouraging those around him to go farther, ‘think about what lies behind your tradition’s words, throw a wider net when you imagine community, include those you didn’t think belonged, expand your thinking…….your awareness of others and their lives. Expand your belief in your own worth….develop a fascination for everything around you until this life becomes the kingdom of the divine and you begin to worry less about your own life and begin to long for that “something more” you have always hoped for.  

I believe Ian’s gift, his bit of the divine revelation, had to do with that part of what Jesus tried to communicate.  Ian who was “roused and startled to life” very early on, never stopped inviting others into that grander way of being in the world.  He did that with and for and to every one of us.  That is why we are here today.  We give thanks to God this afternoon for the gift of Ian Roberts.  And, we give thanks to Ian for the God we know a little better because of Ian’s call to look for the best things “hidden in plain sight. “

JB